Virtualization has gained much attention across organizations looking to address these challenges, improving the efficiency of their IT operations and enhancing their responsiveness to changing conditions. Originally focused on consolidating resources in the data center, virtualization now has applications across the IT spectrum, driving down costs and improving agility. This paper looks at the role virtualization should take in an optimized IT infrastructure, and presents a set of principles and best practices to help you build a comprehensive virtualization strategy for your organization.