Enterprises have been using both Big Data and virtualization for years. Until recently, however, most enterprises have not combined the two. Big Data’s demands for higher levels of performance, the ability to control quality-of-service (QoS), and the ability to adhere to SLAs have kept it on bare metal, apart from the modern data center cloud. With recent technology innovations, we’ve seen the advantages of bare metal erode to such a degree that the enhanced flexibility and reduced costs that clouds offer tip the balance in favor of virtualization for Big Data deployments. And for organizations concerned about performance, virtualized environments can address that issue or in some cases even perform better than bare metal.