virtualization adoption

Scenario:

Seabreeze is a fictional, midsize city in southern California. Once prosperous due to its enviable location on the coastline, the city has undergone a change in fortune. The city has experienced several consecutive years of decreasing revenues. The once-burgeoning real estate market in Seabreeze has contracted significantly, resulting in a decline in property tax revenues for the city. The disappearance of most peoples discretionary spending income has resulted in less retail and tourism activity, which translates into less sales tax revenue. On top of these direct hits to the bottom line, the California Legislature has passed a bill requiring cities to transfer 20% of their gross property tax revenues to the state to offset a very large budget deficit. Because of these drastic reductions in revenue, the city is now looking for opportunities to cut costs in all operational segments.

You are the IT director for the city of Seabreeze. The city manager asked you to identify where the elimination, replacement, or addition of technology would result in a cost savings to the city. After investigating a number of potential options, you have determined that the initiative with the greatest savings would be the virtualization of the citys physical server environment, which consists of 72 servers; the storage environment, which consists solely of direct-attached storage (DAS); and the desktop computer environment, which consists of 350 end-user computers.

You now face several challenges.

Though implementation of physical server, storage, and desktop virtualization will result in significant savings over time, it will also require a large upfront investment to purchase the virtualization software, storage area network (SAN) hardware, desktop virtualization hardware, maintenance, training, and consulting services.
The city manager and the Seabreeze city council, while generally pro-technology, do not possess technological backgrounds. Thus, concepts such as virtualization are not readily understood.
The employees of Seabreeze possess a wide range of computer skills, but the majority of employees are not well-versed with technology. They have received minimal training over the years and are comfortable completing day-to-day tasks but do not have a deep understanding of the complexities of computers, networks, and the Internet.
The citizens of Seabreeze are very attuned to the expenditures of the city and demand fiscal responsibility. Additionally, the local newspaper has been running pieces highlighting local government spending.

It is your responsibility to present a virtualization adoption plan in order to convince the city manager that virtualization is a viable technology that will result in long-term savings.

Task:

A. Develop a virtualization adoption plan applicable to the scenario by doing the following:
1. Explain how the benefits of virtualization would impact the city of Seabreeze.
2. Explain how to offset potential negative implications of the adoption of virtualization for the city of Seabreeze.
3. Analyze the current state of diffusion of virtualization technology.
4. Discuss potential barriers to the local governments adoption of virtualization.
5. Discuss how to gain the support of opinion leaders in Seabreeze.
6. Explain where the city of Seabreeze falls on the technology adoption curve, using a theory of adoption or diffusion of technology.
a. Discuss one strategy for addressing the technology adoption type of the city of Seabreeze.
7. Discuss one strategy for addressing the technology acceptance of potential users in Seabreeze.