Field-tested since the 1960s, virtualization nowadays is common practice in the modern world of information technology. Over the past years, it has become more and more attractive, even for small and medium-sized businesses – mainly because of the growing number of available solutions combined with price adjustments and releases of several free hypervisors. Advantages like increased efficiency, cost savings or faster deploy- ment of servers cannot be denied.

After a short introduction to virtualization and the clarification of the status quo, virtualization technologies and currently available server and application virtualization solutions are treated. The questions to be clarified are whether virtualization is a practicable concept for G + P or not and if so, which product would suite best.
The three most popular server hypervisors Citrix XenServer, VMware ESXi and Microsoft Hyper-V as well as the following application virtualization products: Citrix XenApp, VMware ThinApp, Microsoft Application Virtualization, Evalaze, Spoon Studio, Novell ZENworks Application Virtualiztion, LANDeks Application Virtualization and Cameyo are analyzed.
After a more detailed inspection and tests of some of the products, virtualization appears to be an attractive solution to solve the agency’s problems. VMware vSphere Hypervisor plus Novell ZENworks Application Virtualization meet the requirements especially well.

Original title:
Evaluierung verschiedener Virtualisierungs-Technologien zum Einsatz in der G + P Glanzer und Partner Werbeagentur GmbH

Bachelor thesis written by Benjamin Ringat, March 2012.

Second supervisor: Dipl.-Ing. (FH) Thomas Reimann, Glanzer und Partner GmbH, Stuttgart