Is 2010 The Year Of Widespread Desktop Virtualization?

Many of think this could be the case.  It looks like a "perfect storm" cloud be shaping up in the industry to fundamentally change this piece of the IT landscape.

The thought is timely, given VMware's recent VMware View 4 announcement.  Check out the details from VMware here, or see Chad's excellent writeup here.

So, let's look at the enablers -- and the inhibitors -- and how they might play out in the very near future.

Desktops Can Be The Bane of IT

Of all the things that enterprise IT organizations have to do, desktop support is probably the least rewarding.

It's a huge expense and always is a target for cost reduction.  No matter what you do, users are rarely happy.  To make matters worse, it's always at the forefront of every security and compliance discussion. 

And -- at the end of the day -- it's hard to make a case that most organizations gets a 'strategic advantage' from this part of the IT landscape.  Indeed, many large organizations have outsourced some or all of their desktop environment for that reason.

Here Comes Windows 7

By now, it's pretty obvious that Windows 7 will be successful in a way that Vista wasn't.  Unfortunately, most enterprises are running XP on seriously downgraded desktops and laptops.

If you accept the fact that, before too long, most enterprises will need to upgrade both the operating system as well as the hardware it runs on, it brings up an interesting strategic question:

Do you do what you did before, or look at a new model that incorporates virtual desktops?

If you choose the first path, you're talking about a complete revamp of hardware, software, process and procedure -- an enormous expense -- that basically gets you back to where you were a few years back, strategically speaking -- physical desktops.

If you choose the second path, you're talking about investing in getting to a much better world.

And I'm betting that many organizations will seriously consider providing "desktop as a service" internally, or (more pragmatically) turning to a service provider to do the same.

Here Comes VMware View

VMware recently took the wraps off their new VMware View 4 offering.  There's a heckuva lot here to like, including a flex architecture that can run fat server, fat client, or any dynamic combination.  PC over IP protocols for rich media experiences.  And all the "supporting cast" of provisioning and management enablers that make this more of an enterprise solution, and less of a point product.

Sure, the technology has to stand on its own merits vs. competitive alternatives, but I think that most organizations will see value in standing up one comprehensive virtualized environment that can do both server-based applications as well as virtualized user experiences -- rather than a piecemeal approach.

But getting to a large-scale virtual desktop environment is going to take more than wonderful technology from VMware.

The Cost Hurdle

Costs associated with the desktop PC environment are well understood.  Most organizations understand what it costs per user per year to provision and support a desktop environment.  And those costs have been continually driven down over the last few decades.

EVen though there's a significant amount of "soft" benefits associated with a virtualized desktop approach, most people will be forced to focus on the hard costs -- hardware and software.

Good news here: the hardware costs associated with virtual desktops appear to have begun their rapid downward spiral.  Various forms of storage data dedupe are now common for both primary storage and backups.  Large-memory designs (Cisco's UCS) allows many more VDI sessions to be run per server.  And we're starting to see a whole new raft of netbooks and thin client devices from Wyse and others.

Put differently, whatever infrastructure costing you've done in the past, it'll probably be badly out of date in the very near future.  It's moving that fast.

The Management Hurdle -- Getting Opex Out

We've got decades of operational process built around physical desktops.  And all of that will have to change -- not to replicate the sins of the past, but to create better.

It's not enough to simply save money on hardware and software -- we've got to cut people and process out of the equation as well -- and deliver a better user experience at the same time.

One clear example is provisioning -- the VMware View environment lends itself to a self-service approach with a zero-touch workflow for IT. 

Another is configuration management -- it's now possible to decompose a desktop environment into its constituent pieces, and not only assemble it on-the-fly, but understand where all the pieces come from -- useful for patch management and license compliance.

And the big one -- in my mind -- is addressing endpoint security in a fundamentally better way.

The Security Opportunity

Face it -- desktops are information portals into the enterprise environment.  They're probably responsible for 90% of the ugly security breaches you read about in the news.

And many of us believe that desktop virtualization gives us a once-in-a-career opportunity to "harden" these environments in a way we never could do in the physical world. 

Not "good enough" security: world-class security that's adaptable, auditable and verifiable.

You may have noticed EMC's RSA division released their new security solution for VMware View 4 yesterday.  No coincidence, t's next-gen security technology applied to virtual desktops. 

Compared to what's usually out there today, it's an entirely different world.

The Operational Model Changes

Put 1,000 or 10,000 virtual desktops in a data center, and you've got an entirely different operational model on your hands.  For those of you familiar with block-mode 3270 and MVS, you'll get an eerie sense of deja vu.

High-speed backup and recovery becomes important.  HA designs for compute and data become important.  Disaster recovery and business continuity becomes important.  Robust change control processes become important.

This ain't a simple desktop computing environment any more -- it takes its place alongside other mission-critical applications that run the business.  More than few organization have had that realization, and are now thinking "robust and efficient" rather than "cheap and cheerful".

The Service Provider Opportunity

I am absolutely sure that, before too long, we'll see dozens of "DaaS" -- desktop as a service -- offerings in addition to the few that are already out there today.  This party has just begun.

Undoubtedly, there will be many thousands of IT organizations who simply look at the situation, and decline to re-engineer their entire desktop environment from the ground up.

And, like any open marketplace, we'll probably see all sorts of differentiation in cost, performance, availability, security and other relevant factors.

Finally, It's All About The Users

I often try to point out that -- for many environments -- the move to desktop virtualization will be probably be driven less by IT-centric concerns, and more by knowledge workers that demand a working environment that follows them around from device to device, and works the way they do.

I, for one, want to live in this world.

Comments

[Bob]

I love how we always, eventually, get back to mainframe technology. Virtual desktops are pretty much the same as the old dumb terminals from the 70's and 80's. There was an attempt to do this with UNIX technology in the 90's. I think they were "X-stations" (I don't remember exactly). Do users really want to give up the the "power" associated with a desktop? Maybe now is the time ... time will tell.

[Doug Rainbolt]

My question is how long can Teradici remain as an independent company? Will VMWare pick them up now before Teradici experiences great success in licensing others? Of course, there is always the question of Citrix’ war chest in this area, including its HDX technology. Regardless, it’s good to see two solid vendors target this space and compete to elevate the richness of the desktop experience, whatever the platform, wherever users find themselves. Dell, from my vantage point, appears to be siding with Citrix, at least in this area. The question will become how much clout Randy Groves has with his past employer to influence a shift. Personally, as an OEM, I might be nervous about too much dependency on Teradici; unless I had insight into its exit strategy. BTW, I wouldn’t be surprised to eventually see Dell-Perot-Citrix events.

[Mark Bowker]

"I, for one, want to live in this world." Are you looking to buy a MAC and run Windows 7 ;-)

A couple points ESG consistently gathers from end users:

1.) Desktop virtualization is driven from an IT executive level and typically not within the four walls of the data center like server virtualization. An ESG research report from early 2009 indicated that approximately 21% of organizations are using a VDI solution with another 8% planning to do so.

2.) VDI is ONE of many architectural delivery models for desktop virtualization. Desktop virtualization includes: VDI (centrally hosted & networked delivered), client side hypervisor (Type I) and application virtualization.

3.) VMware will likely face much stiffer competition from Citrix, Microsoft and even Symantec in this space than they have in the server virtualization market.

Lastly - we are seeing a bunch of interest in hosted desktops!

[Dave Martinez]

I think we are coming close to living in this world. For a number of my customers, the biggest hurdle was tuning up their server virtualization to set then up for desktop virtualization. I think we are getting to the point where most people have a pretty solid server virtualization model and are open to looking at desktop.

Along with that, and maybe more impotant, we are now able to find a much higher desktop to server ration with VDI.

I agree with Mark Bowker that VMware is going to be facing stiffer competition. Only 1 week after VMware released the new View, Citrix just unveiled XenDesktop 4. I am a big fan of this competition. When ESX was the only server kid on the block, improvements were slow. This competition with Citrix will keep VDI on it's toes.