(Glenn O'Donnell and Rachel Dines, CIO) As virtualization management tools proliferate, consider carefully how these tools fit into your IT processes and management portfolio. Keep your eye on these key system management capabilties, says Forrester Research.

The explosive growth of today's virtualization management market is good news for organizations looking to manage and optimize their virtual environments. Like every technology that has come before it, the route to success with virtualization lies in solid, standardized processes and management software to automate and govern the execution of these processes.

As businesses begin to evaluate tools to help manage their virtual environment, Forrester recommends focusing on four key system management capabilities:

1. Improve configuration management
2. Maximize capacity planning and VM placement
3. Performance Monitoring
4. Real-time automation

Virtualization is the most potent technology catalyst toward cloud computing, so it is therefore the first step in the journey to industrialize IT. If you want to be in the driver's seat for the future of IT, plan a journey to industrialize your operation and begin that journey by getting your virtual server infrastructure under control.