There's no worse feeling than thinking you're the only one who doesn't understand a new bit of technology. If you've ever looked around a meeting and wondered what all the technical terms like "virtualization" and "VPS" mean, don't worry. You're far from alone. As new technologies come into the public arena, there's definitely a learning curve. No one's born knowing how these new processes work. It has to be studied and learned. Everyone else had to get up to speed too, so stop worrying that you missed the boat and crack the books.

A lot is being said today about virtualization. What does it mean? You may have a knowledge of virtual reality from video games. These are applications that can simulate real life experiences. It's good to get your head thinking along those lines when thinking of virtualization.

Virtualization, as used in relation to computers, is a way to take one machine or piece of hardware and make it split into several different compartments. A virtualized server is one that is split off from a main server. There can be many servers running off one piece of hardware.

Most companies don't use their servers to their full capacity. So they are wasting space. And wasted space in a hardware application means wasted money and underperformance. Virtualization can host a number of sub-servers off of one main driver. This allows companies to store more data and use their data center to the utmost capacity. This saves money because companies don't have to spend thousands of dollars when they run out of data storage space.

If you're a company using only a small percentage of your server's capacity, you're drawing expensive electrical power to fire up a machine that's running at less than peak capacity. With a virtualized server, you're upping the performance on your one piece of hardware and eliminating the use of several lesser servers. It's all in one place and streamlined. So you save on the bottom line.

You also have to pay someone to run your server. These IT people don't work for free, so you're going to have to budget for a live person to sit there and monitor all your hardware and fix it if it breaks. They'll need to install your operating systems and all your software. What used to take a live person weeks to do can now be done-even from a remote location-in minutes. The number of servers to be serviced is reduced to one, so there's less maintenance that needs to be done. And less IT costs mean more money the company can allocate elsewhere.

Suppose your server goes down. In the olden days -- a year ago, say -- without a virtualized server you'd lose precious hours and days while a human worker came to fix it, but now, it's all synchronized and another server can kick in automatically to seamlessly keep your business flowing.

Look into more specifics of virtualization. These are just the basics to get your started on what virtualization is and how it can save you time and money.