A new survey has been released by Microsoft (News - Alert) Corporation that examines the virtualization technologies used within the banking industry. For those institutions operating in the United States and United Kingdom, a number of virtualization technologies are being used as a means to help centralize deployment and management of applications, simplify IT infrastructure and improve overall business continuity of IT systems.

Microsoft's "Virtualization in Banking Survey 2008," was conducted by Washington D.C.-based research firm KRC Research. This survey revealed that the majority, or 58 percent, of large, tier-one banks are already implementing virtualization across multiple aspects of their IT infrastructures.

These implementations are in the form of application for 61 percent, networking for 54 percent, machine operating systems for 48 percent and presentation for 27 percent.

Virtualization has been in use since the 1960s, operating as an act of isolating or unbinding one computing resource from another. Although virtualization is commonly thought of as occurring within datacenters and servers, technologies are also being applied across multiple aspects of a bank’s infrastructure, including presentation, application, operating system, storage and network.

"Banks realize the impact virtualization can have on operations, from the data center to the desktop, and how it should be embraced as part of an enterprise wide infrastructure strategy," said Rich Feldmann, managing director of the U.S. Financial Services Group at Microsoft, in a Tuesday statement.

Feldmann continued: "Virtualization helps create the foundation for innovative banking applications and channels by producing an agile infrastructure. While banks are known as early adopters of technology, this survey indicates that more than one-third are still on the sidelines waiting for greater value and ease of use before adopting."

Conducted in February of 2008, key finding from the survey include:

 

In today’s major retail bank, machine operating system virtualization is becoming a foundation for a dynamic and responsive data center. Application virtualization continues to change how banks manage line-of-business software applications.

Within the desktop, it is empowering workers by enables them to run multiple operating systems and presentation virtualization allows bank employees to seamlessly execute an application from a remote computer.

"Virtualization helps make more effective use of existing hardware investments and significantly improve IT agility," said Kathleen Khirallah, managing director and practice leader, Global Banking, TowerGroup, in Tuesday’s statement. "These emerging technologies are helping today's bank compete more effectively in an ever-changing market by helping people anticipate and respond to business challenges and opportunities rapidly and effectively."

Hardware and software investments are gaining more of the spotlight as On Demand solutions are gaining more popularity. While it is true that SaaS (News - Alert) can provide significant benefits to the organization, the reality is that many have already made tremendous investments in hardware and software applications to advance standard business practices and must find ways to maximize those investments.

Virtualization is one method for maximizing those IT investments to ensure that the organization is using specific applications to advance business practices, deliver a better customer experience and streamline processes both internally and externally. In doing so, the financial institution can focus on growth and long-term benefits.

Susan J. Campbell is a contributing editor for TMCnet and has also written for eastbiz.com. To read more of Susan’s articles, please visit her columnist page.