The virtual desktop opportunity

Creating a VDI environment is a significant change from the traditional model, where every PC is a self-contained unit with its own operating system, applications and peripherals. This major technology shift means that offering VDI presents the channel with both an opportunity and challenge.

Benefits
A real measure of VDI’s success is the ability to deliver a rich, end user experience - typically not achievable by traditional, server-based, computing methods. VDI can also provide demonstrably significant, operational cost savings – which can be up to 69%. This is because VDI enables operational expenses to drop dramatically as users can share resources allocated to them on a utility basis.

Virtualization will also improve the data integrity of user information because all data can be maintained and backed-up in the data center. VDI also can dramatically assist in the migration of desktop services to MS Windows7 and with integration to Application Packaging tools, enabling organisations to continue running legacy services, until they upgrade them.

Greener
With organisations under pressure to adopt green IT in all its forms, buyers want to choose genuinely green technology. VDI lends itself well to this consideration as its use of thin clients, instead of desktop PCs, will see a reduction in shipping and distribution costs - and their consequent carbon impact.

Businesses also need to counter the fluctuating costs of energy. VDI technology provides a real solution by delivering a major reduction in space, power (typically just 11W at full power) – so energy cost reduction and emissions can be achieved. 

Secure
The nature of VDI’s set-up also increases the level of internal security, as its management software, controlled at the central point, has the ability to block the USB ports on thin clients. So, with no disk drives in service, this doesn’t leave many options for data to be distributed outside of the business premises.

Simple management
VDI really excels in its computer management capability and using thin clients instead of desktop PCs is a major factor. This is because thin clients are a solid state, which significantly reduce the chance of hardware failure, unlike the moving parts and openings visible with desktop PCs. 

In the unlikely event that a thin client experiences some sort of internal failure, an employee can simply move to another monitor, log on and have their desktop in front of them ready for work. This capacity for instant desktop provisioning and near zero downtime, also increases the efficiency of the business. The centralised nature of VDI, with desktop image-management capabilities, can lower the cost of deploying new applications - with a longer refresh cycle for client desktop infrastructure.

The challenges
Attractive though VDI is, it may prove a bit early for some businesses that are only just turning to data centre consolidation and virtualising their servers – and they may not have the budget to expand this to desktops. Also, in the current economic climate, VDI is a major upheaval for organisations and is a costly exercise.

Of course, moving towards VDI will always be more attractive to organisations that have already virtualised their server environment. However, there is still a need to highlight where users would get benefits over their current system – especially if it is already affordable and won’t need a major revamp for some time.

Adopting VDI, even with its noticeable advantages, may be met with opposition from end users, unless accompanied by thorough change management. This is an area that may have been neglected in previous initiatives.

For those organisations that are ready for VDI, there are potential security risks due to the reliance on connectivity to a corporate or public network. The network will need to be properly managed to avoid possible increased downtime - in the event of network failures. However, this can be prevented by the use of a clustered file system.

Other challenges to overcome, will involve setting up and maintaining drivers for printers and other peripherals. VDI may also present potential difficulties when running certain complex, applications.

Conclusion
VDI may not be for everyone yet, but the benefits do stack up in its favour. However, it is important that the challenges are understood and a state of VDI readiness assessment is completed. It really falls to expert third party VDI providers, with proven credentials, to help end users successfully navigate these challenges.