Tech firms see potential in ‘virtual desktop infrastructure’

By Byron Acohido, USA TODAY

Rory Clements is conducting a grand experiment that could be a harbinger of the next big thing in corporate computing.

As chief tech systems architect for CB Richard Ellis Group, a Los Angeles-based global real estate company, Clements has begun converting CBRE’s 40,000 traditional desktop PCs into “virtual desktops.”

His guinea pigs: 2,000 London-based executives, surveyors, appraisers and agents. In exchange for giving up their company-issued Windows XP desktops and laptops, Clements is giving each employee access to a virtual copy of a new, more powerful Windows 7 desktop residing in CBRE’s private data center.

Using the latest virtualization technology from VMware, Clements can push out a Windows 7 desktop to any PC the employee happens to have handy. It could be an old office XP machine, a personally owned netbook or a computer in an Internet cafe in Kuala Lumpur, for that matter. The employee gets full access to company e-mail, databases and business applications.

Some top CBRE executives will even be able to access their company-issued Windows 7 virtual desktops on their smartphones and tablet PCs. If all goes well, Clements plans to roll out 3,500 more virtual desktops across Europe next year; deployment to CBRE’s offices in the U.S. and other regions could follow.

“Giving our guys the ability to work from wherever they are, on whatever device they’re on, is what this is all about,” Clements says.

What’s more, should an employee also use his or her virtual desktop to get on the public Internet, Clements will have much tighter control of repelling infections and breach attempts.

Revisiting thin clients

Making private company data accessible to employees is nothing new. IBM for decades sold data centers running in monolithic mainframe computers accessible exclusively from “dumb” computing terminals. In the 1990s, Sun Microsystems failed in its ambitious attempt to popularize the use of data centers running in Sun Solaris servers made accessible to employees via stripped-down computing devices, called “thin clients.”

What took hold in the modern corporate workplace is a model where each employee gets a “fat client” — a Windows PC packed with applications that is also tied in to the company’s private data center.

Now, a confluence of developments has made the time ripe for revisiting the notion of thin clients. High-speed Internet connections are ubiquitous, and employees are using popular new consumer devices — smartphones and tablet PCs, as well as online services such as Facebook and Twitter— to be more productive. A recent Cisco survey, for instance, found 45% of U.S. tech pros use their smartphones for primary communications.

Meanwhile, VMware and rival Citrix have refined virtualization technologies, prompting the giant hardware and software firms to begin pitching “virtual desktop infrastructure,” or VDI systems.

Adoption is in the embryonic stage, so estimates of the multibillion dollars that corporations could spend on VDI in years to come aren’t yet available. But all the players believe the potential is huge. Tech research firm Gartner looks at it this way: At the moment, there are roughly 600 million desktop PCs in use in large organizations globally. Some 5 million of them are in companies such as CBRE that have launched pilot studies. By 2013, there could be 50 million virtual desktops in daily workplace use.

“Desktop virtualization is one of the most intriguing, hottest areas in corporate IT today,” says Gartner research director Mark Margevicius.

Double-edged sword

A catalyst that could accelerate the trend: Windows 7. Here’s why:

A copy of Windows XP, Windows Vista or Windows 7 runs on 91% of all desktop PCs, according to software firm Net Applications. Many corporations are due to replace older Windows XP machines. That means they must authorize the purchase of more powerful PCs needed to run Windows 7.

But many are taking a hard look at redirecting that spending to new VDI systems. CBRE, for instance, decided not to follow through on an earlier plan to replace aging XP desktops used in its U.K. offices with traditional Windows 7 desktops. Instead, it’s rolling out new 24-inch Samsung monitors, called “zero clients,” equipped with a power plug, a special input jack to tie into virtual copies of Windows 7 residing in private data centers — and nothing else.

Clements expects zero out-of-pocket savings immediately. New PCs are dirt cheap. Setting up an all-new VDI system is not. But he expects to save big over time. The Samsung zero clients have no fans or hard drives, use minuscule electricity and should not need to be replaced for a decade, he says.

Heeding such buzz, giant tech suppliers are hedging their bets. Microsoft last February, for instance, changed how it licenses new copies of Windows 7, making it easier for companies to pay to use virtual copies of Windows 7 on any platform, even a Google Android phone or Apple iPad touchscreen tablet. “With VDI, we can give users a consistent Windows experience on any device,” says Windows general manager Gavriella Schuster.

Microsoft stands to profit big whether companies buy Windows 7 virtually ..or not. PC makers Dell and Hewlett-Packard must deal with a double-edged sword. Each could see sales of traditional desktops erode. Yet, each could also grow sales of data-center servers and lucrative service contracts to help companies manage VDI systems.

That’s why Dell and H-P have joined IBM, Cisco and EMC in offering a menu of VDI packages combining just about whatever hardware and software components a corporate IT buyer might fancy. Says Paul Bell, president of Dell’s $15 billion-a-year public sector business: “Any time you have a chance to embrace changes that are good for the customer, you’ve got to take it.”

Source: www.vmware.com; www.usatoday.com