Of course, a robust virtualized platform is the foundation for virtually (cool pun!) all Cloud Computing – public clouds like Amazon and Google, or private corporate Clouds.

One really significant aspect of virtualization is the contribution that a virtualized IT platform makes to “Evergreen IT” – a term coined, I believe, by PriceWaterhouseCoopers. In addition to reducing the number of physical servers, which of course reduces electrical consumption and heat generation (less air conditioning), most Hypervisor systems can be configured to automatically shut down servers that aren’t needed during periods when less capacity is required.

During a recent lunch with a client’s VMWare representatives, I was treated to a good explanation of the latest green-IT features offered by their suite of products. Although I haven’t put them to the test, yet, it sounds pretty impressive – e.g., claims of as much as 80% reduction in use of electricity (supported by a Gartner report)!

Given all of the benefits that IT virtualization (and Cloud Computing) is demonstrating, it’s hard not to visualize a future for IT that’s built on information utilities. Obviously, in these early years… most large corporations will maintain their own internal “IT utilities” and will realize tremendous benefits by doing so. But eventually…. Will it make sense for even mega-users of IT resources not to tap into the commercial “IT power plants”?

Of course, I’m also the guy who wrote an article in 1985, for our leading IT trade publication, in which I predicted that the age of the software “factory” was imminent! I could see quite clearly that object oriented architectures and tools were about to bring an end to the long and painful process of reinventing software for every new product or application. Oops!

But this time…. The future not only looks pretty compelling, it’s being proven more and more viable at a rapid pace.

I’ve just posted some guidance for developing a Cloud Computing Roadmap on my Strategic IT Architecture Web site. Obviously, it’s a complex topic and there are many, many variations on the routes you might map out.

One approach that I didn’t mention in that post – space is limited in a blog posting – was an approach that mitigates and contains risk, while still delivering a solid foundation for internal Clouds and near-term ROI and operational benefits.  Server platform virtualization.

Virtualization is a mature and proven platform architecture that greatly improves asset utilization and can significantly enhance operational efficiency. Clouds are based on a virtualized platform.

In order to fully evolve into a Cloud, and provide all of the benefits that Clouds offer, you will eventually need to enhance the virtual environment with some additional capabilities – e.g., self provisioning, dynamic resource allocation, measured/metered usage. You’ll also want to make some enhancements to the platform architecture to better accommodate multi-tenancy, elasticity and other powerful Cloud capabilities.

But as a solid first step toward a Cloud Computing target, and as a means of containing risk – including the risk of moving core applications to an external, still unproven commercial Cloud – consider implementing a virtualized computing IT ecosystem.

One additional technical point: As you develop your implementation plan for a virtualized platform, you do need to consider what kind of “Hypervisor” you’ll use. The most critical decision is whether to use a Type 1 (bare metal) product or a Type 2 (hosted) Hypervisor.  Type 1 provides maximum performance because it executes on the hardware (bare metal) and provides its own operating system support. Type 2 is installed as a guest operating system on a hosted system, so it sacrifices some performance because it’s running in a layer above the native OS.