Parziale hasn't calculated ROI on the project because most of the old equipment was at its end of life. However, he said the project has greatly reduced workloads and eased management headaches.

Virtualization has helped free up the IT staff's time for strategic initiatives like building the college's distance-learning program and scanning paper documents into the storage network. The latter effort is intended to help safeguard important information in the event of severe weather, which often hits southern Florida.

"Also, we're always in a situation where we're looking for new staff," Parziale said. "This gave us the opportunity to reallocate our staff into other departments. The virtualization and dynamic allocation just makes it easier. There are a lot of things you don't have to worry about anymore."