Visualisation & Virtualisation Are Keys to Surviving the Economic Downturn

In his opening keynote presentation at the FIRST 2009 Conference in Kyoto Professor Suguru Yamaguchi suggested that visualisation and virtualisation will be key technologies in ensuring that ICT operations can be sustained through the economic downturn.

Visualisation will be essential both for operators to understand how the performance of complex systems can be optimised and also to explain to senior management why continued investment is required despite shrinking budgets. Virtualisation is already recognised as enabling more efficient use of server hardware, by running multiple virtual servers on a single physical device, but it may also have potential to save costs at the client end by replacing PCs by thin clients or even replacing the 'work' computer by a secured and isolated 'work' virtual machine running on an employee's own home laptop.

Andrew Cormack at the FIRST 2009 conference
(http://conference.first.org/)