Virtualization is on of the hottest buzz-words around right now but for very good reason.  Reducing physical servers in your data center will redcue power consumtion costs and resource usage overall.  This leads to better performance on the backend, lower maintenance costs (in both time and tools needed), and greater server availability (more on that in a bit).

One of the tools that was discussed today was the Microsoft Assessment and Planning toolkit or MAP for short.  This tool can be run by any IT staff member (with appropriate permissions) and will examine your environment and determine where your servers are under utilized and how much you could benefit from using virtual servers.

The tool produces a report that will outline for IT Management and C-Level management the findings and benefits of taking your organization away from physical servers and into the virtual world.

The tool can be found at http://www.microsoft.com/map

It may be the best thing available to aid in determining just how your company will benefit from Hyper-V and Virtualization.

One more tidbit of useful information, the MAP utility is a free download.