A virtualized environment transforms a physical server into many virtual machines. They can have different operating systems and run different applications while still being hosted on a single physical server.
The consolidation of the applications onto virtualized environments is a more cost-effective because there will be less physical servers needed, resulting in less money spent on servers and their maintenance.

Fewer servers mean IT teams are spending less time maintaining the physical hardware and IT infrastructure.
Installing, updating, and maintaining the environment across all the VMs in a virtual environment on the server instead of going through the arduous and monotonous process of applying the updates server-by-server. Less time spent maintaining the physical environment increases IT’s efficiency and productivity.

When a disaster affects a physical server, it requires hands on maintenance to replacing or fix which could take hours or possibly days. With a virtualized environment, it’s simple to provision and deploy, which allows for replication or cloning of the virtual machine that has been affected. Recovery process may take a few minutes — as opposed to hours to provision and set up new physical servers.

A virtualized environment is segmented into virtual machines, developers can quickly spin up a virtual machine without impacting a production environment. This is ideal for Dev/Test, because the developer can quickly duplicate the virtual machine and run a test on the environment. This control increases the speed and agility of an application.

When the number of physical servers being used is reduced, there is an automatic reduction in the amount of power being consumed. This reduces expenses and the carbon footprint of the data center.

Not only is the reliability of virtualization better, file recovery is faster with good retrieval capability.

There is no waiting for installations and updates to complete like with physical servers, these are completed by service providers.