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Virtualization cuts across just about all of what you might find in the data center. Clients, servers, applications, storage systems, data networks, and security can all be virtualized to one degree or another. And chief executives are discovering that virtualization has the potential to not only improve the balance sheet, but strengthen competitive advantage and put a shine on the corporate brand. Despite the bluster coming from vendors and analysts, data suggests that this generation of virtualization is still in its formative years. CIO.com, for example, found in its 2008 survey that while 85 percent of the respondents have virtualized at least some of their servers, just over one-third have virtualized other aspects of their data centers, like storage systems and desktops.

We can expect to see the emphasis on virtualization itself diminish. Like all disruptive technologies, virtualization is really an enabler – a means to an end rather than the end itself. CIOs and CTOs know this. Analyst and consultant Dan Kusnetzky succinctly summed up the sentiment when he blogged, “no one starts down the path toward a more virtualized environment by saying ‘I want virtualization.’” Instead, they want increased IT flexibility and more responsive customer service.  What companies really want is a way to orchestrate their infrastructure assets and achieve a reliable dynamic data center.

Understanding the reliable dynamic data center requires a different way of thinking about how classes of resources are related to one another. Application services, for instance, need CPUs, memory, operating systems, storage, network connections, and security. In the dynamic data center, these are logical relationships. The physical elements are completely fungible. This means that functions such as application deployment, capacity allocation, backup and restore, high availability, and disaster recovery are more integral to the system. Consequently they are less labor intensive, less intrusive, and less costly.

So how does a comprehensive infrastructure orchestration solution address these shortcomings?  By horizontally extending virtualization and creating pools of server, storage, and network capacity that can be shared among all applications. Second, it replaces the static bindings between hardware and software with logical associations. Finally, it provides workload management capabilities that enable rapid application deployment and server repurposing in response to fluctuations in demand, scheduling priorities, or system outages.

This result is a level playing field that brings scalability, reliability, high availability, and disaster recovery to all applications while lowering the aggregate number of servers needed to keep the business running. Infrastructure orchestration empowers IT administrators to reassert management control over resource capacity. Within the dynamic environment, IT becomes a fundamental element of the business process - responsive to organizational needs instead of being overburdened by increasing demand for data center services.

The reliable dynamic data center exists today in many enterprises around the globe. Infrastructure orchestration is the key technology force behind the movement that enables enterprises to realign their organizations in order to increase competitiveness and become more responsive to the needs of business and customers in today's changing world.