As virtualization becomes a household name for small- and medium-sized business owners, more and more services are being introduced. Hardware virtualization, storage virtualization, and even network virtualization all aim to capitalize on the trend of creating virtual versions of physical technology.

While virtualization still has a host of security advantages over its localized counterparts, it isn’t exempt from the attention of cyber attackers. Most recently, one of the industry’s leading software vendors, VMware, was forced to release a patch for a critical vulnerability that allowed underprivileged users to attain access to administrative rights.

Virtualization has taken the IT world by storm, and if you’re not up to speed on exactly what that means, it’s time to change that. The service is no longer a paragon reserved for enterprise-level businesses, and with Microsoft and Citrix’s most recent announcement, it will soon be more accessible than ever.

Although merely mentioning the word ‘virtualization’ has the power to make people’s eyes glaze over, its value and relevance can’t be denied. Since VMware first launched their workstation client in 1999, the industry has seen steady expansion and engulfed a number of legacy network solutions.

If your business has decided to make the move to virtualized servers and databases, there are countless variables you need to plan for during the migration process. In an effort to make the whole affair as painless as possible for SMBs, Amazon Web Services has created a tool to make migrations faster, cheaper and simpler -- what else could you ask for? Not much, which is why we’re excited to tell you all about it.

Virtualization allows you to eliminate dependency on physical hardware limitations and software requirements. Exactly how you achieve that comes in a number of different solutions with even more confusing lingo and acronyms, but before you can tackle any of that it’s a good idea to go over the different companies providing the services.

Server-hosted delivery of client applications is hardly new. Whether it was Microsoft Windows Terminal Services back in 1996 or the Remote Desktop Services of today, it has been around for a while now. With client virtualization, boundaries of traditional networks are done away with to allow rich client applications and environments to endpoints.

Software developers make a profit by selling us the best product they can create. When selling pieces of their software in bulk they offer licensing packages to businesses so you don’t have to buy 100 copies of the same CD. Simple enough, right? Well, now that an increasing amount of services and tools are moving into the cloud it’s a lot harder to track how many licenses you’ll need and how much they’ll cost.

For someone with limited IT experience like a small business owner, they could find themselves overwhelmed by their company’s IT demands. Fortunately, virtualization services are giving small business owners a fighting chance. However, the term virtualization can refer to a number of different strategies.

Many business owners think that Virtualization and Disaster Recovery are two separate services. And while that’s true in most respects, they actually have more in common than you think. Particularly in how Virtualization can serve as a legitimate Disaster Recovery solution.