There has been a lot of talk and discussion lately about one cloud and server virtualization capabilities. But if you are like most people, you're probably wondering what all the fuss is about. After all, the virtual cyber world, Second Life, has been around for almost a decade now and most of us have probably been told a time or two in our lives to get our "heads out of the clouds". All kidding aside, what do these two trendy terms really mean and why should credit unions care?

Let's talk about server virtualization first, as it has a direct bearing on the cloud. Virtualization by definition means replacing something physical with something virtual, or in other words, switching out a tangible for an intangible. With respect to technology and your credit union's current physical server environment, it means decreasing the number of physical servers to fewer machines but having the ability to run multiple "virtual server instances" on them instead.

How does it work?