A Coke moment in virtualization

It felt like one of those ‘A-ha!’ moments during a roundtable discussion between nine CIOs I had the privilege to moderate at The CIO Forum in Scottsdale, AZ the other day. The theme of the discussion was ‘Managing up in a Down Economy’ and the intent was for us to explore various techniques and strategies that the CIOs have been following in light of economic pressures on their businesses. The 50-minute conversation covered several different areas, including steps that these CIOs have taken to lower their run-the-business IT costs in order to free up more capital for discretionary spending and innovative projects.

About halfway through the discussion -- after each of the participants had described business conditions for their organizations and shared their views on potential opportunities for cost savings, such as offshoring and on-demand computing –- the dialogue turned to virtualization.

The CIO for a major U.S. city told us that his IT group is just starting a server virtualization effort on behalf of two of the city’s larger agencies. One of the biggest challenges he has encountered so far is in convincing agency leaders and key stakeholders to share systems under a virtualized setting. As he and another CIO from the entertainment industry concurred, people don’t want to let go of their boxes.

Then the municipal CIO drew an interesting analogy. He gestured to the CIO seated next to him and asked, “Is this your Coke? I’m going to have you share it with five other people. Are you OK with that? No?”

He got his point across. In his situation, the CIO said he’s effectively had to become a “salesman” for virtualization. To help sway reluctant agency leaders, the CIO convinced them that a shift to a virtual server environment will provide users with greater flexibility and lower costs. That seemed to do the trick.