City of Seabreeze, CA Virtualization Adoption Plan

Introduction
The city of Seabreeze, California has experienced several consecutive years of decreasing revenues resulting in a significant decline of tax revenue for the city. As a result of the reduction in revenue, the city must find ways to cut cost in all operational segments included Information Technology. In its current state, the city operates 72 physical servers, a storage environment and 350 end-user computers. The IT director has been tasked to identify where the elimination, replacement, or addition of technology would result in cost savings to the city. In order to save the city money, it has been determined that the best solution would be to implement a virtualized IT environment in the city of Seabreeze. Virtualization is the means to create a virtual version of a device or resource, such as a server, storage device, network or even an operating system where the framework divides the resource into one more execution environments. (Virtualization, n.d)

a1.
The virtualization of the IT environment would have a big positive impact in terms of long term cost savings for the city of Seabreeze. The city would have a benefit of reducing capital and overall operating costs. As the servers and storage environment is consolidated and virtualized, fewer devices would be needed. Fewer devices means a smaller power requirement which is an immediate savings for the city. This also means less space would be needed. Virtualization allows for multiple devices to be managed from a single device. Less administrators would be needed to manage the environment, this would save the city on payroll. Fewer servers being used also means the less space is required. The space recovered can be used to serve other purposes for the city. In addition to the savings related to the virtualization, the technology itself will provide a better and more robust IT environment. Virtualization allows for high application availability which would minimize or even eliminate downtime. Virtualization is an elastic technology and servers can stood up and decommissioned on demand. The city would benefit from the business continuity and disaster recovery. The city could implement and entirely software-designed data center with minimal hardware needed.

a2. Explain how to offset potential negative implications of the adoption of virtualization for the city of Seabreeze.
There are actions that will need to be taken to offset any negative implications that will may occur during the adoption of virtualization for the city of Seabreeze. The large upfront investment a3. Analyze the current state of diffusion of virtualization technology.

a4. Discuss potential barriers to the local government’s adoption of virtualization.

a5. Discuss how to gain the support of opinion leaders in Seabreeze.

a6. Explain where the city of Seabreeze falls on the technology adoption curve, using a theory of adoption or diffusion of technology.

a. Discuss one strategy for addressing the technology adoption type of the city of Seabreeze.

A7. Discuss one strategy for addressing the technology acceptance of potential users in
Seabreeze.

References

Virtualization. (n.d.). Retrieved August 23, 2015.