AI and cloud are changing virtualization

Changing times, changing priorities—the impact of AI on modern virtualization has made things very different for IT pros.

For over two decades, virtualization has been an IT workhorse, allowing IT pros to expand their tech stacks’ storage and capabilities. The maturing of the cloud and the introduction of AI have made virtual environments even more complex, even if virtualization itself, in the words of Forrester analyst Devin Dickerson, is “not in a dissimilar state to what it’s been in the last couple years.”

“There’s the potential for disruption to the space because AI features, over time, will become expected—so things like predictive and self-healing infrastructure, and something that can understand usage patterns, optimize right size in real time, anticipate demand, dealing with performance, rerouting workloads, without necessarily having human intervention,” Dickerson said. “Those can become expectations over time, the more that they’re baked into managed platforms.”

Reality bites

Part of the problem with virtualization is the perception of the technology as legacy rather than modern architecture. Dickerson said he believes that’s due at least in part to the use of containerization and microservices, which have existed for many years, and not to the potential of AI and cloud—but that the latter can be seen as a variation on a theme rather than a brand new tune.

“AI workloads actually bring to bear a part of a part of cloud computing that…