Dell (News - Alert) and Microsoft are partnering to simplify the transition over to virtualization-based technologies such as dedicated servers.

As Sandra Gittlen noted in a recent white paper, “Server virtualization has proven enormously beneficial to IT by speeding application deployments, decreasing infrastructure costs, optimizing resource utilization, and simplifying IT operations. But, for the most part, these gains and a rapid return on investment seem to have eluded smaller enterprises due to the cost and complexity of solutions.”

Gittlen goes on to emphasize the major benefits of virtualization and does a good job discussing their importance. She talks about a new integrated product from Dell and Microsoft (News - Alert) making virtualization accessible to enterprises of all sizes.

Dell coupled its virtualization solution with Microsoft Windows Server 2008, which features the Hyper-V hypervisor and System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) 2008.

By the two industry veterans closely collaborating during development of Windows Server 2008, Dell gained significant expertise in understanding the capabilities of the new platform -- especially those involving virtualization.”

According to Gordon Haff, principal IT advisor at Illuminata, “Small to mid-size companies have similar challenges to large companies when it comes to their server environments. IT teams struggle with physical server sprawl whether their infrastructure is bursting out of a wiring closet or threatening to outgrow the data center. In the past, IT teams would provision a server for each new application, leading to out-of-control farms that wasted valuable floor space as well as valuable cooling and power resources.”

Therefore, IT organizations can also save time by managing their physical and virtual dedicated servers from a single console tool set.

“Dell and Microsoft have been quite proactive in ensuring that their virtualization solution has the same management tools and dashboard as their other products. Therefore, if your data center personnel understand that interface, they won’t struggle with the Dell/Microsoft virtual management,” said Charles King, principal analyst at Pund-IT Inc. in Hayward, Calif.

Dell has spent thousands of hours in lab and engineering time certifying Microsoft virtualization and management technology across a broad range of Dell’s dedicated server and storage platforms.

And there’s one final reason a collaboration between Dell and Microsoft might prove so fruitful: Dell has designed many of its server and storage products to account for a dedicated server’s virtualization density, flexibility and performance needs by enhancing memory capacity, boosting I/O performance, adding multicore processors and embedding integrated hypervisors.