March 11, 2026
Virtualization Best Practices: The Next Step in Your Virtualization Journey
IT leaders must align their virtualization decisions with their strategic objectives.
The virtualization market is experiencing significant disruption, driven by changes in licensing models, pricing structures and feature bundling. Many IT leaders are looking into switching providers for the first time in years, but this is neither an easy decision nor a simple process. Migration efforts require careful planning, as organizations must unravel previously hidden system interdependencies, map out complex migration waves and assess the potential costs and benefits of the move.
Some organizations opt to stay with their current vendor and try to maximize the value of their existing platform, while others are modernizing their infrastructure to emphasize hybrid cloud architectures or container-first deployment models, or else take a blended approach that places workloads in multiple platforms based on cost and other factors. A trusted partner such as CDW can help guide every step, resulting in a virtualization environment that supports an organization’s broader IT and business strategies.
CDW can help your organization implement a virtualization strategy that helps you achieve your business objectives.
The virtualization market is experiencing significant disruption, driven by changes in licensing models, pricing structures and feature bundling. Many IT leaders are looking into switching providers for the first time in years, but this is neither an easy decision nor a simple process. Migration efforts require careful planning, as organizations must unravel previously hidden system interdependencies, map out complex migration waves and assess the potential costs and benefits of the move.
Some organizations opt to stay with their current vendor and try to maximize the value of their existing platform, while others are modernizing their infrastructure to emphasize hybrid cloud architectures or container-first deployment models, or else take a blended approach that places workloads in multiple platforms based on cost and other factors. A trusted partner such as CDW can help guide every step, resulting in a virtualization environment that supports an organization’s broader IT and business strategies.
CDW can help your organization implement a virtualization strategy that helps you achieve your business objectives.
For years, many IT leaders have treated their virtualization refresh cycles as mere formalities — and with good reason. After all, if an organization had been with the same vendor for more than a decade, and the environment reliably helped the business meet its goals, then there was little need to evaluate alternatives.
The current moment is different. Suddenly, instead of breezing through routine refresh cycles, organizations find themselves at unfamiliar crossroads. Over the past several years, the virtualization market has been upended by dramatic changes in licensing, pricing and bundling, introducing significant uncertainty into what was previously considered a stable, foundational component of most organizations’ IT environments. In fact, the changes in virtualization licensing and pricing have been so drastic that many leaders report experiencing an emotional reaction when they realize that their renewal process will be completely different from those of years past.
Once this initial emotional reaction fades, however, business and IT leaders must quickly turn their attention to strategic discussions about their path forward. Over the past two decades, virtualization has gone from a niche IT innovation strategy to a default model for many environments. This means that today’s hypervisor decisions will carry long-term consequences, including ongoing impacts to cost structures, operating models, architectural flexibility and even future modernization plans. Many are finding this decision-making process challenging, not only because of the sudden shift in the virtualization market but also due to the need to balance immediate pressures (including looming renewal deadlines and pricing volatility) with long-term needs (such as agility, cloud alignment, containerization and AI-readiness).
To navigate this process, leaders must avoid the temptation to make reactive decisions and instead take a step back to evaluate their virtualization environments in the context of an ongoing strategic journey, rather than treating a refresh as a one-time event. As part of their new strategy, many organizations are opting to move away from using a single virtualization platform and instead embracing hybrid and multi-hypervisor environments. This reduces the risks of vendor lock-in, but it can also introduce a new level of complexity. Several providers now offer bundled full-stack solutions, and while these have benefits, many buyers find that they need to consult with an expert to help them untangle the different offerings and identify the best fit.
Third-party vendor-agnostic advice from a trusted partner such as CDW can help IT teams adopt and deploy new environments as efficiently as possible, while also future proofing organizations against volatility in the virtualization market.
28%
The percentage of IT leaders who say that vendor lock-in is a top concern prompting them to reassess their existing virtualization platform
Source: Red Hat, “The state of virtualization,” May 2025
CDW can help your organization deploy and optimize a new virtualization environment.
For years, many IT leaders have treated their virtualization refresh cycles as mere formalities — and with good reason. After all, if an organization had been with the same vendor for more than a decade, and the environment reliably helped the business meet its goals, then there was little need to evaluate alternatives.
The current moment is different. Suddenly, instead of breezing through routine refresh cycles, organizations find themselves at unfamiliar crossroads. Over the past several years, the virtualization market has been upended by dramatic changes in licensing, pricing and bundling, introducing significant uncertainty into what was previously considered a stable, foundational component of most organizations’ IT environments. In fact, the changes in virtualization licensing and pricing have been so drastic that many leaders report experiencing an emotional reaction when they realize that their renewal process will be completely different from those of years past.
Once this initial emotional reaction fades, however, business and IT leaders must quickly turn their attention to strategic discussions about their path forward. Over the past two decades, virtualization has gone from a niche IT innovation strategy to a default model for many environments. This means that today’s hypervisor decisions will carry long-term consequences, including ongoing impacts to cost structures, operating models, architectural flexibility and even future modernization plans. Many are finding this decision-making process challenging, not only because of the sudden shift in the virtualization market but also due to the need to balance immediate pressures (including looming renewal deadlines and pricing volatility) with long-term needs (such as agility, cloud alignment, containerization and AI-readiness).
To navigate this process, leaders must avoid the temptation to make reactive decisions and instead take a step back to evaluate their virtualization environments in the context of an ongoing strategic journey, rather than treating a refresh as a one-time event. As part of their new strategy, many organizations are opting to move away from using a single virtualization platform and instead embracing hybrid and multi-hypervisor environments. This reduces the risks of vendor lock-in, but it can also introduce a new level of complexity. Several providers now offer bundled full-stack solutions, and while these have benefits, many buyers find that they need to consult with an expert to help them untangle the different offerings and identify the best fit.
Third-party vendor-agnostic advice from a trusted partner such as CDW can help IT teams adopt and deploy new environments as efficiently as possible, while also future proofing organizations against volatility in the virtualization market.
CDW can help your organization deploy and optimize a new virtualization environment.
Virtualization by the Numbers
57%
The percentage of IT decision-makers who report being “very satisfied” with their current primary virtualization platform
Source: S&P Global Market Intelligence, “The virtues of virtualization,” August 2025
54%
The percentage of IT decision-makers who cited overall cost as the reason for their satisfaction with virtualization
Source: S&P Global Market Intelligence, “The virtues of virtualization,” August 2025
46%
The percentage of IT leaders who say optimizing across hybrid and multicloud environments will be one of the top changes to their virtualization environments over the next three years
Source: Red Hat, “The state of virtualization,” May 2025
Virtualization by the Numbers
57%
The percentage of IT decision-makers who report being “very satisfied” with their current primary virtualization platform
Source: S&P Global Market Intelligence, “The virtues of virtualization,” August 2025
54%
The percentage of IT decision-makers who cited overall cost as the reason for their satisfaction with virtualization
Source: S&P Global Market Intelligence, “The virtues of virtualization,” August 2025
46%
The percentage of IT leaders who say optimizing across hybrid and multicloud environments will be one of the top changes to their virtualization environments over the next three years
Source: Red Hat, “The state of virtualization,” May 2025
- VIRTUALIZATION’S COST AND COMPLEXITY
- CHOOSING THE RIGHT PATH FORWARD
- VIRTUALIZATION: A CONTINUOUS ADVANTAGE
Within most organizations, virtualization has been a relatively low-drama component of the IT ecosystem for years. While IT teams have continued to patch systems, upgrade hardware and implement cybersecurity measures, many have not undertaken a ground-up build of a virtualization environment or conducted a major migration for quite some time, if ever. Consequently, not all IT leaders are prepared for the cost and complexity that almost always accompanies a virtualization migration effort.
Understandably, many IT leaders facing steep price increases and unwanted feature bundles have a similar initial reaction: They want to switch vendors. This may, in fact, be the right path, but the process is rarely as smooth or simple as these leaders imagine. As teams take a closer look at their virtualization environments, they often discover that years of incremental growth have led to highly interdependent systems, with monitoring tools, automation workflows, backup processes and reporting structures that have all evolved alongside virtualization platforms. To make an informed decision, leaders must first identify their current operational dependencies, infrastructure readiness and long-term architectural goals.
UNRAVELING INTEGRATED VIRTUALIZATION ENVIRONMENTS: A virtualization environment extends far beyond the hypervisor layer, touching networking, storage, backup, monitoring and identity management, among other systems. Over time, IT teams establish standard operating procedures for these dependencies, including alert thresholds, backup windows, security baselines and acceptable levels of latency. Pull any of these threads without proper planning, and the entire fabric can come undone. Because these integrations largely determine how teams troubleshoot problems and maintain required service levels, changing the platform is inevitably a highly complex process. A thorough, early discovery effort may not make migration any less complex, but it will give leaders a clear map of their environment before they make a major move — potentially preventing service disruptions and other problems later.
MANAGING MIGRATIONS: If migration were as simple as merely moving virtual machines from one hypervisor to another, far more organizations would likely make the move. In reality, migration requires IT teams to conduct a variety of tasks:
• Design host sizing
• Plan cluster and storage layout in the target platform
• Choose migration toolkits
• Define “waves” of workloads to move based on criticality, technical complexity and business windows
• Prepare virtual machines and data for the new hypervisor
• Bring the virtual machines up in the target environment and perform rigorous testing
• Decommission the legacy environment
Hidden within these stages are myriad smaller steps, such as updating or replacing drivers, redesigning critical nonportable features, and rebuilding network and security elements such as virtual LANs and firewall rules. Teams also typically must re-create platform-specific automation and self-service features.
UNDERSTANDING VIRTUALIZATION PLATFORM TRADE-OFFS: When IT leaders decide to switch vendors, they cannot assume the new virtualization platform will have all the same features and functionality as their existing environment. For example, not all platforms offer the same levels of availability or load-balancing. And capabilities that were tightly integrated in legacy environments — such as backup and disaster recovery, monitoring and some security features — may need to be replaced with supplemental tools, adding both cost and risk. These differences can strain IT teams, even after a migration is complete. For example, when teams lose familiar visibility dashboards, this may lead to delays in incident resolution. Or, if a new virtualization platform lacks the automation maturity of a previous platform, the manual workload on IT teams may increase significantly. Leaders must take all of these trade-offs into account if they want to make a useful comparison.
As organizations reassess their virtualization strategies, many leaders are discovering there is no single best path forward. Instead, they must evaluate a range of options based on their existing environments, workload requirements, budget constraints and long-term modernization goals. For some, the right choice will be to stay on their existing platform, even if it is more expensive than it was in the past. Others will see value in moving to an alternative platform, despite the considerable cost and complexity of migration. Some will use this moment as an opportunity to modernize their IT environments with hybrid cloud or container-first models. And still others will take a blended approach that combines some or all of these paths.
STAY AND MAXIMIZE VALUE: Organizations that opt to remain on existing virtualization platforms often focus on maximizing operational efficiency, optimizing licensing usage or adopting platform capabilities they have not yet fully leveraged. This new focus may yield meaningful operational benefits as well as potential cost reductions. Staying on an existing platform can also provide continuity for IT teams while leadership evaluates longer-term modernization strategies and prepares for future infrastructure changes. In many cases, this approach allows organizations to stabilize costs and operations while building a clearer roadmap for future decisions. Also, some teams may initially opt for this approach and then use the next renewal cycle to more thoroughly assess their existing environments and alternative virtualization providers.
MIGRATE TO ALTERNATIVE PLATFORMS: The most obvious motivation for exploring alternatives is likely cost. However, some leaders are also treating this moment as an opportunity to reduce dependency on a single vendor. Migration should not be undertaken lightly, as the process requires careful planning. Teams need to inventory workloads, validate feature parity and determine how new platforms will integrate with existing tools and processes. They also need to account for any skills gaps and impacts on established operations. In many cases, enterprises will pilot a new platform for a subset of workloads before committing to a larger shift. This phased approach can help organizations better understand how short-term migration costs compare with potential long-term benefits.
MODERNIZE INFRASTRUCTURE STRATEGY: Other organizations are modernizing their infrastructure more broadly. Rather than focusing solely on hypervisor selection, leaders at these organizations are evaluating hybrid cloud architectures, container-first development models and workload portability across environments. In these cases, virtualization decisions are typically closely tied to broader application modernization, cloud strategy and AI-readiness initiatives. By aligning virtualization strategy with these larger priorities, organizations can ensure infrastructure investments support long-term innovation rather than simply maintaining existing systems. This broader perspective can also help IT teams build environments that are better suited to support future workloads and evolving business requirements.
ADOPT A BLENDED APPROACH: In practice, these paths are not mutually exclusive. Some organizations are adopting blended strategies, placing workloads across multiple platforms based on cost, performance, risk and operational requirements. This workload placement strategy allows IT teams to match applications with the environments best suited to support them while maintaining flexibility for future changes. With the support of a trusted partner such as CDW, organizations can assess environments at both macro and micro levels to map their workloads, constraints and long-term goals. With this knowledge, leaders can make informed decisions regarding platforms, vendors and architectures while maintaining both stability and flexibility during a period of extraordinary change.
Click Below To Continue Reading
Myth #1: Licensing cost is always the largest expense.
Reality: Although licensing changes may trigger virtualization reassessments, increased costs are only part of what accounts for the total cost of ownership. Leaders must also consider costs associated with labor-intensive migration efforts, new hardware purchases and training.
Myth #2: Switching platforms automatically reduces cost.
Reality: Lower licensing costs do not always translate into spending reductions over the long term. Migration complexity, retraining requirements, tooling changes and operational adjustments can sometimes lead to overall higher costs — even for a less expensive platform.
Myth #3: One platform will fit all workloads.
Reality: Different workloads often have different infrastructure requirements. Many organizations are embracing hybrid or multi-hypervisor strategies that allow them to match workloads with environments that will optimize cost and performance.
Myth #4: Renewal is the best time to plan a move.
Reality: Migrating to new virtualization infrastructure is not as simple as flipping a switch. If leaders wait to evaluate their options until renewal deadlines are approaching, they may not have time to assess alternatives or complete migrations.
Organizations that treat virtualization as an infrastructure decision to revisit only periodically will always find themselves playing catch-up. But those that treat virtualization as a strategic capability will position themselves to more effectively adapt to changing technologies, workloads and vendor priorities.
MOVE BEYOND ONE-AND-DONE THINKING: Contract renewals should not be the only time IT and business leaders think about making changes to their virtualization environments. Instead, virtualization should be treated as a continuously evolving discipline with inherently dynamic workloads and pricing models. This view allows IT leaders to proactively prepare for change, rather than reacting to disruption after options have already narrowed and costs have climbed.
EMBRACE LIFECYCLE PLANNING: Migration is only one of many critical components of any overhaul to a virtualization environment. Leaders must pay careful attention to each step of the virtualization lifecycle, including assessment, selection, deployment, optimization and re-evaluation. Each step informs the subsequent stages, creating opportunities to refine environments as business needs change and ensuring that ongoing infrastructure decisions are aligned with long-term goals.
ENGAGE EARLY: The time to begin working with a trusted virtualization partner such as CDW is well before contract renewals come due. CDW offers early-stage virtualization workshops and infrastructure assessments to help organizations chart the future of their environments. By engaging early, organizations can reduce risk, align technical strategy with budget planning cycles and avoid rushed, deadline-driven decisions.
FOCUS ON SOLUTIONS, NOT VENDORS: One reason working with a trusted partner is so effective is that it allows IT and business leaders to receive vendor-agnostic advice. As virtualization platforms evolve and vendors introduce new licensing and bundling models, organizations need to be able to turn to someone who can help them evaluate platforms through the lens of performance, resilience and cost, rather than preconceptions or vendor incentives.
BRING IN OUTSIDE EXPERTISE: Given the relatively stable nature of the virtualization market until recently, even many seasoned IT professionals have never undertaken a major virtualization migration. Here again, a trusted partner such as CDW can provide unbiased, cross-platform expertise, helping IT teams evaluate trade-offs and identify the risks of different solutions, architectures and deployment models.
ASSESS EVERYTHING: By carefully assessing their existing environments well before a potential virtualization migration, organizations can avoid unpleasant surprises later. Assessments, workshops and discovery sessions help business and IT leaders better understand their environments at both macro and micro levels, including complex interdependencies among different systems. These engagements provide a structured foundation for planning modernization efforts and making informed platform decisions across hybrid and multi-hypervisor environments with confidence and clarity.
MANAGE EVERY ASPECT OF MIGRATION: Migration initiatives often involve more than moving workloads between platforms. They can include transitions among clusters, data centers, hypervisors or cloud environments, along with configuration, testing and operational validation. Third-party support for migration planning and deployment can help organizations minimize disruption, reduce operational risk and accelerate adoption of new platform capabilities while maintaining business continuity throughout the process.
BUILD FOR STRATEGY: When implemented effectively, virtualization can increase productivity by accelerating development and supporting legacy applications. It can improve IT flexibility through dynamic resource allocation, enable resilience by streamlining disaster recovery and simplify management by centralizing IT administrative tasks. When leaders are blindsided by cost increases and other changes, they may be tempted to respond reactively. But for those who instead align their infrastructure decisions with long-term strategy, virtualization will become a business enabler, rather than a constraint.
- VIRTUALIZATION’S COST AND COMPLEXITY
- CHOOSING THE RIGHT PATH FORWARD
- VIRTUALIZATION: A CONTINUOUS ADVANTAGE
Within most organizations, virtualization has been a relatively low-drama component of the IT ecosystem for years. While IT teams have continued to patch systems, upgrade hardware and implement cybersecurity measures, many have not undertaken a ground-up build of a virtualization environment or conducted a major migration for quite some time, if ever. Consequently, not all IT leaders are prepared for the cost and complexity that almost always accompanies a virtualization migration effort.
Understandably, many IT leaders facing steep price increases and unwanted feature bundles have a similar initial reaction: They want to switch vendors. This may, in fact, be the right path, but the process is rarely as smooth or simple as these leaders imagine. As teams take a closer look at their virtualization environments, they often discover that years of incremental growth have led to highly interdependent systems, with monitoring tools, automation workflows, backup processes and reporting structures that have all evolved alongside virtualization platforms. To make an informed decision, leaders must first identify their current operational dependencies, infrastructure readiness and long-term architectural goals.
UNRAVELING INTEGRATED VIRTUALIZATION ENVIRONMENTS: A virtualization environment extends far beyond the hypervisor layer, touching networking, storage, backup, monitoring and identity management, among other systems. Over time, IT teams establish standard operating procedures for these dependencies, including alert thresholds, backup windows, security baselines and acceptable levels of latency. Pull any of these threads without proper planning, and the entire fabric can come undone. Because these integrations largely determine how teams troubleshoot problems and maintain required service levels, changing the platform is inevitably a highly complex process. A thorough, early discovery effort may not make migration any less complex, but it will give leaders a clear map of their environment before they make a major move — potentially preventing service disruptions and other problems later.
MANAGING MIGRATIONS: If migration were as simple as merely moving virtual machines from one hypervisor to another, far more organizations would likely make the move. In reality, migration requires IT teams to conduct a variety of tasks:
• Design host sizing
• Plan cluster and storage layout in the target platform
• Choose migration toolkits
• Define “waves” of workloads to move based on criticality, technical complexity and business windows
• Prepare virtual machines and data for the new hypervisor
• Bring the virtual machines up in the target environment and perform rigorous testing
• Decommission the legacy environment
Hidden within these stages are myriad smaller steps, such as updating or replacing drivers, redesigning critical nonportable features, and rebuilding network and security elements such as virtual LANs and firewall rules. Teams also typically must re-create platform-specific automation and self-service features.
UNDERSTANDING VIRTUALIZATION PLATFORM TRADE-OFFS: When IT leaders decide to switch vendors, they cannot assume the new virtualization platform will have all the same features and functionality as their existing environment. For example, not all platforms offer the same levels of availability or load-balancing. And capabilities that were tightly integrated in legacy environments — such as backup and disaster recovery, monitoring and some security features — may need to be replaced with supplemental tools, adding both cost and risk. These differences can strain IT teams, even after a migration is complete. For example, when teams lose familiar visibility dashboards, this may lead to delays in incident resolution. Or, if a new virtualization platform lacks the automation maturity of a previous platform, the manual workload on IT teams may increase significantly. Leaders must take all of these trade-offs into account if they want to make a useful comparison.
As organizations reassess their virtualization strategies, many leaders are discovering there is no single best path forward. Instead, they must evaluate a range of options based on their existing environments, workload requirements, budget constraints and long-term modernization goals. For some, the right choice will be to stay on their existing platform, even if it is more expensive than it was in the past. Others will see value in moving to an alternative platform, despite the considerable cost and complexity of migration. Some will use this moment as an opportunity to modernize their IT environments with hybrid cloud or container-first models. And still others will take a blended approach that combines some or all of these paths.
STAY AND MAXIMIZE VALUE: Organizations that opt to remain on existing virtualization platforms often focus on maximizing operational efficiency, optimizing licensing usage or adopting platform capabilities they have not yet fully leveraged. This new focus may yield meaningful operational benefits as well as potential cost reductions. Staying on an existing platform can also provide continuity for IT teams while leadership evaluates longer-term modernization strategies and prepares for future infrastructure changes. In many cases, this approach allows organizations to stabilize costs and operations while building a clearer roadmap for future decisions. Also, some teams may initially opt for this approach and then use the next renewal cycle to more thoroughly assess their existing environments and alternative virtualization providers.
MIGRATE TO ALTERNATIVE PLATFORMS: The most obvious motivation for exploring alternatives is likely cost. However, some leaders are also treating this moment as an opportunity to reduce dependency on a single vendor. Migration should not be undertaken lightly, as the process requires careful planning. Teams need to inventory workloads, validate feature parity and determine how new platforms will integrate with existing tools and processes. They also need to account for any skills gaps and impacts on established operations. In many cases, enterprises will pilot a new platform for a subset of workloads before committing to a larger shift. This phased approach can help organizations better understand how short-term migration costs compare with potential long-term benefits.
MODERNIZE INFRASTRUCTURE STRATEGY: Other organizations are modernizing their infrastructure more broadly. Rather than focusing solely on hypervisor selection, leaders at these organizations are evaluating hybrid cloud architectures, container-first development models and workload portability across environments. In these cases, virtualization decisions are typically closely tied to broader application modernization, cloud strategy and AI-readiness initiatives. By aligning virtualization strategy with these larger priorities, organizations can ensure infrastructure investments support long-term innovation rather than simply maintaining existing systems. This broader perspective can also help IT teams build environments that are better suited to support future workloads and evolving business requirements.
ADOPT A BLENDED APPROACH: In practice, these paths are not mutually exclusive. Some organizations are adopting blended strategies, placing workloads across multiple platforms based on cost, performance, risk and operational requirements. This workload placement strategy allows IT teams to match applications with the environments best suited to support them while maintaining flexibility for future changes. With the support of a trusted partner such as CDW, organizations can assess environments at both macro and micro levels to map their workloads, constraints and long-term goals. With this knowledge, leaders can make informed decisions regarding platforms, vendors and architectures while maintaining both stability and flexibility during a period of extraordinary change.
Click Below To Continue Reading
Myth #1: Licensing cost is always the largest expense.
Reality: Although licensing changes may trigger virtualization reassessments, increased costs are only part of what accounts for the total cost of ownership. Leaders must also consider costs associated with labor-intensive migration efforts, new hardware purchases and training.
Myth #2: Switching platforms automatically reduces cost.
Reality: Lower licensing costs do not always translate into spending reductions over the long term. Migration complexity, retraining requirements, tooling changes and operational adjustments can sometimes lead to overall higher costs — even for a less expensive platform.
Myth #3: One platform will fit all workloads.
Reality: Different workloads often have different infrastructure requirements. Many organizations are embracing hybrid or multi-hypervisor strategies that allow them to match workloads with environments that will optimize cost and performance.
Myth #4: Renewal is the best time to plan a move.
Reality: Migrating to new virtualization infrastructure is not as simple as flipping a switch. If leaders wait to evaluate their options until renewal deadlines are approaching, they may not have time to assess alternatives or complete migrations.
Organizations that treat virtualization as an infrastructure decision to revisit only periodically will always find themselves playing catch-up. But those that treat virtualization as a strategic capability will position themselves to more effectively adapt to changing technologies, workloads and vendor priorities.
MOVE BEYOND ONE-AND-DONE THINKING: Contract renewals should not be the only time IT and business leaders think about making changes to their virtualization environments. Instead, virtualization should be treated as a continuously evolving discipline with inherently dynamic workloads and pricing models. This view allows IT leaders to proactively prepare for change, rather than reacting to disruption after options have already narrowed and costs have climbed.
EMBRACE LIFECYCLE PLANNING: Migration is only one of many critical components of any overhaul to a virtualization environment. Leaders must pay careful attention to each step of the virtualization lifecycle, including assessment, selection, deployment, optimization and re-evaluation. Each step informs the subsequent stages, creating opportunities to refine environments as business needs change and ensuring that ongoing infrastructure decisions are aligned with long-term goals.
ENGAGE EARLY: The time to begin working with a trusted virtualization partner such as CDW is well before contract renewals come due. CDW offers early-stage virtualization workshops and infrastructure assessments to help organizations chart the future of their environments. By engaging early, organizations can reduce risk, align technical strategy with budget planning cycles and avoid rushed, deadline-driven decisions.
FOCUS ON SOLUTIONS, NOT VENDORS: One reason working with a trusted partner is so effective is that it allows IT and business leaders to receive vendor-agnostic advice. As virtualization platforms evolve and vendors introduce new licensing and bundling models, organizations need to be able to turn to someone who can help them evaluate platforms through the lens of performance, resilience and cost, rather than preconceptions or vendor incentives.
BRING IN OUTSIDE EXPERTISE: Given the relatively stable nature of the virtualization market until recently, even many seasoned IT professionals have never undertaken a major virtualization migration. Here again, a trusted partner such as CDW can provide unbiased, cross-platform expertise, helping IT teams evaluate trade-offs and identify the risks of different solutions, architectures and deployment models.
ASSESS EVERYTHING: By carefully assessing their existing environments well before a potential virtualization migration, organizations can avoid unpleasant surprises later. Assessments, workshops and discovery sessions help business and IT leaders better understand their environments at both macro and micro levels, including complex interdependencies among different systems. These engagements provide a structured foundation for planning modernization efforts and making informed platform decisions across hybrid and multi-hypervisor environments with confidence and clarity.
MANAGE EVERY ASPECT OF MIGRATION: Migration initiatives often involve more than moving workloads between platforms. They can include transitions among clusters, data centers, hypervisors or cloud environments, along with configuration, testing and operational validation. Third-party support for migration planning and deployment can help organizations minimize disruption, reduce operational risk and accelerate adoption of new platform capabilities while maintaining business continuity throughout the process.
BUILD FOR STRATEGY: When implemented effectively, virtualization can increase productivity by accelerating development and supporting legacy applications. It can improve IT flexibility through dynamic resource allocation, enable resilience by streamlining disaster recovery and simplify management by centralizing IT administrative tasks. When leaders are blindsided by cost increases and other changes, they may be tempted to respond reactively. But for those who instead align their infrastructure decisions with long-term strategy, virtualization will become a business enabler, rather than a constraint.
CDW can help your organization approach virtualization as a strategic capability, enhancing your ability to adapt in the future.
Andrew Young
Hybrid Infrastructure Strategy Lead
Chris Jostock
CDW Expert