Forrester Research - The Future of Desktop Virtualization

Benjamin Gray, Forrester Research Analyst

Presentation Notes: Seeing a lot of IT shop building client virtualization infrastructure into their strategy Organizations building granular and customized hardware support for IT Local Desktop virtualization more of a niche solution Increasingly organizations investing heavily in app virtualization and reducing dependencies thinapps have on the OS Users fall into three basic categories 1. Task-based workers Limited apps and limited performance requirements Easiest for IT to manage - require limited customization 2. Office workers Standard office apps and medium performance requirements Harder for IT to manage - app conflicts are commonplace 3. Power users Compute-intensive apps and high-performance requirements Hardest for IT to manage - require full control of their PCs Emerging important of workforce segmentation IT is struggling to build the case for client virtualization TIme frame to realize ROI is in the 3 year range Most companies are planning today for 2012 XenClient (type 1 hypervisor) comes preloaded in thin client BYOC emerges as a new computing paradigm promises to unleash productivity and passion, lower costs, and increase competitiveness IT fears BYOC security, compliance, liability, licensing, management, and training complexity Well witness an inflection point for enterprise adoption of BYOC over the next two years Examples of BYOC: Carfax, Cisco, Citrix, Google, IBM, Intel, Kraft, Microsoft, Shell, Sybase, Unisys With this policy must ensure min spec and follow further business, financial, legal and HR policies

List of BYOC Best practices: determine who qualifies, invest in isolating corporate data, acceptable use policies, stipend model for fixes, manager approval, app stores, user self-support Help break the never ending replace cycle Enable true heterogenous environments Better opportunities to tackle more strategic projects IT increasingly measured on user productivity and satisfaction; decreased importance on break/fix and systems support Companies move to many sizes fit one mentality Users will be given a more specialized computing solution Users will access their desktop from whatever device is most convenient IT should: Conduct a workforce technology needs assessment Define the next-gen client computing strategye with consumerization and BYO devices in mind for select users Embrace desktop and app virtualization and cloud computing as enabling technology Limit BYOCs availability to select empowered users, start small, controlled pilot Update policies to empower workers while protecting business integrity

QUESTIONS How to keep centralized data secure what are companies doing? Determine what types of workers require a dedicated VDI image (persistent desktop). Try to contain users to VDI instance whenever possible, apply a hybrid approach of streaming certain apps while locally installing others. Looking for Citrix and Vmware partner with leading antivirus technologies. Takeaways Bring your own device slide confusing GE Capital seemed to this the nail on the head regarding BYOC (in our case BYOD) A lot of other solutions to implementing virtualization separate from just virtualizing the desktop