Small and medium-sized businesses,

Small and medium-sized businesses can improve their IT by investing in virtual private servers and other virtualisation technology, it has been claimed.Writing for PC Pro, IT journalist Jon Honeyball said there are almost "no downsides" to migrating to this technology.Many firms are continuing to persist with legacy technology, he stated, with hard disks that have been "spinning for a decade and are at the very edge of their failure envelope"."Components are overstressed and the build-up of dust and worse inside the chassis has reduced the airflow to a trickle," he commented, referring to existing servers.Mr Honeyball described virtualising a server as "the first step" in any business journey into the modern, digital age.Consultant Manek Dubash recently told ZDNet that in modern times, virtualisation has become a more focused discipline which can be used effectively to tackle both technology and business issues.Businesses should look to only purchase virtual private servers from reputable web hosting firms, it has been claimed.Writing for Ezine Articles, industry commentator Paul Fuelton warned that some firms are not equipped to provide the comprehensive customer support service that growing business users require.He explained how one close friend had a "devastating experience" after purchasing a virtual private server from a US-based provider.When the server became unresponsive one morning, the web hosting provider was unable to provide any guarantees as to when normal service would be resumed, he added.The server was eventually brought back online six hours after the problem was first reported, Mr Fuelton added.He claimed that in selecting a virtual private server, businesses "need to rely on other people's knowledge and experience - there is no other way". "Your own trial and error might simply be too costly of an alternative," Mr Fuelton said.Last month, ITvoir Network's Pooja Vij claimed that virtualised technology can help small firms reduce costs.Virtualisation is not the "shiny new technology they once were, it has been claimed.Writing for ZDNet, IT expert and consultant Manek Dubash said that firms do not view the virtual hosting technology in the same light as they once did.He said that virtualisation had become a more focused discipline which can be used effectively to tackle both technology and business issues – including IT budget constraints.On the other hand, Mr Dubash claimed that the term 'storage virtualisation' was still a "hazy concept".Earlier this year, John Abbot, chief analyst with The 451 Group, said that the main benefit of virtualisation is its ability to separate workloads from the underlying hardware, which can add flexibility to a business's operation.He added that a modern virtual infrastructure can form an effective foundation for automated storage, backup and retention, as well as improving a firm's disaster recovery and continuity plans.