BW4740 – Evangelizing the Value Proposition

We all know Virtualization is great, and it saves customers money. As Todd said in the keynote, Virtualization saves Financial Energy, Human Energy, and Earth’s Energy.

But, how do you demonstrate this savings to your upper management. How can you translate these IT Benefits into Business Value your Exec’s can understand.

IT Benefit	Solve Business Needs
Consolidate Resources	Lower Capital Costs
Reduce Complexity	Lower Operational Costs
Automated Management	Increased Agility
Availability and Disaster Recovery	Reduce Downtime
improved security	Reduce Business Risk and Increased Governance

From there, you can show them output from an ROI calculator. VMware’s ROI Calculator was created by Alinean, our ROI Calculator was created by Alinean as well. Take either of these reports and look at the results. YOU WILL SAVE MONEY WITH VIRTUALIZATION.

Now look at them, and remove the cost for VMware, that is what you will save with Microsoft.

If you are running Microsoft Operating Systems in the Guests, you buy the Windows Server Datacenter Edition and apply it to the host. Once applied, you can run unlimited Server VMs on that box (regardless of Virtualization Solution), but, with Hyper-V that license also includes the Virtualization Layer. With VMware you would have to buy a vSphere Bundle with that cost added ON TOP of the cost you are already paying for the Guest OS license where you get a Virtualization solution included.

If you are managing these Guests with System Center Configuration Manager, and System Center Operations Manager, then get the Server Management Suite Datacenter bundle to save money, and once you bundle with SMSD, you get SCOM, SCCM, SCDPM, and SCVMM. So you have the management pieces, and you don’t need to buy the vSphere Bundle.

You need to understand how Virtualization will save you money versus physical. What you really need to do is justify your Virtualization Solution of choice. As all of them will save you money, why not save the most and go with the Microsoft Solution?