There are several benefits such as less disk space, less backup time, less tapes, less storage to manage and less complexity. The onslaught of storage technologies with software integration for server virtualization is not over yet; we've just seen the first wave. But this particular technology (deduplication) is right on schedule from my perspective in that virtual machine sprawl is causing a storage management nightmare, especially within Windows environments because of the numerous .dll files, etc. Anytime you can consolidate and centralize computing and storage assets inside the data center you are optimizing your storage, as well as minimizing risk. Using VDI and consolidation allows you to change your backup strategy because you know what data needs to be backed up and replicated; and you have better insight into change rates.
This was first published in March 2008