Virtualization and cloud computing can be confusing, especially to business owners who are not familiar with them. But when you understand their differences, you’ll be able to best take advantage of these technologies.

Virtualization
Imagine a company with five servers, each assigned a single task such as storage, email, etc.

For many businesses, managing and maintaining their entire hardware and software infrastructure can be a daunting and prohibitively expensive task. But with virtualization, this is no longer an issue. Virtualization allows businesses to maximize the use of their IT resources at a reduced cost -- this is why it has become so popular in the past few years.

Virtualization and cloud computing are sometimes used interchangeably, and it's easy to see why people confuse the two. To set the record straight, virtualization is NOT cloud computing. But these two revolutionary technologies often overlap.
Virtualization
Imagine a company with five servers, each assigned a single task such as storage, email, etc.