october 2011 volume 10 enterprise...

ENTERPRISE CIO DECISIONS • OCTOBER 2011 1

INSIDE

Design and TestYour Setup forVirtualization

One on One: Virtual DesktopsTake Data Intothe Field

By theBusiness, For the Business

DeploymentStrategiesand Challenges

Make YourVDIs Pay Off

Selling DesktopVirtualizationWith Mobility

OCTOBER 2011 VOLUME 10

Deploying andEnhancingDesktop VirtualizationCIOs aren’t the only onesbehind the push to virtualdesktops—cost savings,greater mobility and employee demand haveturned business execsinto fans as well.

EnterpriseCIODecisions

Guiding technology decision makers in the enterprise

FOR YEARS, the virtualization spot-light has mainly been focused onservers and storage—and rightfullyso. The technology has evolvedmore quickly and had fewer road-blocks to overcome, and the eco-nomics of IT created a real demandfor consolidation, which server andstorage virtualization enabled.That’s changing. Virtual desktop

infrastructure (VDI) is overcomingsome of its inherent obstacles, likenetwork bandwidth, and finding newapplications in mobile workforcemanagement.In this edition of Enterprise CIO

Decisions Ezine, you will read aboutnew ways that VDI is gaining trac-tion in the enterprise. For instance,Scottsdale Community Collegeplans to save about $250,000 thisyear due to desktop virtualization.That may not seem like a lot, butthis is a small college, and it’s taking$50,000 of those savings andinvesting it in IT innovation grantsfor its faculty, writes SearchCIO.comNews Director Christina Torode.Mobility’s role in the growth of

desktop virtualization opportunitiescannot be overstated. Senior NewsWriter Linda Tucci reports on theinfluence of iPhones and iPads,

which are finding their way into the enterprise via skunkworks proj-ects and bring-your-own-devicepolicies.In many ways, the opportunities

of desktop virtualization are notdriven by technology, but by a needfor businesses to empower theiremployees while freeing their ITdepartments from being in theclient-management business.In all of the examples we cover

here, the common thread is innova-tive IT managers looking for a wayto improve the business and findingthat all roads lead to VDI. Search-CIO.com contributor Niel Nickolai-sen, vice president of strategy andinnovation at EnergySolutions Inc. in Salt Lake City, even enjoins ITmanagers to “have some fun, take a chance and be prepared to fail and have to correct your course. The biggest risk is ignoring what justcould be the next technology revolu-tion.” Sounds like good advice. �

SCOT PETERSEN

Editorial DirectorCIO/IT Strategy [email protected]


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Fun with Desktop Virtualization

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UpFrontNews, views and reviews

for senior technology managers

ON THE JOB

design and test your setup forvirtualizationENTERPRISE desktop virtualization isan infrastructure overhaul that canlead to pushback from users and thebusiness if performance levels sufferbecause of mistakes at the designand testing stages.Many enterprises fumble at the

design stage because they try toaccommodate each and every user’sdistinct desktop profile. Instead ofminimizing the number of desktopimages, which can simplify desktopmanagement by as much as 80%,many enterprises are overloadingvirtual servers with too many images,said Kevin Vogl, vice president ofvirtualization at systems integratorChampion Solutions Group Inc. inBoca Raton, Fla.

“I see enterprises that take a smallgroup of users and, instead of givingthat group one or two images, theyend up with six [images] because afew people in the group use anapplication that the rest of thegroup doesn’t,” Vogl said.Instead, applications that are

unique to a few users should be de-livered separately through applica-tion virtualization. Otherwise, anenterprise could end up with thou-sands of images to support, Voglsaid.Unlike some desktop virtualiza-

tion pundits, Vogl said he believeshosted desktops put less strain onthe network, not more—again, whenthe infrastructure is set up correctly.Users experience fewer jumps fromserver to server than before; that, inturn, puts less strain on the networkwhen the desktop images andservers are connected to the mainswitch in the data center, Vogl said.“Unlike the spoke-and-wheel

UF

BY THE NUMBERS

Individualized Virtual Desktops on riseIn 2010,77% of organizations said they weren’t going to

provide for robust individualization of virtual desktops. In 2011,

that number plunged to 21.9% . Dynamically layering the

“personal” aspects of a dedicated personal computer onto a generic

virtual machine allows personalization at less expense and with easier

management than dedicating persistent virtual PCs allows.

SOURCE: “COMMUNICATIONS AND COMPUTING BENCHMARK: 2011/2012,” THE NEMERTES RESEARCH GROUP INC.

model, where all the end switchesconnect to the central hub and everyPC hits that hub from different loca-tions, with desktop virtualization,everything is connected to the sameenterprise switch or hub, so lesstraffic is going over the network,”Vogl said.He added that in his experience,

when implementing desktop virtual-ization, the best group to test firstisn’t the rank and file—it’s top com-pany management. “They are lesslikely to freak out if performanceisn’t as good, and will tell you exact-ly what has to be fixed,” he said.“Also, it’s a matter of perception.People at other levels of the compa-ny see that the big guys have some-thing new and cool, and they wantit, too.”Another prime guinea pig for

enterprise desktop virtualization isthe training room. Production isn’taffected in training classes, and avariety of new classes can be creat-

ed quickly and simply by reimagingthin clients for different types oftraining, Vogl said.“And since a lot of people across

the organization take training insome form, this proof-of-conceptarea can become a proving groundfor production and user buy-in,”Vogl said. —CHRISTINA TORODE


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A prime guinea pig for enterprisedesktop virtuali-zation is the training room.

UF

ONE ON ONE

virtual desktopstake data into the fieldNAME:Maytee AspuroTITLE: CIO and IT directorTIME IN THIS ROLE: Three yearsORGANIZATION:Wisconsin Depart-ment of Children and FamiliesHEADQUARTERS:Madison, Wis.EMPLOYEES: 1,100 employeesIT STAFF MEMBERS: 42

In 2008, Maytee Aspuro was hiredas CIO to build an IT department forthe Wisconsin Department of Chil-dren and Families, a departmentformed in 2007 by the merger ofthree other government agencies.Saddled with outdated desktops andother systems, Aspuro needed tofind a way to give field employeesanytime, anywhere access to dataand applications. She recently spokewith SearchCIO.com to explain howher team began last year converting100 desktops for field employeesand another 250 desktops withinthree months. By November, 750more desktops will be virtualized.

Why did you decide on desktop virtualization as opposed to a traditional desktop refresh?Employees want to use their owndevices, so [desktop virtualization]

was brought about in part to accom-modate the work styles of ouremployees out in the field. Also,unfortunately, it would take the fieldemployees 10 to 15 minutes to bootup the machines [we had], whichwas unacceptable.Our social workers worked out of

three locations, and in the past hadto pack up and restart their comput-ers in each new location. With VDI[virtual desktop infrastructure], allthe data lives in the data center.They can take their virtual desktopswith them, or boot up a virtualmachine in a new location and getthe same access to their data.

Having personal settings follow the user can be difficult. How didyou handle personalization?We used VMware View for desktopvirtualization, but for personaliza-tion we used Unidesk. It’s a personal


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JEFF BELL

Maytee Aspuro

Dwelling on Desktop VirtualizationWhat’s your enterprise’s exposure to hosted and

local desktop virtualization?

Not interested

Interested but no plans

Planning to implement in a year or more

Planning to implement in thenext 12 months

Implemented, not expanding

Expanding/upgrading implementation

Don’t know

0% 10% 20% 30% 40%

SOURCE: “FORRSIGHTS HARDWARE SURVEY, Q3 2010,” FORRESTER RESEARCH INC. SURVEY OF 388 ENTERPRISE ORGANIZATIONS, DEFINED AS THOSE WITH MORE THAN 1,000 EMPLOYEES.

management tool that allows you tobuild a desktop in a virtual worldthat has the same characteristics asan individual’s desktop. The virtualdesktop is customized to their set-tings, and that personalization does-n’t go away just because theyrestart their computer.

Did you have a backup plan just incase something didn’t work outwith the desktop virtualization

project?I also bought Lenovo laptops foremployees in the field and fullyloaded desktops. I wanted to makesure that we had a fallback plan andcould use [traditional] desktops andlaptops, given that we had aboutthree months to deploy the virtualdesktops. The deployment wentwell, so the hardware that webought is being repurposed as thinclients.


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� HOSTED DESKTOP VIRTUALIZATION� LOCAL DESKTOP VIRTUALIZATION

You said the initial projects had tobe done in a short period of time,within three months. How did youget the vendors to join forces tomake this happen?I was honest with them. I told them I couldn’t fail at this. That itwas being viewed as somethingcompletely new and other depart-ments were watching what we were

doing. I asked them for a commit-ment to do whatever was necessaryto get through this successfully, and the main ones involved—HP,VMware and Unidesk—all steppedup.

Has the project been a success so far in terms of savings?We’ve realized a 30% savings forworkstation support and about a40% decrease in call volume to ourhelp desk. That is partly because wegot rid of a lot of outdated desktops,

and we have a much more consis-tent desktop experience that is easi-er to manage. We’re also saving upto 70% in VDI storage, since onegold image of Microsoft Windowsand single instances of standardapplications can be shared acrossmany desktops.Based on the success we’ve had

so far, based on employees’ experi-ences, the state’s Department ofAdministration announced that aninterstate agency committee isgoing to start looking at VDI. Theywant to have a discussion [with us]on the best way for other depart-ments to approach desktop virtual-ization.

You essentially built an IT department from scratch. Whatother projects are you working on in conjunction with desktop virtualization?We are building shared services in an internal cloud, completing anetwork consolidation and virtual-izing desktops. The three projectsare really merging into one. Now weare also working toward establishinga charter for moving applications for the department’s workforce to ahosted model on our [data center]infrastructure. Our administrationasked us to do some discovery interms of how we could host theapplications on our infrastructureversus where they are currentlyhosted [by another department].

—CHRISTINA TORODE


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“We’ve realized a 30% savings forworkstation supportand about a 40% decrease in call volume to our helpdesk. That is partlybecause we got ridof a lot of outdateddesktops.”


THE DESKTOP virtualization tableshave turned. Where once IT shopsargued and pushed for the technolo-gy to solve their desktop adminis-trative and security headaches, nowthe business is pushing IT to usedesktop virtualization to resolve apotpourri of business problems.At Honeywell International Inc.,

end users want access to an AdobeFlash-based SAP AG application ontheir iPads and other iOS devices,but such devices don’t supportFlash. End users are also pushingthe company to a bring-your-own-device (BYOD) support model, andtechnicians need to provide remotesupport for the conglomerate’s con-sumer, aerospace, automobile andother products at customer sites.

Baiju Shait, lead security architectat Honeywell, is investigating waysto resolve these scenarios while stillprotecting the company’s vast data

assets. The solution he keeps com-ing up with is desktop virtualization.Employees could “check out” a

virtual machine with a Windows


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Business, FOR THE

Business IT executives and experts discuss the trends that are

making it easier to pitch virtualization as the answer to a host of business problems. BY CHRISTINA TORODE

Now the businessis pushing IT to use desktop virtualization to resolve a pot-pourri of businessproblems.

image installed and get the sameuser experience as they would on acorporate machine or a mobiledevice with Flash-based apps, Shaitsaid. By setting up an Internet-fac-ing virtual desktop, there is no trafficcoming into the Honeywell network.That resolves the problem of bridg-ing a remote support techniciandirectly to Honeywell’s network andpossibly transferring a virus; it alsogives customer support and techni-cians the option of using whateverdevice they want, in turn supportingthe BYOD push.At the Warner Bros. Entertain-

ment Inc. division of Time Warner,Angelo Salerno, vice president forenterprise architecture and engi-neering, MIS, is “leaning the way ofdesktop virtualization” for as manyas 10,000 users at Warner Bros. Hesaid he has two main reasons: “TheCFO tapped my CIO on the shoulderand asked about the cost of [desktop]ownership and why it takes threeyears to roll out Windows 7 whenhe’s heard that virtualization canaccelerate all that and save money.”This is an interesting switch from

even last year, when executivesbalked at the cost of desktop virtual-ization to support mainly offshoredevelopers or select task workers.According to Gartner Inc., in 2010the cost of supporting a hosteddesktop was estimated to be 1.4 to1.7 times more than the cost of sup-porting a physical desktop PC interms of the infrastructure and skill

set needed.“Organizations are not doing

[server-hosted desktops] necessari-ly to see that quick ROI,” said ChrisWolf at this year’s Gartner Catalyst

Conference in San Diego. “It’s astrategic investment in loweringTCO long term—meaning in three tofive years—that equates to a 10%-or-so reduction in [operating] costs.”This is based on information fromearly desktop virtualization adoptersamong Gartner’s client base, he said.So, cost savings, at least in the

short term, still is not a justifiablebusiness case for desktop virtualiza-tion. Redirecting money that wouldhave been spent on traditional desk-top purchases or software and hard-ware refresh cycles is, however.Dustin Fennell is vice president

and CIO at Arizona’s ScottsdaleCommunity College, which has11,000 students every semester andmore than 1,000 employees. He


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In 2010, the cost of supporting ahosted desktopwas estimated tobe 1.4 to 1.7 timesmore than thecost of support-ing a physicaldesktop PC.

took the budget he would have usedto support the college’s traditionalhardware and software tech-refreshcycle (including support costs) andrepurposed it for desktop virtualiza-

tion technologies.“I didn’t go to my organization and

say, ‘I need $2 million in capital todothis great project that’s going to re-duce our operational expenses and, infour years, have an ROI,’” Fennell saidduring a presentation at the Gartnerconference. “I actually took moneywe were going to spend anyway tosupport an inefficient and expensiveway to keep technology up to date,and redirected it to fund this new[desktop virtualization] project.”

BACK TO SCHOOL WITH VIRTUALIZATIONScottsdale Community College’sreasons for adopting desktop virtu-alization technologies serve in manyways as a blueprint of what enter-prises are already, or soon will be,dealing with:

� The college’s IT and overall oper-ating budget was cut starting in2008.

� Fennell received a mandate fromthe college’s directors to expandaccess to technology and supportnontraditional learners (remotestudents from all over the world).

� The consumerization of IT wasforcing the college to figure outhow to deliver data and applica-tions to students and faculty,regardless of which device theyused or where they were located.

� The old way of supporting desk-tops—patching them and updat-ing thousands of them multipletimes—was not sustainable orcost-effective.

The diversity of devices studentsand faculty were opting to useproved particularly daunting to sup-port, and eventually wiped out thecollege’s policy of using approved-only devices. Now, “use what youwant, and we’ll support it,” Fennellsaid.


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“I actually tookmoney we weregoing to spendanyway to supportan inefficient andexpensive way tokeep technologyup to date, andredirected it tofund this new[desktop virtual-ization] project.”—DUSTIN FENNELL, VP and CIO, Scottsdale Community College

Just how diverse were students’device choices? One student wasaccessing all his lessons and appli-cations from his PlayStation 3. Thecollege’s IT department now cansupport even this device by givingstudents and faculty access to aWeb interface. There, users log inwith an Active Directory name andpassword; the gateway establishes asecure virtual private network tun-nel and presents users with only theservices available to them.This tailored approach is accom-

plished through a series of desktopvirtualization technologies and non-virtualized technologies, frominstalling the operating system on alocal PC to hosted applications,hosted desktops, server-based com-puting and applications, and OSstreaming.“If you listen to the marketing

hype, [virtual desktop infrastructuretechnology] is the ‘one ring to rulethem all.’ That’s not true,” Fennellsaid. “Like any other project, wehave to use various tools to appro-priately deliver a solution.”

PEOPLE-CENTRIC COMPUTINGENABLERSGartner’s Wolf said he believes thatdesktop virtualization is but oneenabler for people-centric comput-ing, a model that most enterprisesinevitably will have to support tostay relevant. People-centric com-puting lets users access data and

applications from any device andtheir location of choice.“[The] use case is about apps and

data,” Wolf said. “I don’t have anaffinity to a particular OS anymore. I

use a lot of devices, and I’m just try-ing to get to my apps and data to domy job. It’s as simple as that,” hesaid.Another factor that’s pushing

businesses to desktop virtualiza-tion? Widespread adoption of appli-cations based on the Software as aService (SaaS) model, IT executivesand experts said. SaaS-based appli-cations require secure access toremote applications. Not supportingthis model could lead to dissatisfac-tion among users, some of whomare bypassing IT to buy such servic-es anyway. Desktop virtualizationallows IT to maintain control of useraccess to SaaS-based apps while itsupports users’ desire for any-device-from-anywhere access todata. �

Christina Torode is news director for SearchCIO.com. Write to her [email protected].


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Another factorpushing desktopvirtualization?Widespread adoption of appsbased on SaaS.


FOR NEAL KADERABECK, CIO at Hall-mark Services Corp., desktop virtu-alization was but one piece of a larg-er business transformation projectto update IT systems and processesand position his company for growth.Desktop virtualization, however,

was not an easy piece. Kaderabek’steam converted 400 of the healthinsurance company’s physicaldevices to virtual desktops usingVMware Inc.’s desktop and servervirtualization technologies.“It’s not as easy as it looks,”

Kaderabek said. “The hard part isgetting the images created for every[user and department] role of theorganization.” That step alone tookhis team a year to complete.When Hallmark Services began

the project in early 2008, theNaperville, Ill.-based company was atrailblazer of sorts. “It required a lotof learning by the school of hard

knocks,” Kaderabek said. “Myadvice to anyone else choosing tovirtualize desktops is to make sureyou have some talent that has beenthere, done that.”Fortunately, enterprise organiza-

tions increasingly are sharing theirdesktop virtualization stories, alongwith lessons they’ve learned. Themain technical recommendationsfrom CIOs: Take a phased approach,and be prepared to invest in manytypes of desktop virtualization andnonvirtualized technologies to getthe job done. Job No. 1 from a userperspective is creating a consistentapplication and data-service deliv-ery experience for employees, re-gardless of the platform they’re on.“Think about [desktop virtualiza-

tion] as a composition of multipleapplication delivery vehicles thatmake the experience transparent tousers,” said Chris Wolf, an analyst at


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How are enterprises deploying virtual desktop technologies, and what challenges

are they encountering? BY CHRISTINA TORODE

DeploymentStrategies and Challenges

Gartner Inc. That might mean usinga combination of technologies—notnecessarily virtualized ones—to giveusers access to a portal of applica-tions. “This really is a brokeringtechnology, where virtualization canbe one enabler. Software as a Serviceis another enabler; in fact, it is theNo. 1 stop for the app onboardingworkflow before [our clients] look to deploy apps internally,” he said.

A PHASED APPROACH TO DESKTOP VIRTUALIZATIONFor Elio Benincasa, assistant vicepresident for infrastructure manage-ment at Manulife Financial Corp.,desktop virtualization began withserver virtualization, progressed toapplication virtualization and hasmatured in the last couple of yearsinto a technology stable enough forenterprise organizations the size ofToronto-based Manulife.Starting with the U.S. life insur-

ance division of Manulife, the justifi-cation for a virtual desktop infra-structure (VDI) was the need tosupport process workers, such ascall center users; in-house and off-shore application developers; andsome administrative and operationsstaff. At the same time, Benincasawas called on to give developers aconsistent look and feel when theyaccess applications.The challenge was that some

development work was being doneon Windows Server 2000 and some

on Windows Server 2003, whileusers were on Windows XP ServicePack 1 and Windows XP SP2. Benin-casa had to simplify the manage-ment and maintenance of multiplesystems and give users a consistentexperience with the applications,regardless of their platforms. A VDIallowed him to do both.“VDI gave us a consistent look

and feel for many platforms and formany users—from offshore devel-opers to call center users,” Benin-casa said in his presentation atGartner’s Catalyst Conference 2011.“Another benefit was that trainingwas simplified, and deploying a new[operating system] and new apps tothe platforms became much easier.”In the beginning, the project’s

infrastructure was based onVMware and consisted of a server-hosted desktop and thin clients thattook advantage of existing hardwareplatforms. Connection brokers iden-tified users and provisioned virtualdesktops based on roles and accessprivileges in the company.Version 1 (as Benincasa calls it)

for U.S. Life Insurance began in2007. Today, he is working on a VDIplan for Manulife’s U.S. Investmentdivision with the same use-casescenarios: application developers,operations support staff and off-shore database administrators.VMware’s ESX hypervisor andVMware View had been the basetechnologies for the first desktopvirtualization project. For this go-


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around, his team is using Citrix Systems Inc.’s VDI infrastructure,with the ESX hypervisor as the backend.“Our global infrastructure folks

started developing standards duringthis first iteration and decided to gowith the Citrix [brokering] platformwith ESX on the back end this time,”Benincasa said. A primary reasonfor the change is that ESX uses thePC-over-IP remote desktop proto-col, but the Independent ComputingArchitecture protocol used by Citrixis a global standard at Manulife. “It’s easier for us to run one protocolglobally across all firewalls andregions,” he said.With version 2 under way, Benin-

casa has some advice to share:

� Understand why you’re imple-menting VDI, who the users areand what kind of work they do:“User acceptance is a key thing. Ifyou give users a solution that won’twork with all of their apps, you’regoing to have a major problem.”

� Some applications are still going to need a physical footprint.This was the case with Manulife’sBloomberg system that its tradersuse.

� The desktop virtualization land-scape keeps changing. Keep aneye on it as you place your bets,and realize that acquisitions mightaffect your licensing terms.

� Sit down with your procurementteam to define licensing termswith vendors under the VDImodel. Is the per-user fee basedon North American users? If it is,third-party offshore users will notbe covered.

� You will be making significantinfrastructure investments: “Onthe server side, you need to under-stand sizing. You don’t want toimplement and find out there’s notenough memory running on thedisks.”

� The cost of persistent images inVDI is multiplied by each of thoseimages.

� Have a provisioning mechanism in place that meets compliancerequirements and prevents off-shore developers from printingdocuments or walking away withinformation on devices like thumbdrives.

HEAD OF THE CLASSDustin Fennell, vice president andCIO at Scottsdale Community Col-lege in Arizona, also is a big advo-cate of a phased-in approach todesktop virtualization. His teammoved the college’s IT systems to a fully operational VDI, with 250applications virtualized to date.The first goal was to make appli-

cation delivery independent of plat-

forms and devices. “Get out of thebusiness of managing end devices.Shift your mind-set to not care aboutthe end device, who owns it or whereit’s coming from,” Fennell said atGartner Catalyst Conference 2011.To make this happen, start withapplications, he advised. By virtual-izing applications first, you can beginto deliver features to users immedi-ately without having to overhaul yourcurrent infrastructure. Then, moveon to virtual desktops to tackle appli-cations that are graphic-intensive,such as Autodesk Inc.’s AutoCADand Adobe Inc.’s Creative Suite 5.In Fennell’s view, another key ele-

ment is a Web portal with a provi-sioning system that’s based onActive Directory user access todeliver applications to users locatedanywhere and using any device.“We are leveraging desktop virtual-ization and a whole host of othervirtualization technologies to createon-demand access to services thatour users need to consume viawhatever device they happen to beusing, from wherever they happento be,” he said.The college’s desktop infrastruc-

ture includes local PCs with theoperating system still installed,server-hosted applications, server-hosted desktops, server blade com-puting, application and OS stream-ing to local devices, and bare-metalhypervisors. “Using bare-metalmachines, someone can come in

and steal it and we don’t care. It’s a throwaway machine and no dataresides on it,” Fennell said.Desktop virtualization saves

Scottsdale Community Collegeabout $250,000 a year as a result of its ability to pool hardware andsoftware resources, extend the lifeof hardware and decrease support—and reduce IT headcount as well,Fennell said. Of the money saved, a portion—$50,000—is being redi-rected to fund IT innovation grantsfor ideas culled from the college’sfaculty and staff.The savings and improved service

to students prompted the rest ofMaricopa County’s community col-lege system to adopt Scottsdale’sdesktop virtualization strategy. Thisproject will cover the needs of about260,000 students annually and12,000 employees. In the meantime,Scottsdale Community College con-tinues to reap the rewards of desk-top virtualization.“We gained a competitive advan-

tage over the 15 other colleges in thearea competing for students, because[students] no longer have to makean educational decision based onthe age of hardware or the softwarethey can afford. We provide freeaccess to the software they need, toany type of device,” Fennell said. �

Christina Torode is news director for SearchCIO.com. Write to her [email protected].


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FOR YEARS, I was enchanted by thepromise of the virtual desktop infra-structure (VDI). It seemed a naturalextension of server and storage vir-tualization that could help me slowdown my PC and laptop refreshcycle.I saw VDI technology as a way to

achieve unprecedented service lev-els for remote and travelling users. Iimagined wiping out and re-creatinga salesperson’s device on the flyafter he’d downloaded the latestmalware. And with the trend tosmaller, smarter mobile devices, aVDI seemed to promise a way tosupport a range of traditional andnontraditional devices.Each time I pursued my VDI in-

fatuation, however, I was spurned.Each time I launched a VDI pilot, the

technology failed me. One time, avendor promoting its VDI producttold me that in order to get the end-device performance I desired, Iwould have to install racks of blade

servers, then allocate a blade foreach end-user device. Then I wouldhave to upgrade (by quite a bit) mystorage infrastructure. The thought

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3 MAKE YOUR VDIS PAY OFF

With the right strategy, you’ll see your virtual desktop infrastructure efforts

finally pay dividends. BY NIEL NICKOLAISEN


Make YourVDIs

PayOff

Each time I pursued my VDIinfatuation, I wasspurned. Each timeI launched a VDIpilot, the technol-ogy failed me.

of having to replace my servers andstorage somehow defeated one ofthe main reasons for a VDI—toeventually lower operating costs.Vowing to never give up, I recently

started another VDI pilot. This time,the driver was to allow employeesto select their own devices—tablets,most likely.Having failed at previous VDI

attempts, I first did some network-ing and talked with someone—whoknew someone—who had heardrumors of a VDI appliance thatsolved the processor density andstorage problems. I tracked downthe maker of this applianceand convinced the company tolet us test it as part of thepilot. The appliance consists ofmanagement software and aseries of solid-state drives.The solid-state drives pro-vide incredibly highthroughput and reducethe demand on data cen-ter processors and stor-age. In fact, when weused this appliance, wedidn’t have to makeany changes to ourdata center infrastruc-ture. In our initial test,we planned for anappliance-to-end-device ratio of 30-to-1.The appliance easily sur-passed that density, andwe now operate in the rangeof 50-to-1.

Once we figured out how to use aVDI to deliver our enterprise com-puting resources, we had to find a good group of vol-unteer pilot users. We wanted the

group to include 30power users of ourbusiness applications,and we wanted agood mix of localand remote users.As with many com-panies, most of ourusers are resistantto change, so weplanned on doingsome selling to enlist atest group. Once wemade the announcement

that volunteers would be the“cool kids” who got to use anIT-supported tablet in


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“I did some networking andtalked with some-one ... who hadheard rumors of aVDI appliance thatsolved processordensity and stor-age problems.”

oNiel Nickolaisen, VP of strategy and innovation, EnergySolutions Inc.

exchange for being guinea pigs, theline of willing candidates snaked outmy door and filled my email inbox.We are about two months into

our pilot, and it’s going well—wellenough that our plan now is to moveto our employee-selected deviceover the next year. If all goes well,laptops will be a thing of our past.And even better, now we are experi-menting with sales and customerrelationship management applica-tions that run on our growing popu-lation of tablets. Next in our mobileapplication roadmap are field serv-ice and maintenance applications toimprove our engineering and repairservice levels and response times.In planning for and deploying a

VDI, we have had to overcomesome objections and have learned a few things.We were concerned about how

we could support the types ofdevices our employees would select,and puzzled about this for a while.Then someone made the blindinglysimple observation that most of ouremployees had tablets and comput-ers at home that they somehowwere able to support themselves.Couldn’t they also self-support thework devices they selected? Thishas become our policy: If you selectyour own device, you support yourown device.Another VDI consideration: If you

want to move from providing email

to a tablet to providing the full rangeof enterprise computing resources,you need to do some experimentswith your infrastructure. Even withour really slick VDI appliance, per-formance can be throttled by net-work bandwidth limits and traffic

spikes. Such bottlenecks might notbe an issue for a tablet email user,but they will frustrate peopleattempting ERP transactions.Based on the results of our pilot,

it seems that VDI is maturing. Fromour perspective, now is the perfecttime to experiment with VDI. Thatway, you can take a leadership rolein delivering improved service levelsat lower cost. So, have some fun,take a chance, and be prepared tofail and have to correct your course.The biggest risk is ignoring what justcould be the next technology revo-lution. �

Niel Nickolaisen is vice president of strategy andinnovation at EnergySolutions Inc. in Salt LakeCity. Write to him at [email protected].


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This has becomeour policy: If youselect your owndevice, you sup-port your own device.

BLAME IT ON the iPad—and on themillions of other mobile devices inthe hands of workers as they goabout their jobs. Statistics are hardto come by, but mobility just mightbe the killer use case for virtualizingthe desktop, according to CIOs andindustry experts. The growingappetite for using smartphones andtablets to access desktops remotely—even if only in a pinch and only forlimited use—appears to be acceler-ating deployments of enterprisedesktop virtualization.“I can’t quantify it, but there is a

link,” said David Johnson, a senioranalyst at Cambridge, Mass.-basedForrester Research Inc. “Mobility isa tipping-point issue for desktop vir-tualization.”

Abha Kumar, head of corporatesystems integration at The Van-guard Group Inc., understands theconnection. The Valley Forge, Pa.-based mutual fund investment firm(which, unlike some of its competi-tors, does not have storefrontoffices) thinks of itself as a virtualcompany. In recent years it hasequipped its workers—or crewmembers, as they are called—withthe technology required to commu-nicate with each other remotely,from videoconferencing to morethan 1,000 SharePoint sites.“All the technologies that we use

are not interconnected with eachother, so we are constantly lookingat pieces to bridge the technologygap,” Kumar said. “Ultimately, we


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4 SELLING DESKTOP VIRTUALIZATION WITH MOBILITY

Enterprise desktop virtualization is getting a boost from iPad-wielding execs—and all the other

mobile warriors. BY LINDA TUCCI

Selling Desktop Virtualization

with

Mobility

would like all of this to be seamless,so one of the things we are lookingat is desktop virtualization. IT ispiloting desktop virtualization fortraining employees and with smallgroups of people.”The potential benefits of enter-

prise desktop virtualization are notanything new for CIOs and their ITteams. Done right, virtualizing thedesktop simplifies the provisioningof new desktops, lowers the cost ofdeploying new applications andmaintaining old ones, and reducesdowntime when hardware fails. Itcan also help IT squeeze every lastdrop out of creaky workstations. TheNo. 1 reason for doing desktop virtu-alization, according to studies fromThe Nemertes Research Group Inc.,is desktop management. That wasthe reason cited by 64% of the 250IT professionals Nemertes inter-viewed for its most recent annualsurvey of IT leaders.

LOW STARTUP COSTSThe startup costs for desktop virtu-alization, however, can be signifi-cant. It’s expensive to upgrade anetwork, install the server infra-structure, manage the capacity ofthat infrastructure effectively andshift storage from the desktop to thedata center. Plus, very few compa-nies have had virtual desktops longenough to establish an ROI, consult-ants are quick to point out. Virtualizing the desktop to sup-

port mobility shifts the emphasisfrom an IT operations-centric initia-tive to a user-focused service—andthat shift can make all the difference.“You are giving somebody some-thing they didn’t have before. It’s notjust taking out costs; you are addingvalue,” Forrester’s Johnson said.“CIOs are selling their desktop virtu-alization initiatives with mobility.” A large retail clothing chain’s IT

executives, with whom Johnsonrecently spoke, are a case in point.After a concerted campaign by theIT department for virtualizing desk-tops to simplify and improve desk-top support, the chain recently gavethe project the green light. Desktopmanageability and flexibility playedinto the decision. “But the thing thatsealed the deal was the executivepush. They wanted to get access toinformation they would otherwisehave had a hard time getting whenthey were outside the office,” John-son said. The added cost to providethat quick access was deemed a fairtradeoff.

FROM IT SKUNKWORKS TO EXECUTIVE SUITEThe demand for the “at my finger-tips” convenience of mobile com-puting is starting to spur full-scalevirtual desktop deployments, agreedJohn Burke, principal research ana-lyst and desktop virtualization expertat Mokena, Ill.-based Nemertes.“Because the virtual desktop is run-


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ning inside the data center, it hasextremely fast access to any datafolks reach normally when they areat their desks. We’re definitely see-ing a connection,” he said. Althoughthe firm’s latest annual survey didnot ask directly about a link betweensupporting mobility and desktop vir-tualization, “many people did speakto us about that as being a use casethey wanted to support,” Burke said,for three reasons:

� They want to improve remoteaccess to desktop tools with amobile-enabled device.

� They want to improve security byproviding an alternative to storinginformation on a mobile device.

� They want to improve productivityby giving users access to thefullest range of tools whereverthey were working.

The push is even more notablebecause, until quite recently, mobili-ty “was nearly irrelevant” to virtual-izing desktops, Burke said. “It was acool thing that the IT folks did forthemselves because it was great tosit with your iPhone to reboot serversinstead of having to go back to thecomputer to do it. That kind of moti-vation doesn’t do very much to ad-vance a [virtual desktop infrastruc-ture] project or require one,” he said.“It was done as a skunkworks thingfor IT.”

The “skunkworks thing” hasmoved to the executive suite, thanksmainly to the invasion of tablets inthe enterprise, the iPad in particular,Burke and other experts said. Inaddition to their larger screen size,tablets’ higher screen resolution andfoldable keyboards have made iteasier to for users to interact withdesktop apps. On the technical side,latency issues have been significantlymitigated—if not solved—becauseof improvements in Internet per-formance generally and in protocolsfor communications between re-ceivers and clients. “Microsoft’sRemote Desktop Protocol, PCoIP[PC over IP] or HDX from Citrix Sys-tems are much better at giving you aPC-like experience,” Burke said.

THE HUMAN CHALLENGEThe biggest challenge CIOs will facewhen they deploy desktop virtual-ization to support mobile workers isthe “human side,” according to For-rester’s Johnson. “We find that whencompanies try to drive this from thedata center team, chances are theyhave overlooked some pretty funda-mental factors for how people aregoing to use this stuff,” he said.Forrester recommends assem-

bling a “hybrid” IT team that rangesfrom data center and desktopexperts to folks who understand thevarious populations of users in theenterprise. IT needs to understandremote access to the desktop from


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the user’s perspective. “There are alot of challenges and nuances toconsider. It comes down to end-userand business-role personas in theorganization,” Johnson said.No one has to tell that to Rick Roy,

CIO at Madison, Wis.-based CUNAMutual Group. He’s in the middle ofre-evaluating the desktop infra-structure for the insurance giant’s4,000 employees, including replac-ing as many as 2,000 laptops withiPads for the firm’s independentsales force and adopting a bring-your-own-device policy. A year intothe project, Roy’s team has surveyedusers extensively on the computingequipment they use for work, fromdesktops and laptops to mobiledevices. “Getting our headswrapped around this was a tremen-dous effort,” he said, adding that theteam ended up creating 18 personas(types of users) before making anydecisions. Virtual desktops, whichhis IT team is engineering now, willultimately be a cost saver, he said.Vanguard’s Kumar also is going

slow with her desktop virtualization,carefully vetting which desktopapplications can be accessed effec-tively, to avoid frustrating users, shesaid. And, as a business that is sub-ject to strict regulations, security isanother big concern for Vanguard.“Right now, we keep piloting withsmall groups,” as opposed to a full-scale project, she said. �Linda Tucci is senior news writer at SearchCIO.com. Write to her at [email protected].


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Enterprise CIO Decisions Ezine is producedby TechTarget CIO/IT Strategy Media,

© 2011 TechTarget.

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Rachel LebeauxAssistant Managing Editor

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