The industry could always use another acronym so here it is…VDI or Virtual Desktop Interface (I think that I liked the acronym better!).
Virtualization technology has gone beyond the server into the desktop arena. Sometimes referred to as Desktop Virtualization, it allows an organisation to extend its Virtualization investment to the desktops by hosting these desktops on a server and delivering this back to the users. The desktop is delivered back to the users in a Thin Client environment meaning that users in Brisbane can have their desktops hosted in Sydney or that you can access your Desktop whilst you are travelling from an Internet connection. The desktops can even be accessed from any device…your PC, laptop, iPad/iPhone or Android device! It’s literally like taking your Windows 7 PC along everywhere with you…all you need is access to the Internet.
The major Server Virtualization players ie Microsoft, Citrix & VMware have all got an offering in the market as their VDI solution. Given the proliferation of mobile devices (its predicted that additional 100m Android devices will be sold in the next 6 months!!!) VDI seems to answer the challenge posed by this whole “BYO Computing Device” concept. For one the desktops are centrally stored and located in your own computer room or data centre where you have the most investment in security and control. Other advantages of a VDI environment include central management and governance of these desktops in line with the corporate standard eg backups (can you imagine backing all up your desktops everyday!), no leakage of information (if a user loses their mobile device the information is not lost with it), rapid deployment of new Desktops and single instance patching (how much time would this alone save an IT administrator). VDI has the ability to do all of these and more. Users who have found traditional Citrix desktops great for 80% of the time and not so great running multimedia or websites with flash, VDI resolves this too by making the audio and video processing much more efficient. So now it is possible to operate completely out of a hosted desktop. As you are no longer using the capability of your local PC/Desktop, VDI also transforms the desktop lifecycle. VDI can also allocate resources according to the requirements of the users hence your heavier users can have more processing and memory allocated making it a flexible uniform solution that can be employed right through the organisation.
However truth be told that these benefits come at a cost as whilst you save on your new desktop infrastructure, you require server infrastructure, additional licensing for VDI and Microsoft. In the past these costs have been quite excessive and in some cases prohibitive altogether. However in more recent times, the cost of the server infrastructure as well as the restructure of pricing by the Vendors around the licensing have made it a compelling consideration. When considering a business case for VDI, additional savings may be achieved if have branch offices as this technology also has the ability to reduce your bandwidth requirements significantly across the sites thereby resulting in direct savings.
Indicium has had great success in delivering this solution for a few clients. In fact our Business.Cloud environment has a dedicated Desktop as a Service environment that allows you to trial this technology at no cost to you.
Call us today on +61 (2) 9818 0800 to set up a test account for you, and get started testing this great solution.