Virtualisation as a concept represents the latest and most significant revolution in the Information Technology infrastructure arena this decade.

Virtualisation technologies have been available on the open market for several years now. Initially targeted at the development and test sector, it allowed developers to reduce the amount of physical kit required for development and test. Now a proven technology, virtualisation can be found reliably running the critical systems in many major corporations the world over. The benefits of virtualisation are being realised by more and more organisations as the virtual infrastructure and utility computing paradigms are explored. Amongst these benefits are massive cost savings, improved system reliability and decreased downtime to name just a few.