Application Appliances Get Real, and Virtual
For SMBs, installing new software can be a nightmare, especially when they don’t have a dedicated IT staff. Now two delivery methods could offer them the break they need.
The first is an appliance-based delivery model in which software comes preinstalled on a small device that plugs into the network. This model can dramatically reduce the installation time and hardware costs associated with rolling out new applications. The second delivery type is a virtual appliance, which also provides ease of deployment but doesn’t require a separate physical case.
For Mark Bowker, an analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group, both models have advantages, but virtual appliances seem to come out ahead. “Appliance-based solutions are preassembled with these components, offering a more plug-and-play installation and configuration experience for the end user and easier support and maintenance for the vendor,” he says. “The drawbacks to hardware appliances are that they may underutilize system resources, which are consuming power and cooling resources in the data center, as well as require multiple sources for support and maintenance.”
Enter the virtual appliance, a preinstalled, preconfigured, fully tested application with an operating system that is ready to run in virtual server environments. “The aim is to eliminate the installation, configuration, and maintenance costs associated with running complex stacks of software,” says Bowker. “Virtual appliances are also hardware agnostic, taking hardware dependencies out of the equation.”
When it comes to efficiency, virtual appliances even trump server virtualization, according to Bowker. “Server virtualization promises to simplify the environment, make better use of resources, aid with business continuance, and create big savings,” he says. “Virtual appliances take efficiency one step further, creating a new model for software distribution and greatly simplifying the deployment of applications in these environments.”
For SMBs, that’s welcome news. “The model of delivering applications with operating systems as a virtual appliance is very appealing to the SMB: less time to deploy, simplified evaluation process, and no need to dedicate hardware for test/evaluation,” explains Bowker. “Delivering business solutions as a virtual appliance reduces operating costs and saves valuable IT time.”
Bowker cites VMware—with its hundreds of free virtual appliances for download—as an example of the growing trend. “Operating systems are among the favorite virtual appliances to download today, and you even see applications like MS Exchange Server being packaged as a virtual appliance,” he says. “This shows me that users are very interested in further leveraging their virtualized infrastructure.”
Srinivas Krishnamurti, director of product management and market development at VMware Inc., in Palo Alto, Calif., says SMBs would be hard-pressed to find a better delivery solution than the virtual appliance. “The big thing for SMBs is they don’t have hundreds of IT folks running around patching the OS. They just want stuff to work,” he says. “The virtual appliance solves a lot of their problems and is a lot simpler.”--Liz Garone
