Many organizations are adopting virtualization as part of a strategic initiative to consolidate hardware infrastructure, increase IT agility, and reduce Total Cost of Ownership (TCO). But without fact-based transparency into the complex and heterogeneous IT environment, it can be a struggle to measure the potential opportunity and ultimate success of virtualization initiatives, and to understand their impact on larger business objectives.

Enterprises need to establish a trusted fact base of IT assets, both physical and virtual, throughout the enterprise. With the right level of transparency, IT staff can measure and manage virtualization initiatives, and confidently manage strategic functions like security, procurement and IT operations management in an increasingly virtual computing environment. This white paper describes strategies to establish this fact base.