Assessing the relationship of virtualization, strategic alignment, and information technology effectiveness

The problem addressed by this research was that decision makers often invest heavily in virtualization technologies without knowing if their organizations would be more effective than they were before expenditures on virtualization. Based on the theory of Dynamic Capabilities, the purpose of this investigation was to assess the relationship between virtualization, strategic alignment (SA), and information-technology (IT) effectiveness. For the past 5 years virtualization has been one of the top priorities for IT professionals from all economic sectors, and government institutions in the United States because of its inherent properties to aid in the resolution of diverse IT problems. Despite of the wide adoption of virtualization technologies, little empirical evidence exists to support virtualization contributions to IT effectiveness. Recently, some investigators have successfully demonstrated that a positive correlation exists between IT flexibility and IT effectiveness, extending prior research using virtualization as a surrogate for IT flexibility. Existent literature was researched to find appropriate instrumentation to measure the effects of virtualization over IT effectiveness, compared to traditional contributors such as SA. An existing valid and reliable instrument was slightly adapted to accommodate virtualization's characteristics and deployed to a target population of top management executives of for-profit organizations in the United States using postal mail; participation data were collected using electronic means. A total of 118 qualified responses were received. The collected information was organized, transformed, and analyzed using Pearson's parametric testing followed by non-parametric confirmation using chi-squared, Kendal's tau, and Spearman's rho. Testing results showed that virtualization and IT effectiveness are positively correlated (r2 = .107) and that SA does not have a statistically significant correlation with IT effectiveness (r2 = .002) or with virtualization ( r2 = .001). The results provided empirical evidence to support the assertion that virtualization is better contributor than SA to achieve IT effectiveness; and that virtualization and SA are two distinct and separate variables. The implications of this study for scholars and practitioners include the inclusion of other forms of IT flexibility in future studies to advance the understanding of the phenomenon, and the recommendation to stakeholders to invest in virtualization with confidence to increase IT effectiveness.