By Ramdas S, CRN, September 29, 2009, 1100 hrs
Business Unit Desktop Virtualization boom is yet to happen, according to Jocelyn Goldfein, Vice President and General Manager, Desktop, VMware. But the real drivers for growth will come from some unlikely quarters such as availability of Nehalem-based Xeon processors, impending launch of Windows 7, drop in prices of entry level SANs, and faster broadband technologies such as 3G.
Desktop virtualization is essentially a model where all applications and data in a desktop is hosted and centrally managed in a data center, while giving end users a full PC desktop experience. Though it reduces operation costs considerably, the prohibitive deployment costs including additional hardware, software licenses, needed for setting up a data center has kept several organizations from adopting the technology.
“It’s true that there are several additional costs, but the ROIs are a lot faster—since the resources needed to manage desktops across the enterprise are lesser,” said Goldfein.
According to her, availability of Nehalem servers is certainly helping CIOs consider desktop virtualization seriously. “Nehalem architecture is virtualization-ready and can host double the number of desktops compared to previous generation chips from Intel.”
Windows 7 launch is also likely to be another factor favoring desktop virtualization, albeit for different reasons. “We expect seven out of 10 CIOs, who did not upgrade their enterprise desktops to Microsoft Vista, to switch over to Windows 7—not just because of the good reviews, but because Microsoft is withdrawing Windows XP support. Desktop virtualization will aid the migration to the new OS,” she added.
Other factors influencing a desktop virtualization boom is overall price drops in Storage technologies notably Storage Area Networks (SAN). “With SAN prices dropping and new technologies such as data de-duplication evolving, our partners will find it easier to offer affordable solutions,” Goldfein said.
Also driving growth will be faster, better and cheaper connectivity, where ISPs and telecom companies will try to offer Virtualized managed desktops to consumers over the net. “This is likely to be a business model in the future where consumers will look at an ISP to manage both data and applications. You may have ISPs providing low cost netbook connected 24x7, which will be actually a virtualized with all applications and data residing in an ISP data center.”
Goldfein urged channel partners to start consulting on practice surrounding desktop virtualization. “The opportunities for value added services are many, as the computing paradigms from traditional to virtualized world are quite different.” |