cannot accommodate mobile laptop
users, and they also present challenges
Overview
We have been hearing lot of buzz about
Desktop Virtualization and we wonder
if it’s hype or reality. Desktop virtualiza-
tion holds the promise of solving many
of the desktop management problems
that have been plaguing IT since PCs
first began to multiply in corporations
in the early 1980s. Everyone is talking
about desktop virtualization, but does it
really deliver the promised savings, se-
curity, and flexibility? It has been touted
as the “next big thing” in IT, but has it
really lived up to the hype around it?
Enterprise customers have seen benefits
from adopting Virtualization for server
consolidation. Virtualization has also
been used to simplify storage manage-
ment to improve resource utilization
and ensure high availability. With the
success within the data center (servers
and storage) environment, many ven-
dors are pushing the similar technology
approaches for addressing the Desktop
virtualization
If we take the customer requirements
and IT environment for desktop virtual-
ization, one would find very interesting
tough problem to solve as the different
constituents to satisfy have conflict-
ing or opposing requirements. But at
the same time, the main vendors in
this market are pushing the products
with the same approach that was used
for Server consolidation. There is a big
disconnect between the customers and
vendors in this regard. Unfortunately
even the new startups in this space are
taking the technology driven approach
instead of addressing the customer
requirements.
Many enterprises have initiatives and
are actively looking for desktop virtu-
alization products. The right Desktop
Virtualization products / solutions cer-
tainly bring impressive benefits once the
industry matures to bring the cohesive
products taking the customer and user
requirements into account.
Analysts project big opportunity for
Desktop Virtualization market ($2B to
$10B). There are many green field mar-
kets in developing countries ready to ex-
plode if the products meet the customer
price points and features.
Challenges of
Existing Traditional
Desktop computing:
Enterprise IT is under immense pres-
sure to centralize desktops and increase
productivity while also reducing costs
and ensuring control over information
assets, complying with security regula-
tions, and standardizing data sharing
practices across the enterprise.
This apart, another major challenge for
traditional desktop computing, is the
question of mobility. Statistics reveal
that 50% of business workers are mobile
at any given time (International Tele-
work Association) and that by 2010, over
70% of US workers will be mobile (IDC
#34124). While this is the scenario, tra-
ditional desktop centralization models
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:
When it comes to Data Center oriented
infrastructure like Servers, storage etc..,
primarily IT is the direct user of the
resources to provide IT services. But for
Desktop Virtualization initiatives, the
scenario is different and complex as
the users of desktops are employees or
other users. The usage of the systems is
not just limited to enterprise premises.
Enterprises are also under tremendous
pressure to meet the security and com-
pliance for data leakage issues.
The key constituents that need to be
addressed at various levels, for Desktop
Virtualization:
• At the CIO Level:
Standardization is a primary require-
ment. A key concern here is that it
is not easy to bring legacy desktops
to server side. So how to achieve
standardization? - This is a major is-
sue that needs to be addressed. The
next concern is about saving costs.
Whether virtualization will help in
saving costs remains debatable, as
virtualization by itself involves high
operational costs. The question of
manageability is another important
element. Since systems manage-
ment tools deployed to monitor the
enterprise IT infrastructure were
not built with virtualization in mind,
it becomes complex to implement.
Also another issue here is whether
the people in an enterprise have the
essential skills to deal with virtualiza-
tion or not.

• At the
Employee / User Level:
While more and more business work-
ers are becoming mobile, desktop
virtualization is harder to achieve.
Also, with employees, experience
expectations are higher than current.
Employees and users are more and
more want to mobile thin clients and
want to run new rich media applica-
tions. This apart, another concern is
that there is always resistance from
employees to process changes and
environment changes. These need to
be tackled effectively.
• At CISO
(Chief Information
Security Officer) Level:
With mounting data security issues
reported frequently, risk manage-
ment and data leakage at the
endpoints are two most important
concerns to be addressed.
Market Trends – Thin
Clients, SaaS models,
Energy savings
q Rapid growth in new client devices
• Thin Clients, Netbooks, iPad, vPad,
WePad, Smart phones,
Web-connected TVs
q More and more employees want
mobility.
q Focus on Energy Savings
q New delivery models
• Software as a Service (SaaS) w/o
installation
• On-demand delivery w/o
management overhead
User Priorities - IT
Priorities (opposing
requirements)
q User priorities (Productivity, new
capabilities, New devices)
• Flexible computing, new thin de-
vices
• New media rich applications
• Mobility
• On demand delivery
q IT priorities (Centralize and Control)
• Centralize / Standardize – Simplified
management
• Reduced TCO
• Business Continuity / Disaster
recovery
Why the current
Desktop
Virtualization
products are not
getting customer
traction?
Most of the current solutions are not
true Desktop Virtualization implemen-
tations. Since they primarily emerged
from the success of technologies used in
Server Consolidation (Machine Virtual-
ization) or Application Virtualization,
they only present virtual experience
using thin clients. These solutions don’t
address all the customer requirements.
The VDI/Thin client solutions might
work well for task workers, but major
portion of knowledge workers will
object for these types of solutions. The
other startup products, which were de-
signed/ architected based on the similar
hypervisor based product implementa-
tion don’t satisfy the cost and experi-
ence requirements that Enterprise IT is
looking for.
To summarize:
Current Desktop Virtualization solutions
are primarily around VDI or few startups
that have client centric solutions using
the similar hypervisor (Virtual Machine)
or Application Virtualization tech-
nologies that don’t meet the customer
requirements for cost and experience
as these technologies originally were
meant for data centers.
The current solutions which come from
the success of server consolidation do
not satisfy requirements of the three
constituents above.
There is no single common solution that
satisfies the different types of desktop
users.
What is the Ideal Vir-
tual Desktop
Solution?
Most of the users use office applica-
tions like MS Office or Adobe Photo-
shop, they like the rich features native
experience known interfaces; of course
this comes with cost and complexity in
provisioning and managing, locked to
our own devices.
We have seen the success of new web/
cloud based applications like Gmail that
are independent of any OS and HW
device. These applications are delivered
to users with lot more flexibility and at
a fraction of cost compared to desktop
applications. At the same time Web/
Cloud based delivery models don’t work
for compute intensive graphics applica-
tions that the users are looking for more
and more.
The ideal solution should deliver the
Desktop Workspace to users the way
Web applications are delivered.
1. User desktop/workspace is indepen-
dent of OS and HW device, delivered
to any machine with no installation on
demand. i.e. the desktop was never
installed on any machine but follows
you like faithful dog, where ever user
goes whatever machine he/she uses and
gives the same experience of running on
his/her own machine.
2. Software isn’t installed on PCs, but
rather lives as a single copy on the
network, accessible to millions of us-
ers, a world in which one single system
administrator supporting that one copy
would also be supporting those millions
of users.
3. It should also enable the new soft-
ware delivery models like rent or
subscribe for one’s favorite application
like adobe photo shop, or a delightfully
graphics rich game for an hour, a day,
or a week, just the exact time you need,
and run it on any machine anywhere,
with all the speed and availability you
are used to from a program installed on
your own machine.
4. Simplify management of user desk-
tops/workspaces to the bone like web
applications management.
An Ideal Virtual Desktop Solution should
be able to:
Meet the TCO and Experience require-
ments: Ideal solution should help IT
reduce the Desktop Management with
minimal business process changes.
Address Mobility: It should be able to
separate the physical and logical desk-
tops so that a user’s desktop is portable
and accessible from any machine at any
location with or without connectivity
Ensure Control: It should give the
enterprise complete control over what
applications can be loaded to the virtual
desktop.
Allow Flexibility: It should give users
true online and offline access to their
virtual desktops from any PC.
• Virtual desktops should provide
optimization so that the access from
LAN/WAN should not degrade the
performance
• The offline model should detect
unauthorized desktop access and also
data leakage issues. And it should
allow offline work to be synched with
central IT storage with ease.
How do we achieve
the ideal Solution?
1. Decouple user workspace away
from the OS, make the user work-
space independent of target OS. We
really mean this. That is how the web
applications work; a simple browser
specific to OS takes care of the avail-
ability of that application on the
target device and OS. Seems impos-
sible, we need innovation to achieve
great results.
2. Extract and manage all common
applications and data as single physi-
cal copes for all users in central place.
Again impossible, but that is what
makes the costs to go down to the
bone.
3. Deliver the workspace to any
endpoint for execution without
overloading the target device with
unnecessary virtual layers, leave
almost 100% of CPU and memory for
user applications and data – This is
the only way user can get their native
experience
4. The workspace should be available
even if the user chooses to be offline
or an OS that is not meant for the ap-
plications. Seems incredible, but can’t
sacrifice user experience
5. More importantly the ideal solution
should take into account the new
mobile and thin devices with low
resources.
While focusing on the TCO to the bone
this solution also should minimize the
power requirements.