"Virtualization is not an overnight activity, it's a huge program management effort," he warned. "There is a large overhead associated with running your virtualization program, a lot of change management, a lot of testing that needs to go in place, and a lot of system management tools."
The exec admitted that Ford's own virtualization deployment was not "without its hiccups," thanks largely to the comparative immaturity of the technology, an issue which has already been raised by other IT managers.
Ford has nonetheless cut its storage footprint by using virtualization and has also achieved "significant" savings by reducing the need to buy additional hardware, according to Sanakaran, who refused to reveal exactly how much is company saved.
IDC analyst Vernon Turner also urged users attending today's event to look beyond just virtualization, and touted the green benefits of other, newer technologies.
"Now we have got emerging technologies that can do things like thin provisioning and de-dupe that can be really effective when you need to manage your storage," he said.
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