MANILA, Philippines – Businesses are starting to reap the benefits of virtualization but need to be cautious about striking a "balance" between hardware utilization and power consumption, a top Microsoft executive said.

Virtualization is a technology that enables servers to run multiple operating systems (such as Windows and Linux) to allow more room for applications and increase utilization of computing resources.

Earlier this year, Microsoft launched Windows Server 2008, which comes with a virtualization technology called Hyper-V. This technology pits Microsoft directly against VMware, which pioneered server virtualization.

Bill Hilf, Microsoft general manager for Windows Server and platform strategy, believes virtualization is today's "revolutionary" computing trend for businesses.

"You know you're in the middle of it when there's a lot of questions from customers like who else is doing it, how much savings was realized or what went wrong," said Hilf who is in charge of Microsoft's core server product.

Microsoft release different editions of Windows Server roughly based on how many "virtual" operating system can be installed. The Data Center edition, in particular, allows an end-user to run Windows and unlimited number of virtualized OS alongside it.

"We see people going for premium products in order to take advantage of the technology and in most cases, be able to buy less hardware," Hilf said in a media roundtable with local media.

In most cases, Hilf said companies run virtualization on "infrastructure" hardware, such as file servers and those used for testing applications. "For most end-users, the biggest emergency is how to save money since maintaining legacy apps tend to be costly," he said.

Nicky Eala, Microsoft Philippines group lead for server and tools, said his team has received a lot of questions from customers about Hyper-V since it was launched locally. One customer, a local telecom player, is running Hyper-V to consolidate some 150 servers, according to Eala.

"A trend we are seeing is application virtualization, meaning end-users virtualize their servers in order to accommodate applications that run on specific OS," he said.

Hilf, however, warns that increasing server utilization can lead to increased power usage, which negates cost-cutting measures. "In Microsoft, for example, we have redesigned our data centers. But the biggest impact will be in terms of management," he said.