One thing that keeps coming up over and over, however, is the notion of using virtualization as an enabling technology, rather than an end in itself. This means aligning your IT strategies to your business strategies.  Ultimately it’s not about how many virtual guests you can run on a physical host, or how cool your underlying infrastructure is – it’s about using these technologies to achieve better business outcomes. Whether the specific goal is to use virtualization to save money, reduce data center footprint, gain competitive edge, drive business continuity and availability, or go green by reducing power and cooling, it all comes down to using virtualization as a means to reach these goals.

OK, so that makes sense – so how do I do that?  One of the key things that HP and Microsoft recognize is that it is the management tools that really enable you to take advantage of the underlying virtualization technologies.

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