When virtualisation technology first started appearing in organisations, it was sneaked in by the IT department. Non-mission-critical services were virtualised, new development work slapped onto virtual platforms for ease of testing of new – and more importantly, old – environments. Even some aspects of disaster recovery (DR) were virtualised. But virtualisation as a foundation technology has now had more than enough time to show up on the enterprise’s balance sheet as a no-nonsense way of saving money and increasing agility across the board.

Richard Vester, director of cloud services at EOH, says he’s seen savings in three main areas.