There's a lot of buzz about Desktop Virtualization... Desktop virtualization holds the promise of solving many of the desktop management problemsDoes it really deliver the promised savings, security, and flexibility?

2. cannot accommodate mobile laptop
users, and they also present challenges
in terms of overall end-user experience
and application compatibility.
On the other hand, enterprises also
have growing concerns about endpoint
security and data leakage. IDC analysts
state that 60% of enterprise confidential
information resides on the endpoints
and 42% of data breaches are a result
of a lost device, including laptops and
mobile phones. Laptops rank first in this
regard.
Desktop
Virtualization has to
Satisfy Three
Constituents:
Overview instead of addressing the customer
requirements. When it comes to Data Center oriented
Many enterprises have initiatives and infrastructure like Servers, storage etc..,
We have been hearing lot of buzz about primarily IT is the direct user of the
are actively looking for desktop virtu-
Desktop Virtualization and we wonder resources to provide IT services. But for
alization products. The right Desktop
if it’s hype or reality. Desktop virtualiza- Desktop Virtualization initiatives, the
Virtualization products / solutions cer-
tion holds the promise of solving many scenario is different and complex as
tainly bring impressive benefits once the
of the desktop management problems the users of desktops are employees or
industry matures to bring the cohesive
that have been plaguing IT since PCs other users. The usage of the systems is
products taking the customer and user
first began to multiply in corporations not just limited to enterprise premises.
requirements into account.
in the early 1980s. Everyone is talking Enterprises are also under tremendous
Analysts project big opportunity for
about desktop virtualization, but does it pressure to meet the security and com-
Desktop Virtualization market ($2B to
really deliver the promised savings, se- pliance for data leakage issues.
$10B). There are many green field mar-
curity, and flexibility? It has been touted
kets in developing countries ready to ex-
as the “next big thing” in IT, but has it The key constituents that need to be
plode if the products meet the customer
really lived up to the hype around it? addressed at various levels, for Desktop
price points and features.
Enterprise customers have seen benefits Virtualization:
from adopting Virtualization for server
consolidation. Virtualization has also
been used to simplify storage manage-
Challenges of • At the CIO Level:
ment to improve resource utilization Existing Traditional Standardization is a primary require-
and ensure high availability. With the
success within the data center (servers Desktop computing: ment. A key concern here is that it
and storage) environment, many ven- is not easy to bring legacy desktops
dors are pushing the similar technology Enterprise IT is under immense pres- to server side. So how to achieve
approaches for addressing the Desktop sure to centralize desktops and increase standardization? - This is a major is-
virtualization productivity while also reducing costs sue that needs to be addressed. The
If we take the customer requirements and ensuring control over information next concern is about saving costs.
and IT environment for desktop virtual- assets, complying with security regula- Whether virtualization will help in
ization, one would find very interesting tions, and standardizing data sharing saving costs remains debatable, as
tough problem to solve as the different practices across the enterprise. virtualization by itself involves high
constituents to satisfy have conflict- operational costs. The question of
ing or opposing requirements. But at This apart, another major challenge for manageability is another important
the same time, the main vendors in traditional desktop computing, is the element. Since systems manage-
this market are pushing the products question of mobility. Statistics reveal ment tools deployed to monitor the
with the same approach that was used that 50% of business workers are mobile enterprise IT infrastructure were
for Server consolidation. There is a big at any given time (International Tele- not built with virtualization in mind,
disconnect between the customers and work Association) and that by 2010, over it becomes complex to implement.
vendors in this regard. Unfortunately 70% of US workers will be mobile (IDC Also another issue here is whether
even the new startups in this space are #34124). While this is the scenario, tra- the people in an enterprise have the
taking the technology driven approach ditional desktop centralization models essential skills to deal with virtualiza-
tion or not.

3. • Centralize / Standardize – Simplified
• At the management
• Reduced TCO
Employee / User Level: • Business Continuity / Disaster
recovery
While more and more business work-
ers are becoming mobile, desktop
virtualization is harder to achieve. Why the current
Also, with employees, experience
expectations are higher than current. Desktop
Employees and users are more and
more want to mobile thin clients and
Virtualization
Most of the users use office applica-
want to run new rich media applica- products are not tions like MS Office or Adobe Photo-
tions. This apart, another concern is
that there is always resistance from getting customer shop, they like the rich features native
experience known interfaces; of course
employees to process changes and
environment changes. These need to traction? this comes with cost and complexity in
provisioning and managing, locked to
be tackled effectively.
Most of the current solutions are not our own devices.
true Desktop Virtualization implemen-
• At CISO tations. Since they primarily emerged We have seen the success of new web/
(Chief Information from the success of technologies used in cloud based applications like Gmail that
Server Consolidation (Machine Virtual- are independent of any OS and HW
Security Officer) Level: device. These applications are delivered
ization) or Application Virtualization,
they only present virtual experience to users with lot more flexibility and at
With mounting data security issues a fraction of cost compared to desktop
reported frequently, risk manage- using thin clients. These solutions don’t
address all the customer requirements. applications. At the same time Web/
ment and data leakage at the Cloud based delivery models don’t work
endpoints are two most important The VDI/Thin client solutions might
work well for task workers, but major for compute intensive graphics applica-
concerns to be addressed. tions that the users are looking for more
portion of knowledge workers will
object for these types of solutions. The and more.
Market Trends – Thin other startup products, which were de-
The ideal solution should deliver the
signed/ architected based on the similar
Clients, SaaS models, hypervisor based product implementa- Desktop Workspace to users the way
Web applications are delivered.
tion don’t satisfy the cost and experi-
Energy savings ence requirements that Enterprise IT is
looking for. 1. User desktop/workspace is indepen-
q Rapid growth in new client devices dent of OS and HW device, delivered
• Thin Clients, Netbooks, iPad, vPad, To summarize: to any machine with no installation on
WePad, Smart phones, demand. i.e. the desktop was never
Web-connected TVs Current Desktop Virtualization solutions installed on any machine but follows
q More and more employees want are primarily around VDI or few startups you like faithful dog, where ever user
mobility. that have client centric solutions using goes whatever machine he/she uses and
q Focus on Energy Savings the similar hypervisor (Virtual Machine) gives the same experience of running on
q New delivery models or Application Virtualization tech- his/her own machine.
• Software as a Service (SaaS) w/o nologies that don’t meet the customer
installation requirements for cost and experience 2. Software isn’t installed on PCs, but
• On-demand delivery w/o as these technologies originally were rather lives as a single copy on the
management overhead meant for data centers. network, accessible to millions of us-
The current solutions which come from ers, a world in which one single system
administrator supporting that one copy
User Priorities - IT the success of server consolidation do
not satisfy requirements of the three would also be supporting those millions
of users.
Priorities (opposing constituents above.
There is no single common solution that
requirements) satisfies the different types of desktop 3. It should also enable the new soft-
ware delivery models like rent or
users.
subscribe for one’s favorite application
q User priorities (Productivity, new
like adobe photo shop, or a delightfully
capabilities, New devices)
graphics rich game for an hour, a day,
• Flexible computing, new thin de-
vices What is the Ideal Vir- or a week, just the exact time you need,
and run it on any machine anywhere,
• New media rich applications
• Mobility
tual Desktop with all the speed and availability you
are used to from a program installed on
• On demand delivery Solution? your own machine.
q IT priorities (Centralize and Control)

4. 4. Simplify management of user desk- performance bone.
tops/workspaces to the bone like web
applications management. • The offline model should detect 3. Deliver the workspace to any
unauthorized desktop access and also endpoint for execution without
An Ideal Virtual Desktop Solution should data leakage issues. And it should overloading the target device with
be able to: allow offline work to be synched with unnecessary virtual layers, leave
central IT storage with ease. almost 100% of CPU and memory for
Meet the TCO and Experience require- user applications and data – This is
ments: Ideal solution should help IT the only way user can get their native
reduce the Desktop Management with experience
minimal business process changes.
How do we achieve 4. The workspace should be available
Address Mobility: It should be able to
separate the physical and logical desk- the ideal Solution? even if the user chooses to be offline
or an OS that is not meant for the ap-
tops so that a user’s desktop is portable plications. Seems incredible, but can’t
and accessible from any machine at any 1. Decouple user workspace away sacrifice user experience
location with or without connectivity from the OS, make the user work-
space independent of target OS. We 5. More importantly the ideal solution
Ensure Control: It should give the really mean this. That is how the web should take into account the new
enterprise complete control over what applications work; a simple browser mobile and thin devices with low
applications can be loaded to the virtual specific to OS takes care of the avail- resources.
desktop. ability of that application on the
target device and OS. Seems impos- While focusing on the TCO to the bone
Allow Flexibility: It should give users sible, we need innovation to achieve this solution also should minimize the
true online and offline access to their great results. power requirements.
virtual desktops from any PC.
2. Extract and manage all common
• Virtual desktops should provide applications and data as single physi-
optimization so that the access from cal copes for all users in central place.
LAN/WAN should not degrade the Again impossible, but that is what
makes the costs to go down to the