This is a tricky topic, and one that many organizations are getting hung up on. This can be a major contributor to virtualization stall. Virtualization stall is when an organization finds their efforts to virtualize their environments stalling out and forward progress becoming more and more difficult to achieve. This can often occur when the “low hanging fruit” that the organization started with is done, and the tasks involved in maintaining the virtual environment combine with the difficulty of addressing the remaining “difficult child” physical servers that need to be virtualized.

The easy work is done, and now you begin to realize that moving forward may require a different game plan. Everyone may be in the same boat, but they are each rowing in a slightly different direction. The boat is either going nowhere or in circles, but little to no progress is being made. The solution is not to force people to go in one direction, but to educate them on each others roles and help them understand the impact of their actions on everyone else. In doing this, they begin to go in the right direction as a common group with a common goal. In IT, this means breaking out silos and building new groups where every member of the team carries the same goal and will be measured against the same expectations. This change is not nearly as easy as it sounds, and will surely meet a great deal of resistance.

For more on this topic, please read my article “Overcoming virtualization turf wars” at SearchServerVirtualization, then come back here and leave comments.