Properly Organizing for Virtual Infrastructure:

This Network World article is really hitting on some fundamental realities that I have been preaching for some time now in our own organization. As Virtual Infrastructure redesigns our datacenters and the skill sets have to increase, companies will have to reevaluate how they've organized IT. They also will need to reward those increasing there virtualization skills and taking on new responsibilities as datacenters are redesigned. Some good quotes from the article:

...The skill set required for this technology is only going to increase, as is the number of mission-critical applications hosted on a virtual architecture," he says. "So, its relevance is going to increase every year for the foreseeable future.

...virtualization has necessitated a higher level of trust among already integrated systems and network teams, as well as a higher skill level.

...The application administrators and developers need to be brought in to play along with the server, storage and network teams.

...At least get folks from different silos together, maybe monthly, to talk about virtualization best practices, product selection criteria and management processes