by Curt Franklin

Virtualization: The SMB Take

analysis
Feb 4, 20082 mins

I'm at InfoWorld's Virtualization Forum in San Francisco today, and much of what we're hearing is aimed squarely at the largest IT organizations. I'm beginning to see more vendors and analysts talked about virtualization for SMB organizations, and they're making good points. This morning, I heard a keynote address that had a line talking about the dangers of success -- the significant hit to an IT infrastructure

I’m at InfoWorld’s Virtualization Forum in San Francisco today, and much of what we’re hearing is aimed squarely at the largest IT organizations. I’m beginning to see more vendors and analysts talked about virtualization for SMB organizations, and they’re making good points.

This morning, I heard a keynote address that had a line talking about the dangers of success — the significant hit to an IT infrastructure that a huge number of web hits can produce. It leads to a good question: are you ready for success? I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had discussions with companies in which they talked about the success they wanted, but when I asked them about what would happen if everyone answered their ad or responded to their marketing program, they had no idea.

I’m not saying that you need to over-build everything on the assumption that you’ll be the next Google by sometime next month, but you should make sure that your IT infrastructure is up to the task of supporting your customers and partners even if they all decide to respond to your marketing. It’s tough to think about success as an instigating incident for your disaster-recovery plan, but you should have those plans in place — with any luck at all, you’ll actually get to use that particular plan.

What would happen to your IT infrastructure if your business really started to take off? Are you ready? Let me know what you have to think about this one — leave a comment or drop me an e-mail message.