Bare Metal Virtualization Unix Server Consolidation Solutions: Stretching the IT Dollar with Virtualization. Talk about bang for your buck. Learn how virtualization technology delivers high ROI by letting your organization run more applications on fewer servers — while reducing energy consumption and administration chores, too.

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What is virtualization and how does it affect the bottom line? For nearly 10 years, VMware of Palo Alto, California, has made a name for itself by making computing more efficient with virtualization technology. Sun recently spoke with Raghu Raghuram, vice president of product and solutions marketing at VMware, to find out about the business benefits of virtualization.

Q: What is virtualization?

A: Virtualization is a layer of software that partitions — or carves up — the resources of a server so that multiple operating systems can simultaneously, yet safely, access them. This creates what we call virtual machines — software that acts like physical servers. Virtualization allows fewer servers to run more applications and operating systems.

The technology can also be used to aggregate resources across servers, which creates a pool of computational resources that keep chugging away regardless of demand. If a virtual machine fails, business applications can be shifted over to another virtualized environment without affecting operations.