EMC: Virtual world safer than physical

Virtual world

A senior executive from EMC has dismissed doubts about the security of moving data into the virtual world, claiming it is an even safer environment than the one we live in now.

During a keynote speech at EMC World 2010, Pat Gelsinger, president and chief operating officer of EMC's Information Infrastructure products division, told how customers often assumed moving applications and storage onto virtual machines was a risky option.

His response was: "Wait a minute, the virtual world will be more secure than the physical world ever has been."

Gelsinger claimed there was much more visibility in a virtual environment, meaning any dodgy activity could be identified right away.

"That [virtual machine] gives visibility to every instruction, every packet, every user, every application," he added.

"We now have a much better vehicle to deliver finer grade policy and mechanisms for security in the virtual world."

Earlier at the EMC conference, Joe Tucci, the company's chief executive, claimed virtualisation had its green merits too.

"I would submit that there is no technology, none, that has done more for green energy efficiency than virtualisation," he said.

"To handle the workloads we handle today, if we didn't virtualise we would be buying so many more servers... same with storage and flash drives... [and] EMC has done a tremendous amount to [stop] that."

Jennifer Scott

Jennifer Scott is a former freelance journalist and currently political reporter for Sky News. She has a varied writing history, having started her career at Dennis Publishing, working in various roles across its business technology titles, including ITPro. Jennifer has specialised in a number of areas over the years and has produced a wealth of content for ITPro, focusing largely on data storage, networking, cloud computing, and telecommunications.

Most recently Jennifer has turned her skills to the political sphere and broadcast journalism, where she has worked for the BBC as a political reporter, before moving to Sky News.