Tag Archives: desktop virtualization

Desktop Virtualization Facilitates Easy Migration To Windows 7 & 8

desktop-virtualization-windowsAfter a long wait, Windows 8 is finally here. The new operating system from Microsoft, features a number of business-friendly features that would be compelling for enterprise users and administrators. According to industry estimates, nearly half of the Indian organisations use Windows XP platform today, and as the OS reaches end of life in a year-and-a-half, analysts believe it will result in a demand uptick for newer platforms such as Windows 7 and 8.

Hence, the migration from Windows XP is one of the top IT priorities today, in the context of the emerging post PC era, the extinction of Windows XP support, and device proliferation at the workplace.

Although the roll-out of Windows 8 by enterprises will be phased and gradual, media reports state that select Indian enterprises have already downloaded 16 million copies for testing of the OS since September 2011 until its launch this year. As organizations undertake this migration, many are looking to streamline the process for both IT and users to reduce the complexity and costs associated with migrating client PCs to a new operating system.

However, while the decision to migrate is relatively straightforward, the process of migrating can be rife with IT complexity, end-user disruptions, and added costs. Desktop Virtualization in this context is a powerful technology that can facilitate this transition in a quick seamless way through the following four pivots:

Enhancing Consumerization of IT

For executives, work is no longer defined by a place. It’s something they do – wherever and whenever their organizations require. Modern executives need continuous access to enterprise data while being inherently agile. The role of an executive has changed from being hierarchical to being truly networked.

In this regard, executives who have adopted tablets can now get a consistent experience of Windows 7/8 through desktop virtualization even if the tablets are running on different operating systems (such as iOS, Android etc.) This also enables these mobile executives to access their desktops anywhere using their device, thereby improving efficiency and productivity.

Application compatibility

Applications built on a 16-bit architecture will cease to work while upgrading to 32-bit or 64-bit version of Windows 7 or 8.  This can be challenging from a business continuity perspective as many business critical programs will be dependent on their erstwhile architecture framework.

Similarly, it could be a gargantuan activity to re-platform applications built and designed for Internet Explorer 6 browsers with Windows 8. In this case, desktop virtualization facilitates on-demand application facility where IT can virtualize the IE6 and deliver it from data center onto the new OS with no differentiation in user experience. In addition, applications that require 16-bit architecture can be virtualized and delivered in the same way to numerous end points.

Hardware Upgrade

Migration to Windows 7 and 8 comes with having to open purse strings towards hardware upgrades in an organization. Such roll-outs are also associated with downtime as they are completed in a phased approach, consuming months of IT staff time and multiple days of downtime for end users. Desktop Virtualization enables the OS and applications to be delivered virtually, while the hardware resources of the end-point remain unused. As a result it doesn’t necessitate a hardware upgrade, eliminating the scenarios of cost expenditure and downtime.

In fact, the procedure entails merely deploying the Windows 7/8 solution at the data center, and all the user has to do is simply log out and re-login. When they log in to the desktop virtualization client, their systems are up and running on Windows 7/8 with all their requisite applications. Another major advantage of embracing desktop virtualization is that it reduces operating expenses by centralizing desktop maintenance and brings down the desk-side support needs. By making it possible to deliver virtual desktops to thin clients or tablet devices, this enables the company to save costs on power and cooling.

Security and User Preferences

During an upgrade, it may be required to re-chart the entire settings for each of the end users owing to the host of new security and user preferences available with Windows 7 & 8 as compared to Windows XP. As a natural consequence, security of data becomes a concern while allotting privileges to each of the employees as the company data resides on user end-points.

With desktop virtualization, the organization can manage this transition in a secured manner as the data doesn’t shift out of company’s data center, and therefore doesn’t reside on the end points.

In a nutshell, the challenges around application compatibility, agility of desktops to support new environments and data security can be very well addressed through desktop virtualization during migration from Windows XP.

 

Author: Atul Ahuja
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Half Of All Enterprise Networks Will Be Obsolete In Five Years

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Dimension Data, released the results of a Network Barometer study for this year, which evaluates the readiness of enterprise networks to support ongoing business operations. The report found that technology trends such as bring-your-own-device (BYOD), video and virtualization are rapidly consuming network capacity and capabilities, and that 45 per cent of the enterprise networks assessed during 2011 will be obsolete within five years.

This represents a 38 per cent increase over the 2010 data, indicating the growing velocity of these technology trends, the report found.

Dimension Data also reported that of the devices that are now in the obsolescence cycle, the percentage that are at end-of-sale increased exponentially from 4.2 per cent in 2010 to 70 per cent in 2011.

The study concluded that organizations considering desktop virtualization and pervasive video need to refresh their routing and switching infrastructure ? only 18 per cent of all access switches discovered during the evaluations would be able to support these technologies properly.

Other findings include:

Dimension Data conducts the annual Network Barometer Report by evaluating adherence to best practices, potential security vulnerabilities and the end-of-life status of network devices. The 2012 report includes findings from nearly 300 Technology Lifecycle Management (TLM) assessments at enterprise organizations worldwide throughout 2011.

Grant Sainsbury, vice president of advanced solutions, Dimension Data, said the introduction of new technologies into the enterprise environment has accelerated to the point where many corporate networks predate current megatrends such as mobility, virtualization, BYOD and pervasive video.

The report also found four other key findings. They include:

1. Two-thirds of all devices assessed in 2011 had at least one known security vulnerability. Repeat users of the TLM Assessments had a 59 per cent vulnerability rate, compared to a higher 75 per cent vulnerability rate for non-repeat users.

2. Of the known security vulnerabilities discovered, four of the 10 most prevalent were new. Three of these have a high severity rating, and one has a critical rating. These findings underscored the need for organizations to ensure that their IOS patch management processes are comprehensive and that they screen for security vulnerabilities regularly.

3. The mobility trend and Dimension Data’s prediction that 802.11n access point penetration will be greater than 50 per cent next year mandate that organizations must carefully consider the underlying network infrastructure responsible for the distribution and delivery of their communication services.

4. From a lifecycle perspective, the total number of devices that were past end-of-sale jumped from 38 per cent to 45 per cent, highlighting the fact that organizations must not forget the network as they consider deploying new communication services.

Dimension Data added that this year’s report indicates that while the percentage of devices with security vulnerabilities stayed roughly the same (73 per cent last year vs. 75 per cent this year), the vulnerability environment is rapidly evolving with four new entrants on the top 10 list – all of which carry relatively high risk ratings.

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Mobility Is Driving Desktop Virtualization

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The demand for desktop virtualization is being driven, at least in part, by the explosive growth in mobile work styles. That’s a key takeaway from a new global market study commissioned by virtual solutions provider Citrix, whose virtualization, networking and cloud solutions are delivered to more than 100 million corporate desktops daily.

The survey found that 55 percent of responding companies will deploy new desktop virtualization for the first time by 2013. Of those surveyed, 86 percent said security was the biggest reason, and that desktop virtualization is a strategic choice for improving security in an age of multiple devices.

Security Joins Savings

The white paper describing the study noted that “familiar advantages of desktop virtualization include the ability to enable a more flexible workplace,” provide support for mobile workers, and effectively manage the variety of devices typically found in an organization. It noted that security now joins savings as a reason in favor of desktop virtualization.

The kinds of security that are driving desktop virtualization include the need for secure access for mobile and user-owned devices, increased security requirements for apps and data, the desire to be able to accommodate an increasingly mobile workforce, and simplified risk management.

Citrix Chief Security Strategist Kurt Roemer said in a statement accompanying the survey that desktop virtualization offers centralized control and management of software devices, as well as “granular, policy-based access control and support for compliance requirements.” With its infrastructure level of information governance, he said, it enhances risk management.

Provisioning, Isolation, Wiping

Other benefits found useful by IT managers in the study include the ability for immediate provisioning of security updates, apps and access, which was identified as a key benefit by 60 percent of respondents. Some 54 percent believed that the instant isolation of a compromised application was a key benefit of desktop virtualization, while 32 percent identified the ability to remotely wipe data from devices.

The survey also found that virtually all respondents — 95 percent of those surveyed — believed that virtualization was effective in protecting information, while still allowing employees the ability to get the information they needed to do their jobs.

For device-related issues, nearly three-quarters of the surveyed IT decision makers see desktop virtualization as a way to immediately update an entire fleet of computers and devices, and 66 percent felt that the ability to deploy applications securely was a critical component in their decision to implement the technology.

The survey was conducted by independent market research firm Vanson Bourne, under a commission from Citrix. The survey covered 1,100 senior IT managers in October in 11 countries, including the U.S., U.K., The Netherlands, Germany and Canada. Three-quarters of those surveyed worked at enterprises of more than 1,000 employees, while the rest were in companies of 500 to 999 employees.

Author: Barry Levine
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Desktop Virtualization Improves Security

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One of the main reasons for deploying desktop virtualization is the security advantages it can provide, such as keeping sensitive data off the endpoint, according to Citrix.

And Citrix is practicing what it preaches at its Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., headquarters where employees, for example, use the Citrix virtualization product Citrix Receiver for smartphones and tablets.

Citrix Receiver brings full-fledged desktop apps to smartphones and tablets

“It’s required to access some systems such as SAP,” says Kurt Roemer, chief of security strategy at Citrix. “And we don’t have to roll out an SAP client. It’s up to date and the exact configuration. You’re just interacting with the application.”

While businesses all operate in different circumstances, there are general aspects of desktop virtualization that hold appeal to IT departments that have fought unending battles to try and keep unwanted applications off user desktops, patch applications, and cope with the stray malware eruptions.

“It gives IT back control,” Roemer says. “It allows for risk-based access, and the decision on whether to allow the data to be taken offline.” The company managers can set policies related to saving or printing data, for instance. Although for those needing data offline, desktop virtualization doesn’t preclude use of encryption, for example.

Applications made available through desktop virtualization — Citrix offers Xen Desktop, which can run on top of VMware, Microsoft Hyper-V or the Citrix hypervisor — are consistent across the user base and patch updates to them are consistent, even while access to applications is more flexible.

“This is very beneficial for security,” Roemer notes, adding that it allows for flexibility in deciding how to centrally establish management and security controls.

It’s evident from the survey of 1,100 senior IT managers and decision-makers worldwide that was published today that there’s also widespread expectation that desktop virtualization will be used in a complementary fashion with cloud-based services and various security controls.

The survey, “Desktop virtualization and security: a global market research report,” found 91% of the respondents said they already have or will have desktop virtualization implemented by the end of 2013 in their organizations, of which all have at least 500 employees.

In addition, they said they plan to complement desktop virtualization with cloud-based services and additional security measures such as data-loss prevention, identity management, mobile-device management, VPN, threat management and authentication.

According to the survey, which didn’t identify which specific desktop virtualization technologies were being used, 33% have already deployed desktop virtualization to a significant level and a further 58% plan to do so before the end of 2013. The survey, sponsored by Citrix, was conducted by firm Vanson Bourne.

Author: Ellen Messmer
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Pumping The Brakes On Desktop Virtualization?

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There’s evidence in the channel that organizations are growing increasingly gun-shy about following through on desktop virtualization pilots and deployments. Their uneasiness, according to virtualization experts, stems from higher than expected infrastructure costs, technical complexity and a return on investment that’s typically slower to materialize compared to server virtualization.

It wasn’t supposed to be this way. Desktop virtualization goes hand-in-hand with mobility, and the arrival of Windows 7 and Apple’s iPad were expected to be catalysts for the technology. Centralized management and simplified security are also attractive features. But while interest in desktop virtualization remains high, organizations are hesitant to pull the trigger.

“Our customers are asking a lot of questions about desktop virtualization, but we have not seen a tremendous amount of traction,” said Dan Weiss, CEO and co-founder of Varrow, a Greensboro, N.C.-based solution provider. “We have a lot of proof-of-concepts, but not many full-blown implementations.”

Cost and complexity aren’t the only factors stalling the desktop virtualization market. Chris Minnis, virtualization services manager at Mainline Information Systems in Tallahassee, Fla., says the growth of tablet usage in the workplace, coupled with the emergence of HTML5 as a mobile application delivery mechanism, have caused organizations to freeze desktop virtualization projects.

Their fears are understandable if one subscribes to the idea, often raised by Apple, Google and VMware, that we’re already living in the post-PC era. “Customers are trying to figure out whether to use desktop virtualization as a conduit to their applications, or whether HTML5 is going to change application delivery and completely overhaul their reliance on the OS on end user devices,” Minnis said.

When Mainline Information Systems launched its virtualization practice in 2006, most of its desktop virtualization revenue came from deploying the infrastructure to support remote connectivity. But since then, Mainline’s desktop virtualization revenue has failed to grow at the rate it had anticipated, Minnis said.

While the bumpy economy has been a factor, Minnis says customers are waiting to see how things play out in mobility before placing their bets on a specific technology. “We’re starting to question the viability of our desktop virtualization practice,” he said. “Customers are seeing potential for the desktop — both as a device and as a role — being potentially replaced by something else.”

Another aspect of the desktop market has been a whirlwind of marketing hype around virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI), a term that vendors have stretched to the point of being synonymous with desktop virtualization — at least in customers’ minds.

The reality is VDI is one method of implementing desktop virtualization, but not the only one. And for many potential customers, it may not be the best one, said Simon Bramfitt, founder and research director at Entelechy Associates, a Concord, Calif.-based virtualization consultancy.

Bramfitt says VDI works well in call centers, healthcare, and financial services organizations that have large numbers of task workers requiring very high availability at the endpoint. Organizations that have very tight control of their desktop environment and a well defined application portfolio with minimal variation would be also be candidates, he said.

While VDI is a fit for certain scenarios, some virtualization experts feel that vendor marketing glosses over the associated cost and complexity of the technology. And down the road, this often leads to disillusioned customers.

Simon Crosby, former CTO of Citrix’s Data Center and Cloud division and co-founder of security startup Bromium, says vendors are pushing VDI as mature, when in fact it’s “very immature.”

“People have to learn about how to manage hypervisors, buy servers, buy storage, and buy networking equipment. And they have to get comfortable with managing all this stuff prior to getting VDI up and running,” Crosby said.

Like Bramfitt, Crosby also believes that VDI is sometimes deployed in environments where a different type of desktop virtualization would have been a better fit. “If the goal is access to multiple client devices, primary devices and tablets, Terminal Services does this just fine — and it’s already well understood,” Crosby said.

As is often the case, it often falls on solution providers to wave away the smokescreen. “A lot of time customers hear the marketing song and dance and are convinced that desktop virtualization will help them. But it may just be a fit for a percentage of their users, and it doesn’t have to be 100 percent,” Scott Miller, director of business development for virtualization and cloud at World Wide Technology (WWT), a Maryland Heights, Mo.-based based solution provider.

At WWT, Miller leads a national team of experts focused on virtualization and cloud technology whose includes holding desktop virtualization workshops with customers. These aren’t sales discussions; in fact, no products are mentioned at all.

Instead, the WWT team explains the different types of desktop virtualization and where it would make sense for customers to deploy the technology. Instruction on the various flavors of server-based computing — and their limitations — is also included.

As a customer, “You need to first determine whether it makes sense to do it at all. We’ve been doing this long enough that it’s refreshing for us to tell them no,” Miller said. “We can quickly determine from what application stacks customers are using which ones are candidates and which are not.”

Varrow’s Weiss also finds himself playing defense for customers that have starry eyed notions of what benefits desktop virtualization will bring.

“We’ve had customers tell us they wanted to roll out 1,000 desktops on VDI, and we said ‘Whoa, hold on, you need to know what that means,” he said. “In reality, desktop virtualization increases management efficiency, but it doesn’t reduce cost.”

The careful, deliberate approach to desktop virtualization appears to be working for WWT. Its VMware View sales rose 100 percent from 2009 to 2010, and this year-to-date sales are up 400 percent. Meanwhile, XenDesktop sales rose 150 percent from 2009 to 2010 and are up 200 percent this year, Miller said.

“We’re seeing growth in this market,” Miller said. “For new opportunities, it’s still the fastest growing solution.”

While the desktop virtualization party will probably never achieve the same level of raucousness as server virtualization, most solution providers agree that it’ll always play a role in some industry segments. Whether the technology becomes more widespread than it is today remains to be seen, but for now, the industry’s migration to desktop virtualization is happening with tentative steps.

Author: Kevin McLaughlin
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Plano, TX Company Breaks Into Cloud Computing Business

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Interphase Corp., a small Plano telecommunications company, is taking a gamble on breaking into a new market, selling cloud computing hardware to recession-beaten schools, governments and businesses.

Interphase has launched a product portfolio of six desktop virtualization thin clients, small devices that do not store information but can create a desktop environment for users by relying on a remote host server. Companies are increasingly using cloud computing services to deliver their software from remote servers, rather than on-site servers managed by large information technology staffs.

Analysts say challenges abound for the company’s clouDevice portfolio, an untested batch of products in markets dominated by larger, more experienced players, such as Wyse Technology and Hewlett-Packard Co.

“It’s a bit of a David-and-Goliath challenge, but we’re going after it,” Interphase chief executive Greg Kalush said. Kalush said that despite the challenges, his company may have come up with a way to build market share relatively quickly.

How’s that? By keeping the clouDevice’s overhead and manufacturing costs low, and by specializing hardware design to match client needs, Interphase may be able to undercut its competition with lower prices, said HJ Li, Interphase’s senior director of product management.

Analysts say that while small tech companies will fare well when the private cloud computing market takes off, they are skeptical that undercutting the competition will bring Interphase the business it seeks.

“With Interphase being a relative unknown in the thin client space, cost [savings] can only go so far,” said Ian Song, a senior research analyst at the International Data Corp., an information technology research company.

“We really don’t know what some of their performance capabilities are,” Song said. “The portfolio is by no means comprehensive. It’s pretty good.” Mark Margevicius, vice president and research director at Gartner Research, a company that tracks trends in information technology, said that as long as a company differentiates itself, there’s an opportunity for any vendor to succeed. But the technology Interphase must use to manufacture its devices is available to Wyse and HP, so it’s hard to see how Interphase can undercut its competition at all, Margevicius said.

Potential clients have been more than a little rattled by the recession. Kalush said some of the most appropriate customers for the clouDevice products are cash-strapped schools and local governments — particularly in Texas — that could use information technology to save money. For education, Interphase emphasizes cost-efficiency and more computer access for students.

“We could put a wireless client device in the hands of a student for $150 or less,” Kalush said.

For governments and enterprise businesses, desktop virtualization consolidates a company network to one source, making it easier for IT staffs to thwart computer viruses that would otherwise spread undetected, Kalush said.

Expanding the business Interphase, though small, had a strong first half of this year. The company increased its telecommunications revenue 60 percent in the second quarter, generating $6.2 million. Profit rose 82 percent in the second quarter over last year to $3.2 million.

The company was founded in 1974 as an engineering consulting company, and it gradually started selling products in the early micro-controller industry. Micro-controllers are tiny computers built into products, such as microwaves, that usually perform just one function.

In 1999, Interphase entered the telecommunications market, selling hardware and signaling devices to military units and other clients. But three years ago, Interphase leaders decided the company needed to diversify, partially because the telecommunications market is unpredictable.

Li said he started looking into the information technology market, but at first, he had trouble finding a market that a company of Interphase’s size could enter effectively. The cloud computing market was an attractive bet, and analysts predicted plenty of growth, Li said.

Gartner Research expects worldwide cloud services revenue to grow about 100 percent to $148.8 billion by 2014. According to IDC, server sales resulting from cloud computing will grow 50 percent to $12.6 billion by 2014.

Ethernet advantage Bill Rust, a Gartner analyst who covers education information technology, said one of the clouDevice’s features, the ability to run using an Ethernet rather than a USB cable, makes Interphase an interesting vendor.

USB is limited to 16 feet and is a major problem for implementing desktop virtualization in schools, but Ethernet doesn’t have that limitation and is cheaper.

“They may be one of our next Cool Vendors,” Rust said, referring to annual recognitions that Gartner gives to innovating companies.

Wi-Fi on the way The Ethernet clouDevice products are already available, and in the coming months, Interphase will release a version of its devices that can run on WiFi.

Susan Eustis, president of WinterGreen Research, said small companies that can be nimble and innovative will do well in the cloud computing market because large companies can’t cut prices and aren’t focused on building market share.

“Small companies aren’t hampered in this way,” Eustis said.

“After the little companies build the market, the big companies will gobble them up. They see who’s going to succeed.” However, small companies must be careful to develop products that are unique — they should avoid going head-to-head with large companies such as IBM, she said.

“That being said, there’s a lot of space in this cloud business to go places,” Eustis said.

With so much growth expected for private cloud computing services, Kalush said, it was hard to resist jumping in.

The market has “got a lot of positive attributes, and we thought, what the heck, this looks like a pretty cool market, let’s go see what we can do,” he said. “It’s one of those Hail Mary passes, but we feel pretty good that we’ve got something here.” Interphase Corp.

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H&R Block Shifts to Virtualized Thin Clients

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H&R Block’s virtualization project is putting thin clients in the tax preparer’s thousands of retail stores in an effort to simplify its operating environment and cut expenses. The change should also help it to better compete with chains such as Jackson Hewitt, as well as with independent tax preparers and software-only rivals such as TurboTax and Intuit (INTU).

“Typical of any mature company, the competitive landscape is tough. You’re continually looking at ways to optimize,” says Rich Agar, CIO at H&R Block. By cutting costs, the company can lower its prices and compete more effectively, he says.

The company has spent $15 million to $20 million a year on PCs with a lifecycle of three to four years. By simplifying the IT used in its retail stores, including shifting from PCs to virtualized thin clients, the company expects to save $10 million to $15 million in hardware expenses. Plus, virtualization makes it easier to provision temporary employees hired for tax season while keeping data more secure, Agar says.

“Organizations dealing with seasonality can use desktop virtualization to manage capacity and enable quick turnaround by just plugging in thin clients instead of PCs,” says Ian Song, a senior research analyst at IDC, a sister company of CIO magazine’s publisher. “There are several benefits rolled into one.”

Ultimately, Agar wants to double the useful life of H&R Block’s hardware. Thin clients from Wyse Technology have no disk drive and fewer moving parts, which means they last longer, he says. They also use less energy; Agar estimates that the thin clients are at least 75 percent more energy efficient than PCs. With no local storage on the Wyse machines, H&R Block’s operating system and applications are refreshed every day upon log-in to the corporate network.

Technology Lockdown

Two years into the project, which is expected to last four to five years, Agar says he wishes he could move faster. He has deployed 10,000 of an estimated 80,000 seats. But because H&R Block’s business is seasonal and time sensitive, the company limits changes during tax season. Nothing can be changed from December through April.

According to the company, there are 11,000 H&R Block stores, but only 4,400 are open year-round. During tax time, the number of employees balloons from 7,700 to 100,000, and the company takes in 80 percent of its annual revenue in the five weeks leading up to April 15, Agar says. He doesn’t want to roll out new technology during that time because that could threaten the company’s primary revenue stream and the personal financial information of millions of customers. These unusual conditions “inhibit our ability to move at a rapid pace,” he says.

Agar chose Wyse in part because it bundles software with hardware, which helps the company avoid interoperability issues. He adds that he also wanted to be able to influence the product plans of the vendor he signed on with. For example, H&R Block is working with Wyse to shrink the size of the operating system to reduce the time it takes to boot up each morning.

“I wanted to control my own destiny in terms of what we needed in rollout,” Agar says.

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Slicing OPEX With Desktop Virtualization

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Talk to vendors and they will tell you that desktop virtualization is heading for an inflection point. Clearly, in the IT/ITES segment, this technology makes a lot of sense. Other industry verticals, BFSI in particular, also stand to benefit. However, it must be noted that desktop virtualization isn’t everybody’s cup of tea. It needs a large number of users who are deskbound at work. While you can deploy the technology on a laptop and solutions exist that allow you to access a virtual desktop using a tablet or a smartphone, the deployments that have occurred have been for deskbound users such as IT developers or information workers.

Nevertheless, the technology has matured and there are clear benefits for specific scenarios. Also, beyond the efforts of the desktop virtualization players themselves, the ecosystem of storage and server makers are acting as evangelists for these solutions.

Early adopters

Globally, the action has been in the BFSI segment. “The adoption of VDI as a stack has created a lot of interest. However, its adoption by enterprises is slower than what was expected,” said Apoorva Singh, Head IMS, iGATE Patni.

In India, however, it is the IT/ITES vertical that has been the biggest adopter of this technology. Some examples of deployments by this industry vertical include eClerx that has a hundred plus users on a VMware-Dell Blades solution.

Sierra Atlantic that has 100+ users on Citrix Xen-Dell PowerEdge Racks; and Geometric that has gone in for a VMware solution running on Cisco UCS servers and NetApp storage. Microsoft’s application virtualization technology, APP-V, has been adopted in the software services segment by the likes of Infosys and Cognizant. KPIT Cummins has deployed 1,200 seats of VDI from EMC at its Pune facility and, having seen an improvement in response time as compared to the erstwhile physical desktops, is now looking to extend the deployment to its Bangalore facility.

“IT/ITES companies are facing pressure from competitors in countries like the Philippines & Malaysia. Earlier, their set-ups were limited to the metros but, nowadays, you find call centers even in Ahmedabad and Coimbatore. Desktop virtualization enables IT managers in these outfits to manage the infrastructure from a central location,” said Rajat Mehta, Country Head, Emerging Business unit, HP PSG India.

BFSI is the second biggest consumer of desktop virtualization. Here, the likes of PNB and SBI have been the leaders in adopting this technology. Cooperative banks are starting to follow suit for security reasons.

Deployment in other verticals including education, government, telecom and manufacturing has been sporadic. There’s clearly some level of interest but it hasn’t translated into implementations yet except in a handful of cases.

Venkatesh K Iyer, Head – India & SAARC (VCE Initiative), EMC, felt that the reason as to why the IT vertical was such a good fit for this technology was simply because IT companies tended to have development centers staffed with hundreds or thousands of developers who were mostly desk bound and therefore desktop virtualization worked out well for them. “Traditionally, it makes sense for any corporate that is setting up a complex with 500 or more seats. It helps in planning from a project standpoint,” he added.

Rajesh Rege, Sr. VP, Data Center Sales, Cisco India & SAARC, felt that BFSI and service providers were the likely prospects for this technology beyond IT/ITES where adoption was strong. He also felt that, in the medium term, areas like retail where multi-format stores were coming in, each having different merchandising points, would consider this technology. In the case of BFSI, the sector’s affinity for data security and manageability helped make a strong case for this technology. “We are at an inflection point for VDI/VXI and significant adoption will occur during the next 12-18 months,” he said.

VMware cited the example of Mahesh Bank, a cooperative bank that’s deploying VDI. Other than IT/ITES, the vendor has found traction in BFSI and telecom as well. “BFSI is a big play as they have a lot of endpoints to secure, lots of distributed infrastructure, branch-based banking etc.,” commented Seema Ambastha, Director – Technology, VMware India.

Another vertical that’s currently dipping its metaphorical toe in the waters of desktop virtualization is none other than the education segment. Citrix has signed up with Manipal University and the latter has begun using its technology at one of its corporate campuses. Even manufacturing hasn’t been wholly immune to the technology’s charms. Perfetti Van Melle India has deployed desktop virtualization from Citrix.

Then there’s the SMB segment where thin client adoption (as the front-end for desktop virtualization, thin client adoption automatically means that there are VMs running in a data center somewhere) is starting to pick up. “We have seen this in the West Zone where a lot of SMBs are going in for thin clients. Some of them go in for a solid-state device with a Linux kernel or a combination of the Linux OS with OpenOffice. Now that online productivity solutions like Google Apps and Office 365 are available, their adoption will fuel this trend. 90% of people use office productivity tools. 3G’s already available and once Reliance launches its 4G offering, SMBs will go for this in a big way,” said HP’s Mehta.

CAPEX doesn’t go away

It’s interesting to note that what should have been a downer has proved to be the virtual desktop’s saving grace. CAPEX that would otherwise have gone towards buying PCs is now being spent on acquiring servers and storage and this has made true believers of vendors who otherwise wouldn’t have batted an eyelid to help this category along. The upshot of the compute and storage shifting to the back-end is that server and storage vendors have become major boosters of this technology.

In terms of server iron, a high-end Intel box, either 2- or 4-way with lots of RAM (128/256 GB), with a second one for high availability, can manage about 200 users. 50 TB of storage would be required for a thousand users although that can come down if flash memory is used in the storage array. Other storage technologies that can bring down utilization include thin provisioning and dedupe. For remote access, some sort of WAN accelerator solution is recommended.

Storage tiering can prove handy in a virtual desktop scenario with applications being placed on one tier and user data on another. Automated storage tiering technology can help by putting frequently accessed data on flash storage to dramatically boost performance.

It’s worth noting is that before deploying desktop virtualization, a company has to virtualize its servers and storage. It’s clear that deploying this technology entails substantial investments at the back-end. However, the good news is that most organizations are considering server and storage virtualization in order to boost efficiencies in any case. They can tag the desktop virtualization implementation onto the server and storage virtualization project by over provisioning on both fronts to the extent that is required to support the number of virtual desktops that they intend to use.

It’s all about control

EMC’s Iyer argued that deploying virtual desktops was all about bringing down the OPEX. “It’s easier from a patch management and upgrade perspective; it’s easy to commission or decommission virtual desktops; it’s power efficient and it can easily be backed up. From a security standpoint, it can help prevent data loss that would usually occur if a laptop were lost. With the proliferation of iPads and BlackBerry phones, being able to give these users access to their virtual desktops on these devices boosts productivity. The number of IT administrators needed to manage the desktop resources is half of what you need in a conventional environment,” he said.

Dell’s experience has been that deployment time goes down significantly once a company moves to a virtual desktop scenario.

With hundreds of people joining IT/ITES/BFSI organizations on the same day, with cloning technology, virtual desktops could be made ready for these users within 5-10 minutes. “The time need for provisioning desktops has gone from weeks to a few hours or less,” said Syed Masroor, Manager – Pre Sales, NetApp India.

As desktop virtualization places everything in one place, it simplifies DR/BC etc. Moreover, while the loss of a laptop can prove dangerous in terms of data loss and harmful to a company’s reputation, it becomes less of an issue when you go in for this technology. The upgrade/refresh cycles are fewer as thin clients last longer. It’s also easier to give additional resources in terms of memory or storage to a user than in a conventional scenario, pointed out Suhas Kelkar, CTO, APAC & Global Director of Innovation & Incubation, BMC Software.

According to Anoop Nambiar, Country Manager – Business Partner Organization, IBM India/SA, the benefits of desktop virtualization included extending the life of desktop PCs, lowering the business risks associated with data security, compliance and disaster recovery and expediting the roll out of any application or OS upgrade (E.g. SAP or Windows 7).

“If it takes 20-30 minutes to deploy Microsoft Office on to a physical desktop whereas it’s a drag & drop operation in a virtual desktop scenario,” said K Chockalingam, Enterprise Solutions Architect, Quest Software.

“Once you centralize management, you can bring in all the best practices and apply them at one go to the desktop environment. This is something that couldn’t be done previously as these desktops had to be managed individually,” said Andy Karandikar, Services – Head, Red Hat India.

“Management and support costs are lower in a desktop virtualization scenario particularly when you have users in locations scattered across the globe. Customers may not require thick clients for all of the users and thin clients, that consume a fraction of the power (10% or so), can be used. The longer refresh cycle of 6-7 years for a thin client vs. 3-4 years for conventional desktop PCs and lower base cost of thin clients are other advantages of this technology,” said Krishnan of Wipro.

HP’s Mehta explained that although, on a per seat basis, the CAPEX was comparable to that of buying a PC, OPEX savings would allow you to recover costs after 18 months. Centralizing the compute resources in the data center allowed you to manage and allocate resources with ease. Beyond the substantially lower power consumption, being solid-state meant that thin clients did not require an AC environment. The chances of virus attacks and data leakage were also minimized. The technology also promoted work from home or any location other than the office as users could connect using a Web client/VPN.

Singh of iGATE Patni emphatically stated that organizations seeking a rapid RoI were better off looking elsewhere as it would take a span of five years for the benefits to be realized in a desktop virtualization deployment. These benefits would include savings in terms of the money that would otherwise have been spent on managing desktops as well as in terms of break/fix and remote support. “In a VDI environment, in terms of compliance, it is easy to control policy adherence or access rights. It changes the way that you manage the desktop and the capability of each machine is limited to what the server admin mandates,” he added.

It’s worth noting that the RoI of a desktop virtualization roll out only comes into play when you are talking about several hundred users. On a 1:1 comparison, it doesn’t work out. Talk about 200-300 or more users and it’s a different ball game altogether.

How Indian organizations go about virtualizing their desktops

In terms of sizing, the experience of the vendors polled varied with pilots running to anything from 25 to 100 seats and final deployments working out at thousands of seats but over a span of several years as the concerned user companies went through their respective desktop refresh cycles.

CIOs manage things so that the desktop virtualization effort coincides with their hardware refresh cycle. They start looking into what’s possible about 6-8 months before the refresh cycle commences,” commented HP’s Mehta.

“Typically, there would be a new facility or development center that’s coming up and the company decides to take advantage of that fact and pilot the concept of desktop virtualization to see how it works from the standpoints of network utilization, ease of deployment and user acceptance,” said Cisco’s Rege.

Indian organizations typically start with a POC of 25 seats followed by a wider pilot of 75-100 seats and then, once they have ironed out all the wrinkles, they scale up to several hundred users or even thousands of users

“For a thousand users plus, we have seen the process take 45-60 days. Often, customers take a small sample of 30 or 60 or 100 users and do a simulation after which then they come up with a design that lets them extend the deployment. It is important to study the network topology, OSs in use and to look at the data center, access rights etc.,” said Dell’s Venkat.

Not just VDI

While VDI has dominated the desktop virtualization arena to a large extent, it’s far from the only option. Vendors such as Citrix and Microsoft have other technologies that also play in the virtual desktop world. These include terminal services from Citrix as well as application virtualization and OS virtualization from Microsoft. Terminal services is lighter than VDI in terms of allowing you to support more users per CPU but it is a shared desktop scenario which means that one user’s changes or problems could affect another. VDI, on the other hand, offers a dedicated virtual desktop for each user with the upside of being more stable but it also consumes more CPU resources on the server.

Application virtualization or APP-V is a client-based virtualization technology that lets you run multiple versions of the same application in a test and development environment or to support hot desking where the same PC will be used by many users (e.g. in the BPO industry). There’s also OS virtualization or MED-V that lets you run several OSs on a single PC. It could be to support a legacy application that hasn’t been ported or for test and development work.

For task workers who work on one or two applications and don’t require too much of personalization, application virtualization in a hosted or shared desktop scenario would be the most appropriate solution. For knowledge workers who access more applications and require some amount of personalization, VDI is best suited. For users who require high-end graphics such as designers—a blade PC in the data center would be ideal. Graphics designers or CAD CAM users would require a high-end desktop. “For laptop users, you have client virtualization. Citrix has the Xen client that allows you to continue working when you are offline. When you connect to the server, the upgrades and patches are transferred and your changes are synchronized,” said Harish Krishnan, GM – TIS, Wipro Technologies.

Dell’s experience was that VDI was usually the foundation and that based on the customer’s requirements it would offer terminal server or blades as part of a virtual data center stack, commented Sitaram Venkat, National Manager, Enterprise Solutions Marketing, Dell India.

Sanjay Deshmukh, Area VP – India Subcontinent, Citrix Systems India Pvt. Ltd., said, “The hosted share model supports three-four times as many users as VDI does.” His argument was that while the top brass would expect a high quality of service and VDI was necessary for them, for others lower down the organizational food chain, particularly those running fewer applications that were less resource hungry, the hosted shared model worked out just fine. He recommended the Xen client, which creates a VM with your corporate image that you can work on in an offline environment for sales executives. “Whenever you connect to the network, it syncs what you’ve done. If it is lost, you can send a kill PIN and delete it,” he added.

According to him, “The typical ratio that we have seen in the enterprise is that 20-30% of the users are on VDI, 70-80% are on hosted share while Xen Client or streamed desktop would be used by less than 5-10% of the user base.”

BMC’s Kelkar’s take was that VDI had come to rule the roost in this area on account of it solving the problems associated with terminal services where multiple remote sessions shared the same machine and one session crashing could take down the server.

Not everyone agreed with that assertion. 80% of the users tended to be on terminal services while the rest required a proper desktop infrastructure, felt Apoorva Singh, Head IMS, iGATE Patni.

“For a bank teller who does all of his work at the office, terminal services is fine. For a user who needs to work from home but lacks connectivity, MED-V or APP-V makes sense. Whenever we talk about desktop virtualization it almost always gets associated with VDI, however,” said Sumeet Khanna, Director, Windows Business Group, Microsoft India.

Overall, it was clear that companies that had decided to take the plunge were going in for thin clients and replacing their existing desktop base as part of the existing refresh cycle.

Having said all this, it must be stated that desktop virtualization is no magic bullet. While it works well, superbly so, in many use cases, the usage of client-side VM technology hasn’t quite taken off yet and for users who travel extensively, it’s not the best solution.

BMC’s Kelkar made this rather interesting point that it was the IT department that was pushing desktop virtualization because the biggest payoff was for these folks. “IT administrators want people to use virtual desktops. End users aren’t asking for them,” he pointed out.

Insights

  • Outside IT/ITES where it’s been a big success, the traction of this technology has been muted although BFSI institutions are also deploying it to some extent.

 

  • Desktop virtualization doesn’t reduce the initial CAPEX. All it does is that it shifts the costs from the front-end into the data center where you need to buy additional servers and storage.

 

  • The benefits here accrue from ease of management and greater control. Moreover, if a company goes from using PCs to thin clients during its hardware refresh, then it can save considerably as thin clients cost about half as much as PCs and they offer substantial power savings to boot as these devices lack moving components. They also last longer allowing companies to stretch their hardware refresh cycles. Another benefit is that organizations that have gone in for virtual desktops can rapidly provision desktops for new users.

 

  • There are multiple desktop virtualization technologies out there of which VDI is simply the most prominent one. For users who don’t have particularly heavy requirements, even terminal services would do. For the ITES segment, application virtualization works well for hot desking.

 

  • Not everybody in an organization can be migrated onto a virtual desktop. Folks who travel a lot wouldn’t really benefit much from this although there is the option of an encrypted virtual desktop client that syncs when you reconnect. Users of 3D graphics or CAD/CAM and other graphically intensive software would need blade PCs, which would be easier to manage but wouldn’t provide any CAPEX savings.

 

  • Desktop virtualization is loved by IT administrators as it makes their life a lot easier but users need to be handled with care as the thought of losing their PCs can be devastating for some users (the P in PC, after all, stands for Personal Computer). Change management must be handled with care.

Choosing the right device

While thin clients have lots of advantages, they aren’t PCs and that alone is enough to put off lots of users. Having said that, manufacturers are finding ways and means to strengthen the value proposition of these devices further by incorporating technologies such as PoE into the mix.

“Eventually zero clients will be replaced by devices that are powered from the network (PoE). The thin client vendors will launch these products a few months down the line,” said Mehta of HP.

Talking about the choice between going in for a thin client or a PC, Microsoft’s Khanna said that a thin client was the better option for VDI. However, for those companies that weren’t ready to refresh their desktops just yet, Microsoft offered its volume licensing customers the option of dumbing down a PC to a thin client with the intention of improving control and manageability. For this, the vendor has Thin PC a separate thin client OS that it recently launched which converts an older PC into a thin client running a stripped down version of Windows 7.

Another potential trend that many vendors highlighted was that of employees bringing their own devices such as tablets or smartphones to work. In this scenario, desktop virtualization would allow a company’s IT department to lock things down by delivering the corporate environment through a VM so that the data never left the company’s premises insuring it in the case of loss or theft of a device and shielding the company’s networks from the possibility of malware attacks from infected client devices. “VDI works very well in this scenario. You click on an icon and your device joins the virtual network and everything else is isolated. As far as the traditional desktop/laptop environment is concerned, it will go the thin client route connecting through VDI/VMview,” said HP’s Mehta.

NetApp’s Masroor talked about the emerging class of ‘thin’ laptops as exemplified by Google’s Chromebook that booted up in a jiffy and could be set up to access a desktop image on the server offering a mobile desktop virtualization solution.

Delivering the desktop as-a-service

When it came to Desktop-as-a-Service or virtual desktops in the Cloud, the consensus was clear. This service, although quite popular abroad, has yet to catch on in India. Cisco’s Rege argued that it was just a matter of time, however, before it caught on not simply for business users but also for home users who would log into the public cloud from a thin device and consume the desktop from it.

BMC’s Kelkar said that the various characteristics of the Cloud that included on demand, self service, pay-per-use, resource pooling, elasticity etc. all tied well into the virtual desktop proposition.

Wipro has been offering DaaS abroad for quite some time now and it recently launched the service in India as well. Wipro’s Krishnan said that temporary workers could bring in their own devices and connect to virtual desktops provisioned by the customer in this scenario thereby reducing the headache of the IT department and helping customers save on cost even when they gave a stipend to their users to buy their own devices.

“You would see all of these offerings being delivered through a hybrid Cloud model where you retain the ability to work even when you are not connected to the Cloud. Through DaaS, you can have the option of picking VDI or terminal services. The issue is that of connectivity,” said Microsoft’s Khanna.

Citrix’s Deshmukh’s contention was that it would benefit customers who would otherwise find it hard to come up with the initial CAPEX that’s required for the adoption of desktop virtualization. To begin with, it requires an investment that’s 30% higher than buying conventional PCs. In the long term, however, there’s a positive RoI of 30% because companies save substantially on OPEX. The initial outlay on the servers and storage can be a hurdle for some and DaaS can do away with it.

And in the end

In many ways, every IT deployment’s success or failure comes down to how change management is handled. In the case of desktop virtualization, Rege argued that it wasn’t the technology that fell short. It was the mindset that was missing. Until companies were comfortable with workers being out of sight but not out of mind for days or even weeks at a time, they wouldn’t be comfortable deploying a technology that supported working from locations other than the office using a variety of devices.

Most of the folks interviewed for this story were emphatic that the concept of employees bringing in their own devices would also contribute to the popularity of desktop virtualization in the Indian enterprise.

Today, deployments are largely in IT/ITES followed by BFSI. It’s unlikely that PCs will be overthrown en masse in the near term but this technology does have compelling benefits for any scenario where there are hundreds or even thousands of workers who don’t really utilize their desktop PCs to the max and need a set of four-five applications that can very well be run in the data center. These are use cases, moreover, where the user is largely immobile like a bank clerk or a BPO worker. While you can access a virtual desktop from pretty much any device, be it a tablet or a smartphone, this aspect of desktop virtualization would have to

compete with widgets that have emerged as the preferred means of delivering enterprise data to mobile devices in a format that’s easy to comprehend and act on without overtaxing the limited processing capabilities of a mobile device. Then again, with the advent of devices such as the Chromebook, you could well end up seeing lots of users quite happily working on a desktop in the Cloud. For the corporate world, this would be delivered through the DaaS model. Connectivity remains the fly in the ointment. Although 3G’s here, coverage remains spotty even in the big cities and until that’s ironed out, desktop virtualization is likely to be more popular with the IT/ITES, BFSI crowd for the aforementioned use cases.

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Microsoft Releases Windows ThinPC Desktop Virtualization Tool

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Microsoft on Tuesday trumpeted the release to manufacturing of Windows Thin PC (WinTPC), software that lets organizations repurpose their older PCs as thin clients. Microsoft plans to make WinTPC available for public download on July 1.

The WinTPC RTM doesn’t include much in the way of new features, only minor tweaks such as a keyboard filter that prevents the use of common Windows key combinations like Ctrl +Alt + Delete as a security measure. WinTPC now also supports international keyboards and allows customers to use PCs using their existing Key Management Server (KMS) or Multiple Activation Key (MAK), Karri Alexion-Tiernan, director of product management for Microsoft Desktop Virtualization, said in a blog post.

WinTPC is a smaller-footprint, locked down version of Windows that runs a limited scope of applications, including security, management, terminal emulation, Remote Desktop and similar technologies. In Q3, Microsoft will add Forefront Endpoint Protection support to WinTPC, Alexion-Tiernan said.

WinTPC can also run Web browsers, media players, IM clients, document viewers, .NET Framework and Java Virtual Machine. WinTPC includes support for RemoteFX, a set of desktop virtualization features that allow video and other rich content to be delivered to desktops, laptops and thin clients.

What Microsoft doesn’t want is customers running Office on WinTPC machines, and the software giant recommends that customers that use productivity apps opt for a full-blown PC.

Microsoft’s goals with WinTPC are to lower VDI deployment costs and pave the way for customers to make thin client computing a bigger part of their desktop virtualization strategy, Alexion-Tiernan said. It’s also a response to customer demand: In a recent industry survey, Gartner found that 60 percent of respondents are looking to switch old PCs to thin clients.

PCs running Windows Thin PC won’t require Microsoft’s Virtual Desktop Access license (VDA), which allows customers to virtualize home PC and kiosks that aren’t covered by SA for an annual fee of $100 per device. However, the WinTPC RTM is only available to volume licensing customers with Software Assurance agreements.

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