Why Businesses Still Remain Sceptical About Virtualization

Abstract

Virtualization, the technology that allows multiple guests (clients) to reside on a single host (provider) machine and share the resources of the host machine, is rapidly gaining prominence in the corporate business world of the 21st century. Virtualization is a powerful technology for increasing the efficiency of computing services. However, besides its advantages, its flexibility also raises a number of questions regarding security, especially as it forms the bedrock of the revolutionary technology of cloud computing. Research has shown that Cloud Computing directly has the potential to tremendously impact positively the profit margins of leading 21st century businesses but the lack of satisfactory answers to some of these questions, especially by cloud service providers, has greatly limited the rate of adoption of full virtualization by many governments and organizations. This paper aims to elucidate and classify the questions and threats to virtualization, and suggest possible solutions to them.