It’s official: virtualisation has made it. On the Gartner Hype Cycle for Cloud Services, it has scaled the “peak of inflated expectations”, traversed the “trough of disillusionment” and is inches from the much coveted “plateau of productivity”.

For now, it remains on the “slope of enlightenment” — but it’s a technology right on the cusp of an evolution that will expand its influence further than ever.

The core concept of virtualisation, and its promise to increase efficiency by severing the link between hardware and software, has become common in informed businesses. Indeed, there’s now a huge range of examples, among a broad set of industries that demonstrate how to quickly take advantage of it and hit the ground running.

However, exploiting its full potential is not always trivial. Some of the larger and more enthusiastic businesses out there have the resources and expertise to write their own tools …