Virtualization of the City of Seabreeze

A1. Explain how the benefits of Virtualization would impact the City of Seabreeze.

Virtualization creates a virtual resource for any network and server appliances such as a server, storage, and network appliances. There are two ways that virtualization can be done such as operating system and hardware level virtualization. The system level virtualization is the most common reason multiple virtual servers can be run under one single hardware appliance.

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The virtualization technology is leveraged to utilize a physical server to host multiple virtual servers in a single instance. The primary immediate benefit of virtualization is energy saving and less rack space and less data center space by virtualizing the multiple physical servers into one virtual host. Centralizing Seabreeze; each office directly attached to storage will save on energy and hardware to maintain and support multiple offices. Centralized network storage meets the city's data storage requirement and network storage data will be accessible 24/7 since it will be located at the data center.

Finally, this will also reduce the need for multiple system administration, to maintain the virtual server and storage means direct saving into the city payroll by reducing the number of information technology employees.

A2. Explain how to offset potential negative implications of the adoption of Virtualization for the City of Seabreeze.

A primary potential negative implication will be the cost. Initial implementation of virtualization cost will be higher, but long-term saving is much higher than the initial investment. This initial virtualization implementation cost should be seen as an investment, the return on investment will recoup within a couple of years of virtualization project completion.

A secondary negative implication is that the city of Seabreeze leaders, decision makers, and stakeholders do not have a clear understanding of virtualization and its benefit. We will need to provide a brief explanation on what is virtualization, its pros and cons, and how virtualization works to the city of Seabreeze, leaders, decision makers, and the stakeholders. To overcome these negative implications, IT management team members will be going to conduct various meetings with all the City of Seabreeze leaders, decision makers, and stakeholders to overcome any concerns and skepticism on the virtualization. IT team members will also be going to share white papers from multiple virtualization vendors, which will point out the virtualization pros and cons of server and desktop virtualization.

Finally to limit the initial negative implications of virtualization implementation and server outages, we can setup a virtual machine server lab with one of the available spare servers which are neither in use nor in production. This virtual machine lab will help us to evaluate application incompatibility issues and legacy applications support and compatibility. This test virtual lab machines can serve as a proof of concept to deploy it in a production environment.

A3. Analyze the current state of diffusion of Virtualization technology.

Diffusion means migration or adoption of new technology. Virtualization technology had been around for years. There are many types of virtualization technologies that exist such as application, desktop, user, storage, and hardware virtualization. It gained its momentum after the great recession. The survey done by the US-based Forrester research confirms that 78 percent of global IT decision makers use virtual server technology for production application workloads (Companies favor virtualization to boost productions workloads 2009). Many companies outside the United States such as Australia, New Zealand, and India have reached about 40 percent of completion of virtualization (Virtualization reality in the Asia-Pacific region, 2013). It has also become a recommended business practice to use virtualization technology in IT network infrastructure because of its great efficiency and increase productivity. The diffusion of technology has reached the late majority because companies of all sizes around the world have been using virtualization because of its benefit of long-term operational cost savings or to simplify the IT administration task.

A4. Discuss potential barriers to the local government adoption of Virtualization.

The potential barriers for adoption of virtualization are mentioned below:

1. Budget

The city of Seabreeze is in the middle of cost cutting on everything including IT operational cost. The initial cost of virtualization implantation is high, but future long term saving on IT operational cost is great. It is very important that the City of Seabreeze leaders, stakeholders, and decision makers understand the initial high cost as an investment with its long-term information technology operational saving.

2. Knowledge

Most IT team members in the City of Seabreeze do various jobs such as desktop support, system administration and network administration; however, IT team still lacks the knowledge of virtualization. Developing and implementing a virtualization solution can be challenging. Outside virtualization support could cost more to the project. Many virtualization vendors have responded with a solution such as VMware have a free learning center and knowledge base which allows learning about their various VMware virtualization technologies with a hands-on virtual lab.

3. Resources

City of Seabreeze IT department is small and comprises of a handful support engineers tasked with everything from end user support, system and network administration. To streamline the knowledge of technology, it is often beneficial to have a value added resellers. This consulting service provides an architecture support and guide through the process and helps to improve the efficiencies and maximize the outcomes.

4. Maintenance and support

We should have proper maintenance and support for all the virtual products, for example having vendor maintenance and support plan will provide a free access to newest firmware update and patches as soon as they are released. In the event of hardware failure, we can replace the hardware with overnight shipping decreasing the days and weeks of network downtime.

A5. Discuss how to gain the support of opinion leaders in Seabreeze.

Opinion leaders positive support is an ultimate success for the City of Seabreeze virtualization project. The key opinion leaders are local citizens, mayor, city council members, local newspapers, and media. It is very important that these opinion leaders should have a clear understanding of this virtualization project. Such as Initial cost of implementations, short and long term benefits of virtualization for their positive feedback, support and success of this project.

We should provide a detailed virtualization financial report including justification of initial cost of implementation and immediate short term saving such as less electricity, a long term saving such as less hardware, less license, less support, and maintenance. Reusing existing servers which meet hardware requirements and capability of virtualization and allocating overall virtualization implementation budget will help to gain a trust and the needed support of opinion leaders.

A well-planned virtualization implementation plan will have no downtime. Server virtualization will be done offline and it will be going to mirror with the production server, which will give a seamless transition from physical to the virtual server. This new virtualization technology will bring the city of Seabreeze server infrastructure up to date, ready for a current and future technology need.

Finally, it is very important that city of Seabreeze virtualization implementation plans, goals, and long-term outlook are communicated with Seabreeze leaders in a detailed way to obtain their support.

A6. Explain where the City of Seabreeze falls on the technology adoption curve, using a theory of adoption or diffusion of technology.

The virtualization concept is not a new concept; it has been around since the 1960s. As per Everett M Rogers, the city of Seabreeze falls into the late majority cycle because of their slow acceptance curve of technology (Diffusion of Innovations, Fifth Editions, 2006 p. 11). The majority of the businesses in the United States and around the world already have been using this virtualization technology. By the time the city of Seabreeze will adopt this new virtualization technology, it will be considered as late majority cycle. Another reason is the City of Seabreeze waited until late majority phase to get a proven, stable, secure, and widely supported virtualization technology. Any technology which is in late majority cycle means it is also reaching its end of virtualization life cycle too. The primary reason to adopt virtualization technology is to cut information technology operational cost for the city of Seabreeze and it can be done only by implementing virtualization technology such as a server, application, and desktop virtualization. Finally, because of the uncertainty and skepticism toward virtualization the city of Seabreeze falls into the late majority.

A6a. Discuss one strategy for addressing the technology adoption type of the city of Seabreeze.

The City of Seabreeze information technology team members should focus on addressing the decision makers, stakeholders, and leaders' lack of knowledge and their concern to overcome all the barriers as well as to identify the long and short term cost saving benefits of virtualization technology. It is also very important that this similar information should be shared with the city of Seabreeze employees and citizens. By doing this, we will get an internal and external needed support to increase the possibility of acceptance by the City of Seabreeze opinion leaders and stakeholders.

A7. Discuss one strategy for addressing the technology acceptance of potential users in Seabreeze.

To address the end user acceptance of new technology such as virtualization, we will have to create a user acceptance plan. It will focus on to addressing the current user questions and concerns as well as the benefit that will highlight the end users desktop positive experience. There will be a hands-on training and live demonstration of virtualization and its benefit for city users. The main focus of information technology department is smooth virtualization transition and positive end user desktop experience which will be the higher priority for the Seabreeze IT team. Immediate end user benefit such as overall faster system, better boot time, and flexible application delivery which are currently missing from existing Seabreeze IT infrastructure provides a great benefit to Seabreeze users. This end user acceptance plan primary focus will be a city end user ease of use and a positive user experience of virtualization than a cost saving plan.

References

Diffusion of Innovations, Fifth Edition (2006, December 02). Retrieved from [http://www.conceptlab.com/notes/rogers-2003-diffusion-of-innovations.html]

IT World Canada (March 2009). Companies favor virtualization to boost production Workload. Retrieved from [http://www.itworldcanada.com/article/companies-favour-virtualization-to-boost-production-workloads/11098]

Angus Macaskill: Virtualizing the Enterprise (2013, August 1). Virtualization Reality in the Asia-Pacific Rregion. Retrieved from [http://www.zdnet.com/article/virtualization-reality-in-the-asia-pacific-region/]