Wave of Virtualization - Case of Desktop Virtualization

Any "transformation" plan in IT Infrastructure space which does not pay its tribute to virtualization at some level is not a plan.

While there are benefits of virtualization, as it delinks the application layer and the infrastructure layer and creates virtual pool of service layers, it does not come without its own problems. However the case of buying fewer hardware and maxing capacity on investments made makes it strong.

In case of desktops, it is ensuring that technology has come a full circle by moving back to a host-terminal model with thin clients through desktop virtualization. This is what it moved away from, fuelled by the Wintel wave of client-server technology. Having everything at a central place did not deliver a performance each user wanted with the bottleneck at the host. The promise the client-server technology brought was a mix of host and client side computing. Applications were split with a server and client component. Soon this peaked to lead to issues with management issues at the client side and high cost of administration. These include:

• Need for hardware refresh periodically fuelled by new OS and cheaper hardware options every few years
• Challenges of patch management for OS and application upgrades
• Anti-virus management

Most enterprises now have a centralized policy management system where the end-user has limited control on his desktop. Users don't have admin access with ports and interfaces (FDD, USB, CD/DVD drives etc.) locked. Updates are pushed centrally and updates done from the back. So, essentially a desktop is working like a terminal.

Leading the revolution was the largest application ever - the Internet, which delivered everything and more through the humble browser. The browser epitomizes a dumb client with limited configuration and need for little client-side computing infrastructure. Most of the current needs for hardware running browser is due to the operating system on which browsers run. As they evolved (Wintel at work), they required upgraded hardware for a better browsing experience but there are options available to browse with little local computing.

The applications are following this - taking head-on with MS-Office are applications like Google Doc (http://docs.google.com/) or Zoho (http://www.zoho.com/)which now make it possible to work on documents, spreadsheets, presentations and more with a simple browser.

At the enterprise level Sales Force has been the poster boy of Software As A Service.

At these two trends emerge - the applications need to take a lead to make a strong case for low/no computing at the user end. Till then desktop virtualization will mimic the future with assets of the present.