Potential virtualization pitfalls top the list.

Netcordia, the network monitoring company, has released its predictions of the likeliest sources of IT headaches in 2010, and at the top of the list is complications arising from virtualization projects. They write:

Dynamic reallocation of services creates a huge challenge for the underlying infrastructure. Pre-virtualization, managing applications was difficult enough, but now the challenge is much more complex when servers are virtualized, and the connective network infrastructure is segmented. As services are provisioned or moved, the network needs to adapt accordingly.

In virtual environments, network engineering teams need to deal with maintaining virtual topologies that provision and maintain topologically correct VRF, VLAN, and other configurations consistent and aligned with the virtual contexts of routers, firewalls, servers and other components to ensure end-to-end service reliability, dynamically. All too often, virtualization project planning simply overlooks the new challenges associated with managing the underlying network and teams find themselves unable to keep up.

Increasingly, voice will be one of those applications whose management was difficult enough pre-virtualization, but now is subject to the pitfalls of coordinating network and application management and configuration in a a virtualized environment.

This prediction of Netcordia's touches on many of the hot buttons we expect to see at VoiceCon this year and going forward:

* The IT specialists responsible for voice/UC/real-time traffic must work much more closely with those who plan application and datacenter strategies.

* The underlying network that supports communications is dynamic, and its ongoing changes will affect the delivery of communications services--negatively so, if enterprises don't stay on top of this issue.

* The level of enterprise understanding, and vendor education, on issues relating to the cloud, virtualization, and SOA, is often inadequate, according to Tom Nolle. Tom's survey of enterprises suggests to me that there's high potential for the kind of trouble that Netcordia foresees.

Last year's spate of virtualization announcements from communications vendors including Mitel and Avaya was greeted positively by many people--myself included--who saw the potential for curbing the proliferation of servers that UC has brought about. But clearly, virtualization may offer its own risks to the stable management and operation of the network and applications.Potential virtualization pitfalls top the list.