Example 1: Garage-Based Manufacturer

The first example is a manufacturer we know who builds small, specialized equipment for performance cars (we're going to refer to them simply as widgets) out of a facility in his garage. He deals with an extensive client base around the world, taking orders by mail order, by fax, and over the Internet, and he keeps himself and his two employees busy. His order entry/accounting system, though, runs on a total of three computers: One houses his order-entry database; a second one houses his accounting and shipment-processing software; and the third is his working desktop, where he reads the incoming email orders, runs spreadsheet calculations, and so on.

Our friend the widget manufacturer wants to modernize a bit and get rid of the multiple switches, monitors, and keyboards that he has to keep track of every time he changes systems to perform another step in his order-delivery process. He is an excellent candidate for virtualization because he could virtualize both his accounting database and his orderentry database, putting each in a separate virtual computer living on his high-performance desktop system. Given the upgraded inventory database he's looking at investing in, virtualization might be a good idea.