Addressing efficiency and business continuity for environments in remote offices/branch offices (ROBO) is a challenge for infrastructure planning, to say the least. Specialized technical staff is neither practical nor affordable for this environment therefore many choose to avoid virtualizing their infrastructures altogether. Without a cost effective alternative, head office IT managers look for the cheapest "good enough" solution to maintain operations and have therefore become accustomed to dealing with outdated hardware, suboptimal utilization, and unplanned downtime. If systems, applications and data aren't current or are unavailable, the unavoidable reality is that they will suffer from reduced productivity, lost sales and most importantly, decreased customer confidence/satisfaction. Delivering excellent IT service for ROBO isn't easy however it is becoming a competitive imperative.

With the rapid proliferation of virtualization, and the staggering adoption curve exhibited by data centers worldwide, it has yet to become cost effective or easy to roll-out to the ROBO markets. This whitepaper provides the 4 best practices that IT leaders of ROBO organizations need to consider when virtualizing their businesses, providing ROI tips and establishing a roadmap for reducing the Total Cost of Ownership for virtualizing the distributed ROBO environment.