Virtualization Taking Aim At The Desktop

Virtualization has become quite popular in the data center where it has helped companies consolidate their server farms. Vendors are now pushing similar movement at the desktop, but to date, the potential benefits have not been as compelling nor usage as widespread, although that may change in the coming months.

With desktop virtualization, which we reviewed starting with our VDI Rolling Review Kick-Off, traditional PCs are replaced with virtual machines that do not house application software, an approach that offers companies some potential advantages. Users gain access to applications from anywhere (at their desk, working at home, traveling on the road) and can use any type of device and any network connection.

Consequently, businesses are becoming interested in the technology. "Recently, companies have expressed a growing interest in desktop virtualization," noted Chris Wolf, an analyst at Burton Group Inc. In response, vendors, such as Citrix, Pano Logic, Symantec, Oracle, and VMware, have developed desktop virtualization products.

Corporations see potential benefits in moving to desktop virtualization. They can get new users up and running fairly quickly. Also, items, such as upgrades and patches, can be completed faster. Rather than have to populate operating system and application updates to remote PCs, IT departments can change software running on one system and impact all users. From these changes, companies can realize PC desktop support cost reductions of 20 percent or more in certain cases. As a result, the technology has appealed to educational institutions which are constantly looking for ways to curb IT spending.

Security can also be enhanced. Since end users cannot open new applications or store data locally, virtual desktops enable IT administrators to more tightly control end-user activity. Data that is centralized is less likely to walk out of the door at the end of the day. Because of this, desktop virtualization has garnered interest from health care companies and financial institutions, which have high levels of security. While sounding good in theory, this option can present corporations with challenges.  "Companies have to take a very close look at their IT infrastructure to determine if moving to desktop virtualization makes sense for them," said Mark Bowker, senior analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group.The initial costs can be high and sometimes difficult to justify. That's because there can be significant hardware investments: companies may need to upgrade their existing desktops so they can function virtually. This option can require that desktop systems have at least 500 MHz processors and 256M bytes of memory. If a company has many older PCs, the change could pricey and cumbersome. In addition, businesses may need to upgrade their central systems because they will not have sufficient storage or processing power to handle the new requests.

Software pricing can also be high. Desktop licensing costs range from $150 to $250 per user and that is often on top of the regular user licensing fees for the application. In addition, the application vendor often has a one-time fee ranging from $2,000 to $5,000 for each application virtualized.

Then there are other infrastructure considerations, such as network bandwidth and storage. Because information is moving from the desktop to the server, companies may need to add bandwidth, especially if they have periodic traffic spikes. With desktop virtualization, storage is no longer local and therefore can become more expensive. Usually, PCs come with a few hundred G bytes of storage and tasks, such as backup and recovery, can fall to the user. With a virtual desktop, companies often move data onto a SAN, where storage is more expensive because it includes more sophisticated features. In addition since the technology is new, the management tools available are not as robust as more mature technologies. These issues coupled with the recent economic slowdown have impacted the market. "Few companies have hitched their wagons to the virtualized desktop movement," noted Burton Group's Wolf.

Rather than a quick delivery, the desktop virtualization market is experiencing a slow gestation period. Because they do not have money available to move to the technology now, companies may lump virtualized desktops purchase into other ongoing projects. For instance, a corporation usually typically refreshes its PCs ever three to four years or the project could be bundled with a storage system upgrade. So, while firms are interested in the desktop virtualization technology, few have been willing to move forward toward adoption. If the economy picks up and vendors enhance their products, that may change.