With software vendors tending more and more towards delivering their products preinstalled in virtual machines (also known as virtual appliances), much of the traditional installation and configuration work associated with software will disappear.

Implementing virtualization services reduces the number of servers you have to run, which is a direct saving on hardware costs and also on the total amount of energy needed to run hardware and provide cooling. It’s good for the environment.  Your system administrators would not have to support so many machines and could then move from firefighting mode to more strategic administration tasks.