The decision not to virtualize... or anything else for that matter.

Eric S. Perkins

Driven professional with fresh, relevant concepts on enterprise computing.

My goals are simple. To apply my concepts, determination, and leadership to the betterment of those around me.

True thought leadership involving forward looking technology trends enabling me to properly position enterprises to succeed with technology.

Throughout my career I have led my peers in troubleshooting instinct in technical situations, business situations and the ability to quickly ramp up on new trends and leverage them successfully.

My Business Acumen includes M&A, 6+ yrs of running a very profitable corporation. Highly skilled at developing strategic partnerships with clients, vendors, and competitors.

Personal:

Father of three, with a beautiful wife and a passion for anything that goes fast.

I was talking to a longtime enterprise customer today that has not virtualized a single server in his production environment. It came as a shock to me!?!? How could this be? This particular company happens to be a large, well respected manufacturer that has gone through a pretty tough time in this economy. The fact of the matter is people are concerned for the longevity of the company and they don’t seem to be on anyone’s radar as an acquisition target (yet).

So as I dug deeper to understand how this could be, I found that the CIO has enforced a complete IT spending freeze. It turns out it is just too expensive for them to virtualize! Now we probably think about all the savings you would get and if you have to use the free hypervisors, just do something to start getting the environment more streamlined or prepared for the future.

It’s just not in the cards as the change processes alone at this time would cost too much money. So while we all sit here and think of things like power savings, easier management, better DR capabilities, and all the joy that is virtualization, the CIO in this economy is forced to look at his departments and see what will cost his company the least amount of money for the next six months (maybe three).

For those of you that know me personally then you also know I’m not giving up! I have some ideas that could be a zero upfront spend, but just some ideas at this point. That said, it was sad to talk to a customer that was not bluffing at all; they had zero capital to spend.

Sad story I hope this economy is truly back on the right track. Has anyone else run into an enterprise customer recently that has not virtualized at all?

Eric S. Perkins

http://chimerically.com

Comments

Guest on Wednesday, December 02, 2009 says

For one the CIO is an idiot. If they are concerned about longevity they should be INVESTING in their business. How are they going to get a competitive advantage over their competition let alone sit idly by while their competitors work to get that advantage instead?

Change processes cost money? Of course it does, but it's not a hard dollar amount. A company can put its staff to work or they can sit on the asses all day and do nothing (seems as a spending freeze would nix any projects people are working on)

Third, and the big one. Why can't he convert his Operational Costs into a capital expenditure? We have a client who took their PC replacement dollars and instead of buy new PCs, bought new monitors and memory for their existing PCs and invested the rest into a virtual infrastructure that included new servers, storage, XenServer, XenApp and XenDesktop.

Aside from that, you're not along. I'm going to see a company tomorrow that hasn't virtualized (beyond a small XenApp farm for remote access).

Joe

Eric S. Perkins on Wednesday, December 02, 2009 says

Hey Joe-

In general I don't disagree with you at all. I guess it just depends what state they truly are in. Hard to convert opex to capex if the money ain't in the bank! :)

Like I said I have some ideas on how to tackle this one that could help spread the costs over time helping that opex to capex conversion.

Thanks for posting!

-ESP