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Virtualization a boon for us all!



I say users intentionally as essentially we all are users (super-users, developers, managers etc). This .NET developer who wanted to keep his Mac and didn't want to travel with multiple laptops discovered that Virtualization is a total bliss. Well I have enjoyed this bliss for a long time as a consultant.

Of course, I’ve seen and heard all the stuff about Parallels and how good it is: many orders of magnitude better than Virtual PC, which must create a virtual set of hardware on which Windows can run. Parallels (and the upcoming VMWare for the Mac) take advantage of virtualization hardware on the Intel chip, so you really do get near native speed when running Parallels inside OS X. Notice: not dual booting, but running Windows in a window inside OS X. But, I’m on a .NET project, and “it almost runs good enough to do .NET development” isn’t quite enough. Thus, my hesitation up until this point to take the plunge. Well, I’m hear to say: it works as advertised. Building our project in Parallels on the Mac is essentially as fast as building it on the single processor Dell. The build time is within seconds of one another (for an 8 minute build).



I have had VMware on my Dell Latitude (and we're talking year 2000-2001), Windows NT, VMware Workstation and Redhat 8 with Oracle 8 on it. And I flew all over the world with it (Kazakhstan - Our firm's core oil drilling operations, China- New Building, and to individual ports for project management purposes). The greatest thing was I had a Director who listened carefully to what I needed. This way we had transformed our workplace into a single laptop with docking station and VMware. And we're talking 2000-2001 here! Obviously I was championing the whole "Virtual Workplace and Working Identities" , which by the way is much older than the Virtualization and numerous articles have been written since early 90s, and it didn't get into the mainstream. But I must say, we did create work culture which was very affordable and yet highly productive!

At many sites I have visited, users have either multiple workstations or are struggling getting their own laptops at work to get things done. A huge waste of money, time (copy stuff from my laptop, do work on my laptop at home, etc) and resources. Well I myself have 3 workstations at my current employer while I could clean my desk today with all that crap and have a good dual or even a quad-core laptop (Mac please), reasonable amount of disk space and memory and we're done! So all I am trying to say is that Virtualization can literally set you FREEEEEEEEE.

Isn't freedom what we all want. Freedom to do great things at work. Make our employers proud. Make our dad and mom's proud by working in a most customized and very comfy working-zones, do and realize projects with great speeds. I can go on and on.

I have said it several times but if you are a manager, CIO or even the CEO of a firm with a lot of employees OR with fewer employees but in either case loads of bottle necks that are disallowing you to make those critical decisions that affect the lifeline of your business, then you will realize that it is the lack of:
  • productivity
  • freedom (of speech and work, compliant and yet free)
  • customized yet compliant workplaces
which is holding us all back. Take Virtualization and take it for a test drive.

Lets see this comparison:

Legacy and Uncomfortable Cubicle:

This is a typical place of an employee. No order, unmeasurable and unquantifiable. Employee may often complain of lot of work but it is hard to find an answer. Imagine, all this adding up can have a massive impact to your business! Add several hundred cubicles like these and you have a huge TCO there...



Better, Happy and Productive Work Place:

And imagine this, employees get a laptop with possibility of thin clients OR/AND several images (one for corporate network, one for R&D, one for Customers etc). Clean desks, Clean minds ...


And loads of freedom and productivity (I can almost guarantee you that :-))



This developer kind of made this happen to himself, its time that it gets adopted corporate-wide!
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