The first week of August was National Simplify Your Life Week, and although many people tend to think of information technology as a complication we have added to life, there are ways you can use it to make life simpler. For data centers, the old model of server deployment and management was complex, slow, and costly. The advent of virtualization has simplified life for many and may be just what your organization needs.

The following are ways virtualization can simplify your life.

1. Easy networking – Any time you add new hardware, networking becomes a concern, whether it is related to physical rack space or just the time it takes to set up new hardware and run the cables. With virtualization, you can literally network in seconds, allocating the bandwidth, IPs, and configuration you need remotely.

2. Services on-demand – Do you need to setup a firewall, load balancer, or logical router? All the services you need are on-demand with virtualization. Introducing a new application no longer requires custom configuration when your services can be virtualized.

3. Build once, deploy many – Spinning up a new server has never been easier. You can deploy multiple virtual servers in minutes, and they can all be cloned from the same image. Once you have built the initial virtual machine you want, duplicating it is a cinch.

4. Improved diagnostics – With virtualization you can monitor system performance, view health and status information, access any node, and start, stop, or restart a node all from a single interface. You can monitor and keep track of everything because all of your systems are connected.

5. Do more with less – Ultimately, you want to be able to save money while still getting the most out of your investment. Virtualization allows you to reduce operating costs (less infrastructure), while still maintaining or even increasing production levels. Because you are able to maximize your server usage, you can effectively decrease underutilized server space, and you can consolidate physical space, adding more servers in less room.

6. Flexible virtual infrastructure – Virtual machines do not have the same boundaries physical machines have. Even when a workstation experiences hardware trouble, a professional working at a virtualized desktop can move to another machine and continue work without having to wait for any backup recovery or reconfiguration. Moreover, they can even resume work remotely when away from the office. Virtualization is also perfect for BYOD (bring your own device) programs when the employee’s device is not compatible with the organization’s business software.

Virtualization has found a place in the data center, on desktop and laptop computers, and even on mobile devices, such as smartphones and tablets. Virtualization saves money, physical data center space, and time, all of which can simplify your life and allow your organization to spend more time conducting business and less time managing your IT.