Has the Time Arrived for Desktop Virtualization?

For the past several years organizations have been migrating server loads from separate discreet hardware toward virtual servers residing on larger, consolidated hardware systems. There are specific reasons given for the popularity of this migration, despite the complexity that is sometimes entailed but they all boil down to this; cost savings. Server virtualization saves money by reducing total server hardware costs, software licensing, energy utilization, space requirements and administration labor. The exact savings may vary by circumstances but the savings are real and persist over time. Given the budget pressures on IT departments, indeed businesses as a whole, saving money has become a top priority.

The savings that have been realized by virtualizing servers can be found on an even larger scale by virtualizing desktop systems. This isn't a new idea, Sun Microsystems back before the dot com bubble burst declared the the desktop was dead announcing it's short lived Net client. Google's ChromeOS and Documents application are geared toward moving desktop computing tasks to an Internet based cloud, owned by Google of course.

These solutions to date haven't really been that compelling however, as they have been either single purpose or web browser based (or both). To be considered a true virtual desktop, the solution needs to be able to present the user with whatever software offerings a company may feel necessary and the user experience must be identical to local hardware. Neither Sun in the 90's nor Google today have managed to pull it off.

The company that came closest has been Citrix, but usability problems with the company's Metaframe product in the 1990s and the sometimes steep server requirements relegated it to being a niche remote access product.

It's time to re-evaluate the landscape. Both Citrix and VMWare have desktop virtualization offerings that are robust, reliable and offer a user experience that matches that of a local desktop. The user has a monitor, keyboard, mouse and speakers just as he or she would with a local machine. What is missing is the fan and drive noise, the power draw and heat output of a PC and the worries of losing data in the even a hard drive crashes.

I won't get into the technical comparisons between Citrix XenDesktop and VMWare Workstation. I'm not really qualified to even have an opinion. I will say, if you fully understand your needs, understand the limitations of virtualization and are willing to be quite cold blooded about it; the savings opportunities can be enormous. If you consider that most organizations have easily 10 or more desktops for every server and that end user/desktop support is always the single largest cost item in any IT department the decision to virtualize almost becomes a no-brainer. Sure, some tasks, such as CAD or intensive graphics work will still require dedicated workstations. How large is that population compared to the rest of your organization? Few companies have more than a couple of these types of systems and the ones that do directly generate revenue operating them.

Just a couple of examples how desktop virtualization would save an organization some pretty big bucks.

Reduced acquisition costs – Let's just assume for the sake of argument that a dedicated thin client cost exactly the same amount of money as a new desktop. Now your new desktop arrives and we'll assume you bought it from Dell or HP and it is preloaded with MS Office and desktop security package (I'll go the extra mile and even assume either company sells a system with a security package that doesn't suck). Your IT people now still have to:

Configure network access to your corporate LAN
Configure the system's security to use your Active Directory structure
Load the drivers for any printers or other peripherals
Load the asset management and tracking client
Load and/or configure the remote takeover software for your help desk people

And that's before you actually put it on someone's desk and they load whatever applications that didn't come from the factory. If this is a replacement system, now the files from the old system have to be transferred.

A thin client avoids the whole nasty mess. You turn it on, point it to the server IP(s) hosting the desktop session and hand it over. Since everything is handled at the server, you can provision a LOT of identical virtual desktops with fairly little effort.

Refresh costs – In a word, forget about hardware refreshes. Stop and think about it, why do we refresh desktop and laptop hardware every 3 to 4 years? Mainly because hard drives and cooling fans are mechanical devices that wear out and fail after a couple of years. Also, software tends to become more feature rich (aka bloated) over time making a desktop obsolete. Well, all the user has it a monitor, keyboard and mouse. All the work is happening on a back end server. If the server is starting to reach capacity, add another server. You still come out ahead. Now instead of having to plan rolling hardware refreshes and dealing with what OS to use, you can replace clients as failures require. Better yet, since your desktops are simply OS instances on a server migrating to a new OS is oh-so-much easier.
User Support Labor – As I mentioned before, anyone who has had to manage an IT department knows end user support accounts for most of your people's time. Calls for forgotten passwords are still most common, but any company with a reasonably large number of employees should be using some sort of self-service solution by now. The rest of the calls revolve around OS/software crashes and hardware issues. In the first case either an untested patch was installed (shame on you!) or someone installed software that isn't supported. Since a virtual desktop runs on a server you have a great deal of control and can lock down the system. Even better, an administrator can “reboot” the desktop session and remove the offending software without having to take over the desktop. You can also stand up a test desktop identical to what your users operate for testing of patches before deployment. If the call is about a hardware failure, you now have to deal with data recovery. Assuming of course that the data on the system was actually backed up in the first place. Again, a virtual desktop runs on a server and you can control where data is stored and how often it is backed up and how. We've already covered the differences between replacing a desktop and thin client.

One item I haven't mentioned is software licensing. At the moment you may be able to save some cash based on how a vendor charges for licenses. My experience has been, however, that software vendors change their charging methods as required to protect the revenue stream. Any savings will be short term. Still I've only mentioned three areas for cost savings. We could also talk about reduced power consumption, reduced heat production with lower cooling costs, improved information security (a topic for another day) and other possible advantages.

Now I'll admit that I hadn't even considered desktop virtualization as a serious strategy until recently. I'm one of those who had to fight with Citrix Metaframe in the late 1990s and into the early 2000s and I had my own name for Citrix that isn't repeatable amongst non-sailors. I was contacted by a gentleman by the name of Preston Rose who is a principle at Green Qube several weeks ago. What he demonstrated to me has changed my mind and I think shown me a coming trend.

Just as server virtualization has finally lead to Software As A Service (SAAS) becoming a profitable business model, desktop virtualization may at last provide a viable cloud desktop model. Using Citrix XenDesktop, Green Qube (http://www.greenqube.com) has created a service that allows a company to virtualize all of their desktops and make those desktops available anywhere internet access is available and access the desktop from a variety of devices from smart phones to dedicated thin clients to laptops. Using the Green Qube service, Preston finally convinced me there is an actual business use for the iPad as a portable thin client. Using the client installed, he brought up a Windows 7 desktop fired up Excel and was able to work on a spreadsheet. Need Outlook? No problem, he even had Exchange server access. Suddenly, a cute but expensive toy (to me anyway) became an interesting business tool.

With actual full featured desktops as a service (DAAS?) some business exposures that have been very hard to manage suddenly become very manageable indeed. Take the issue of data loss/theft. Up till now mobile employees have been issued laptops and often sensitive data (like client information) resides on the local drive. What happens if that laptop is lost or stolen? Currently companies have to rely on drive level encryption or special software that allows for remote removal of data assuming the unit connects to the Internet. With current thin client software, only screen and control information transits the network. No actual data is stored at the local system to be compromised if the unit is lost or stolen.

A second risk that most companies really try not to think about it business continuity. Sure you have your server data backed up and sent off site. You might even use a commercial backup service to back up local system information every night. But what happens if you are unable to use your place of business due to fire, accident or natural disaster. What if your place of business can function but your employees have lost their homes? How do you continue to do business? This is an area where virtualization can be very, very powerful. Even if you do your own virtualization as opposed to going with a service like Green Qube you can still take advantage of the service as part of your Business Continuity plan by contracting the service to storing a copy your virtual desktop images and spooling them up when you need them. Depending on how full-service the service provider is, they could host a warm standby for your back office needs as well. Now, relocating in an emergency is a matter of making sure your people are someplace they can get Internet access and have a device with the connector installed on it (maybe stock up on iPads?).

Obviously, desktop virtualization is not a panacea that will solve every IT issue. There are still some applications that don't take well to operating in a virtual environment. Some users need to be able to operate without any network access. Going thin client will add network traffic that has to be allowed for and may require investment to make older network infrastructure capable of handling the load. Like any other technology, it must be viewed as a tool. Like any other tool, its usefulness depends on the job you are using it to perform. That said, desktop virtualization like server virtualization is a tool whose time has finally come and as business as well as technology leaders we need to seriously evaluate if this is a tool we should be using.

Have a comment or question about this article? Please feel free to e-mail me at dlb@coonasstech.com

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Has the Time Arrived for Desktop Virtualization?