Business leaders in retail face different challenges from their counterparts in other industries. Retailers are being pulled toward virtualized computing because it enables them to invest less in maintaining, monitoring and updating systems and information. Business needs dictate that IT systems management resources be pooled across retail environments and shared between geographically-dispersed users.
Virtualized architectures increase productivity, save money and create efficiencies. However, they can also be quite complex and expensive to manage. Virtualization management must address how changes or events within the virtual environment impact a retailer’s computing environment. It’s necessary to leverage IT automation tools to manage the virtual infrastructure and enforce business and IT policies.
Key Virtualization Benefits for Retailers
Below are 5 key virtualization benefits for retailers:
- New applications – Deploy new retail applications quickly with a scalable, flexible information infrastructure that supports multiple stores, but can be managed centrally.
- TCO – Lower total cost of operation (TCO) with increased automation, datacenter consolidation, and reduced energy fees.
- Customer satisfaction – Serve customers faster and better with real time retail information available across the entire business.
- Lower capital expenses – Avoid or delay the need to procure additional server capacity.
- Reduced store footprint – Lower the cost of floor space in high-rent locations by consolidating physical data centers.
To date, most retailers have underinvested in systems management and automation tools relative to their virtualization adoption. Many data centers still employ manually intensive processes resulting in greater burdens on IT staff. This results in systems that are disconnected from business processes, so the ability to adapt to change in response to business needs is hindered. IT systems management costs can actually rise if retailers don’t improve automation capabilities for their virtualized environments.
Kaseya centralizes IT systems management and gives administrators a holistic view of all resources, delivering the visibility to efficiently distribute resources as demand ebbs and flows. Kaseya makes virtualization computing manageable without requiring additional staff or expertise. Retailers understand that in today’s hyper-competitive economic environment, virtualized computing is a primary pathway to more effective customer interaction and a greater share-of-wallet. Kaseya delivers solutions for virtualization computing environments that help retailers reduce IT maintenance and overhead, enhance security, and deliver more flexible and cost-effective computing power.
