{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,1,9]],"date-time":"2026-01-09T17:20:17Z","timestamp":1767979217777,"version":"3.49.0"},"reference-count":36,"publisher":"MDPI AG","issue":"4","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2021,4,16]],"date-time":"2021-04-16T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1618531200000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["Computers"],"abstract":"<jats:p>The financial crisis of the last decade has left many financial institutions with limited personnel and equipment resources. Thus, the IT departments of these institutions are being asked to explore novel approaches to resolve these constraints in a cost-effective and efficient manner. The goal of this paper is to measure the impact of modern enabling technologies, such as virtualization, in the process of replacing legacy infrastructures. This paper proposes an IT services upgrade plan approach for an organization by using modern technologies. For this purpose, research took place in an operating financial institution, which required a significant upgrade of both its service-level and its hardware infrastructure. A virtualization implementation and deployment assessment for the entire infrastructure was conducted and the resulting consolidated data are presented and analysed. The paper concludes with a five-year financial-based evaluation of the proposed approach with respect to the projection of expenditures, the return of investment and profitability.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.3390\/computers10040052","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2021,4,16]],"date-time":"2021-04-16T10:20:11Z","timestamp":1618568411000},"page":"52","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/mdpi_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":10,"title":["Improving Business Performance by Employing Virtualization Technology: A Case Study in the Financial Sector"],"prefix":"10.3390","volume":"10","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0001-5240-5497","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Georgios","family":"Lambropoulos","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Informatics, University of Piraeus, 18534 Piraeus, Greece"}]},{"given":"Sarandis","family":"Mitropoulos","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Regional Development Department, Ionian University, 31100 Lefkada, Greece"}]},{"given":"Christos","family":"Douligeris","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Informatics, University of Piraeus, 18534 Piraeus, Greece"}]}],"member":"1968","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2021,4,16]]},"reference":[{"key":"ref_1","unstructured":"Cotton, B., and Fernandez, J. (2020, June 02). Growth in a New Era: Enabling Competitive Banking with Smarter Computing, Frost & Sullivan, White Paper. Available online: https:\/\/fr.slideshare.net\/IBMIndiaSS\/xbl03016-usen."},{"key":"ref_2","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"519","DOI":"10.1016\/j.csi.2011.02.007","article-title":"Knowledge Discovery Metamodel-ISO\/IEC 19506: A standard to modernize legacy systems","volume":"33","author":"Piattini","year":"2011","journal-title":"Comput. Stand. Interfaces"},{"key":"ref_3","first-page":"245","article-title":"A Return on Investment as a Metric for Evaluating Information Systems: Taxonomy and Application","volume":"6","author":"Botchkarev","year":"2011","journal-title":"Interdiscip. J. Inf. Knowl. Manag."},{"key":"ref_4","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"732","DOI":"10.1109\/COMST.2015.2481183","article-title":"Data Center Energy Consumption Modeling: A Survey","volume":"18","author":"Dayarathna","year":"2016","journal-title":"IEEE Commun. Surv. Tutor."},{"key":"ref_5","unstructured":"Microsoft Corporation (2020, September 17). Banks Adopting a Wide Variety of Virtualization Technologies to Centralize Deployment and Save Energy, Reports Microsoft Survey. Available online: https:\/\/news.microsoft.com\/2008\/04\/29\/banks-adopting-a-wide-variety-of-virtualization-technologies-to-centralize-deployment-and-save-energy-reports-microsoft-survey\/."},{"key":"ref_6","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Uddin, M., and Abdul, A. (2011). Virtualization Implementation Model for Cost Effective & Efficient Data Centers. Int. J. Adv. Comput. Sci. Appl., 2.","DOI":"10.14569\/IJACSA.2011.020110"},{"key":"ref_7","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"266","DOI":"10.1109\/TSC.2010.25","article-title":"A Mathematical Programming Approach for Server Consolidation Problems in Virtualized Data Centers","volume":"3","author":"Speitkamp","year":"2010","journal-title":"IEEE Trans. Serv. Comput."},{"key":"ref_8","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Luo, S., Lin, Z., Chen, X., Yang, Z., and Chen, J. (2011, January 12\u201314). Virtualization Security for Cloud Computing Service. Proceedings of the 2011 International Conference on Cloud and Service Computing, Hong Kong, China.","DOI":"10.1109\/CSC.2011.6138516"},{"key":"ref_9","unstructured":"IDC CEMA Consulting (2010). Virtualization: The Next Phase in IT Development, IDC Cema Consulting. White Paper sponsored by Microsoft & Hewlett Packard."},{"key":"ref_10","first-page":"267","article-title":"A Survey Study on Virtual Machine Migration and Server Consolidation Techniques in DVFS-enabled Cloud Datacenter: Taxonomy and challenges","volume":"32","author":"Shirvani","year":"2020","journal-title":"J. King Saud Univ. Comput. Inf. Sci."},{"key":"ref_11","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"529","DOI":"10.1016\/j.future.2018.10.044","article-title":"Managing Energy, Performance and Cost in Large Scale Heterogeneous datacenters using migrations","volume":"93","author":"Zakarya","year":"2019","journal-title":"Futur. Gener. Comput. Syst."},{"key":"ref_12","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"131","DOI":"10.1145\/1965724.1965752","article-title":"Workload Management for Power Efficiency in Virtualized Data Centres","volume":"54","author":"Dasgupta","year":"2011","journal-title":"Commun. ACM"},{"key":"ref_13","unstructured":"VMware Corporation (2020, September 25). VMware Capacity Planner. Optimize Business and IT Capacity Planning in Your Datacenter and Desktop Environment, Available online: https:\/\/www.vmware.com\/content\/dam\/digitalmarketing\/vmware\/en\/pdf\/products\/vmware-capacity-planner-datasheet.pdf."},{"key":"ref_14","unstructured":"Solarwinds (2021, March 02). Documentation for Virtualization Manager. Available online: https:\/\/documentation.solarwinds.com\/en\/Success_Center\/VMAN\/Content\/VMAN-Capacity-Planning.htm."},{"key":"ref_15","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Younge, A.J., Henschel, R., Brown, J.T., Von Laszewski, G., Qiu, J., and Fox, G.C. (2011, January 4\u20139). Analysis of Virtualization Technologies for High Performance Computing Environments. Proceedings of the 2011 IEEE 4th International Conference on Cloud Computing, Washington, DC, USA.","DOI":"10.1109\/CLOUD.2011.29"},{"key":"ref_16","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Guray, U., and Shaikh, R. (2010, January 26\u201327). Virtualization\u2014A key Feature of Cloud Computing. Proceedings of the International Conference and Workshop on Emerging Trends in Technology, Mumbai, India.","DOI":"10.1145\/1741906.1741957"},{"key":"ref_17","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"5","DOI":"10.1186\/1869-0238-4-5","article-title":"An analysis of security issues for cloud computing","volume":"4","author":"Hashizume","year":"2013","journal-title":"J. Internet Serv. Appl."},{"key":"ref_18","unstructured":"Ramos, J.C.C.d.S. (2009). Security Challenges with Virtualization. [Master\u2019s thesis, University of Lisbon]. Available online: https:\/\/citeseerx.ist.psu.edu\/viewdoc\/download?doi=10.1.1.468.7857&rep=rep1&type=pdf."},{"key":"ref_19","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Perez-Botero, D., Szefer, J., and Lee, R.B. (2013, January 28). Characterizing Hypervisor Vulnerabilities in Cloud Computing Servers. Proceedings of the 2013 international workshop on Mining unstructured big data using natural language processing, San Francisco, CA, USA.","DOI":"10.1145\/2484402.2484406"},{"key":"ref_20","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Bogatyrev, V., and Derkach, A. (2020). Evaluation of a Cyber-Physical Computing System with Migration of Virtual Machines during Continuous Computing. Computers, 9.","DOI":"10.3390\/computers9020042"},{"key":"ref_21","first-page":"802","article-title":"Cloud Computing in Banking: An Overview","volume":"3","author":"Lakshmi","year":"2018","journal-title":"Int. J. Multidiscip."},{"key":"ref_22","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"90","DOI":"10.1504\/IJBSR.2021.111756","article-title":"An Integrated Model for Formulation, Alignment, Execution and Evaluation of Business and IT Strategies","volume":"15","author":"Mitropoulos","year":"2021","journal-title":"Int. J. Bus. Syst. Res."},{"key":"ref_23","first-page":"369","article-title":"A Simulation-based Approach for IT and Business Strategy Alignment and evaluation","volume":"10","author":"Mitropoulos","year":"2012","journal-title":"Int. J. Bus. Inf. Syst."},{"key":"ref_24","unstructured":"(2020, November 01). Lifecycle Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2. Available online: https:\/\/docs.microsoft.com\/en-us\/lifecycle\/products\/windows-server-2012-r2."},{"key":"ref_25","unstructured":"(2020, September 12). Microsoft Lifecycle Exchange Server 2016. Available online: https:\/\/docs.microsoft.com\/en-us\/lifecycle\/products\/exchange-server-2016."},{"key":"ref_26","unstructured":"European Banking Authority (2020, March 07). EBA FINAL Draft Implementing Technical Standards on Supervisory Reporting under Regulation (EU) No 575\/2013. Available online: https:\/\/www.eba.europa.eu\/sites\/default\/documents\/files\/documents\/10180\/359626\/f3e58351-8aec-4827-8e8e-628525122414\/EBA%20ITS%202013%2002%20%28Draft%20ITS%20on%20supervisory%20reporting%29.pdf?retry=1."},{"key":"ref_27","unstructured":"European Central Bank (2020, March 09). Guide to Assessments of Licence Applications Licence Applications in General. Available online: https:\/\/www.bankingsupervision.europa.eu\/ecb\/pub\/pdf\/ssm.201901_guide_assessment_credit_inst_licensing_appl.en.pdf?639083c1690b108e5a4a32fc90b110a6."},{"key":"ref_28","unstructured":"(2020, December 15). IBM Tivoli Storage Manager Documentation. Available online: https:\/\/www.ibm.com\/support\/knowledgecenter\/en\/SSGSG7_7.1.9\/tsm\/welcome.html."},{"key":"ref_29","unstructured":"(2020, November 01). Operations Guide for System Center Operations Manager. Available online: https:\/\/docs.microsoft.com\/en-us\/system-center\/scom\/manage-operations-guide-overview?view=sc-om-2019."},{"key":"ref_30","unstructured":"IBM Support (2020, November 01). IBM Systems Director. Available online: https:\/\/www.ibm.com\/support\/pages\/ibm-systems-director."},{"key":"ref_31","unstructured":"Microsoft Corporation (2020, September 25). Microsoft Lifecycle Policy. Available online: https:\/\/docs.microsoft.com\/en-us\/lifecycle\/."},{"key":"ref_32","unstructured":"(2020, November 07). Windows Server 2012 R2 and Windows Server 2012. Available online: https:\/\/docs.microsoft.com\/en-us\/previous-versions\/windows\/it-pro\/windows-server-2012-r2-and-2012\/hh801901(v=ws.11)."},{"key":"ref_33","unstructured":"(2020, October 13). Microsoft Exchange Server Documentation. Available online: https:\/\/docs.microsoft.com\/en-us\/exchange\/exchange-server?view=exchserver-2016."},{"key":"ref_34","unstructured":"Veritas (2020, September 12). Enterprise Vault Documentation 12. Available online: https:\/\/www.veritas.com\/support\/en_US\/article.100040245."},{"key":"ref_35","unstructured":"VMware Corporation (2020, October 17). VMware TCO Comparison Calculator Methodology. Technical White Paper. July 2020. Available online: https:\/\/www.vmware.com\/content\/dam\/digitalmarketing\/vmware\/en\/pdf\/whitepaper\/vmware-tco-comparison-calculator-methodology-whitepaper.pdf."},{"key":"ref_36","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Amado, L. (2013). Capex and Opex Expenditures. Reservoir Exploration and Appraisal, Gulf Professional Publishing.","DOI":"10.1016\/B978-1-85617-853-2.00009-0"}],"container-title":["Computers"],"original-title":[],"language":"en","link":[{"URL":"https:\/\/www.mdpi.com\/2073-431X\/10\/4\/52\/pdf","content-type":"unspecified","content-version":"vor","intended-application":"similarity-checking"}],"deposited":{"date-parts":[[2025,10,11]],"date-time":"2025-10-11T05:48:46Z","timestamp":1760161726000},"score":1,"resource":{"primary":{"URL":"https:\/\/www.mdpi.com\/2073-431X\/10\/4\/52"}},"subtitle":[],"short-title":[],"issued":{"date-parts":[[2021,4,16]]},"references-count":36,"journal-issue":{"issue":"4","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2021,4]]}},"alternative-id":["computers10040052"],"URL":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/computers10040052","relation":{},"ISSN":["2073-431X"],"issn-type":[{"value":"2073-431X","type":"electronic"}],"subject":[],"published":{"date-parts":[[2021,4,16]]}}}