Further resources

Removing IT from the boardroom Agenda whitepaper from VMware
To download a copy of the whitepaper on Removing IT from the boardroom agenda, click here.

Removing IT from the boardroom agenda press release
To read the press release about Removing IT from the boardroom agenda, click here.

Slide deck
To view a short slide presentation summarising why we think IT should be removed from the boardroom agenda, click here.

Case studies
To learn more about how organisations in the UK have used virtualization to transform the way IT supports their businesses, check out the selection of case studies below.

Standard Bank -  View Case Study  
“VMware has transformed the role of IT within the business. Centralised management of both the desktop and server infrastructure has enabled us to halve the time and money we previously invested in IT support and to prioritise the strategic projects which drive business growth. The remote working benefits of a virtualized desktop environment have been welcomed by staff and helped the business to adopt more flexible working practices. In addition to achieving our initial aim of meeting our green targets, we’ve realised a host of additional benefits which have delivered rapid ROI. We estimate we save £400,000 per year by virtualizing our desktops and servers.”

 WWF United Kingdon - View Case Study

“Virtualization has allowed WWF to simply manage our IT infrastructure and create an effective disaster recovery practice. After experiencing these benefits in our UK office, my IT team has been urging all of our other offices to ‘go virtual.’ Our aim is for the entire global operation of WWF to run on VMware and dramatically reduce our carbon footprint through virtualization.” Hull College http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/customers/07Q4_ss_vmw_hull_college_english.pdf “VMware has provided us with a really flexible and robust infrastructure. We can now deploy new applications in minutes rather than days and routine management is so much simpler. Virtualization has freed up so much of our time that we have been able to start working on new initiatives that we would never previously have been able to consider.”

Lagan Holdings Ltd - View Case Study

“As with any new technology we approached virtualization with caution, but I can safely say we now have really embraced it as our standard architecture and have no fear about virtualizing pretty much any application. We have seen incredible short-term cost savings which have helped us sell in further virtualization initiatives at board-level, and in the long-term our IT infrastructure is now far more manageable and flexible. Where downtime was once a significant headache for us we now can provide protection and failover for all our applications as standard. The fact that IT is no longer holding up construction projects but actually enabling them is a massive plus.”

Littlewoods Shop Direct Group - View Case Study

“Using virtualization is a critical part of our IT strategy, both now and for the future: where possible, we take a 'virtual first' approach to deploying applications. Our migration to a new data center infrastructure using virtual machines means that we have been able to reduce the impact of downtime on the business, as well as dramatically reducing the amounts of power and space required to support operations. VMware Infrastructure 3 provides us with a resilient, flexible platform that is used to support our central systems and make our server assets run far more efficiently; we are also seeing the benefits of virtualization at several of our remote sites by using VMware Server to consolidate our branch office IT systems.”

Newcastle College Group - View Case Study

“VMware View has transformed our IT infrastructure and given us the control and centralized management capabilities we needed following a number of mergers and acquisitions. We now have a reliable, secure and resilient IT infrastructure in place which provides our end users with the flexibility they need to work wherever they work best. What could have been a time intensive, expensive, IT integration project has proved quick, pain free and, most importantly of all, has proved great value for money. Not only does our IT team now have a lot more time to concentrate on strategic projects to help drive the business forward, rather than worrying about maintenance issues, but we’ve actually saved ourselves over £7 million which is quite staggering.”