In a virtual environment, your applications and business services don't need to know where your resources are located, or how they are managed and connected. What really matters is the end result - the quality, performance and availability of the IT applications and services that keep your business moving forward.

So how do you reach this comprehensive state of virtualisation?

To gain greater value from your virtualisation investments and avoid some of the potential pitfalls of a virtualised environment, consider virtualisation from an architectural design view with the goal of components that are integrated by design to work seamlessly together. This approach can have a better likelihood of success for delivering the promises of cost reductions and ease of management through data consolidation, and paying for the right feature and functions, when or where you need them.