Let’s talk about VDI

The launch of VMware’s Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) has revitalised interest in the thin client computing concept, however, desktop virtualisation is still in its infancy. Traditional thin-client vendors Citrix and Microsoft; as well as new kid on the block VMware, are talking VDI up for all it’s worth but thin client has always been a tactical solution for most organisations (see box out). It remains to be seen if VDI will be the same or if it will gain mainstream acceptance; but if you talk to three people in the IT industry about what impact VDI has had or will have on business, you’re likely to get four opinions.

Citrix area vice president Australia and New Zealand, Rob Willis, is not unsurprisingly enthusiastic about the possibilities for VDI.

“A lot of people are revisiting the desire to have a thinner device on the desktop to reduce power and make it easier to manage while providing a fully functional desktop. It’s also being looked at by people who are looking to put the desktop in a remote location like offshore, a country town, another city, but keeping the data, applications etc. in a centralised location. So particularly companies that are moving things offshore are very interested in the ability to keep it all local, manage it all local but deliver it offshore.”

Getronics Microsoft solutions manager, Brett Lightfoot, is a passionate advocate for the possibilities of VDI. “Just recently I experienced accessing a powerful ERP system hosted on the other side of the world from a mobile PDA-style device. At that point I realised that these technologies really do have an amazing ability to change the way we all work.”

IBM’s sales manager for x server business in Asia Pacific, Peter Hedges, is extremely upbeat about the possibilities for VDI. “There are some amazing new technologies around virtualising applications on the desktop such as having virtualised applications running in a shell, which is great for organisations that want to have on demand applications but don’t want to do all the packaging and distribution.”

When talking about where VDI is right now, Gen-i virtualisation specialist, Safi Obeidullah, is more circumspect. “Desktop virtualisation is still in its infancy and is slowly gaining momentum on the back of the server virtualisation wave. Along with major players, Citrix and VMware, there are a number of companies starting to play in this space. I think it is still early days and while we may see tactical deployments it will still be another 12 months or so before we see mainstream adoption.”
Infoplex managing director, Sean Kaye, believes that VDI gives organisations a viable alternative to Citrix but that at the current stage of development neither seems to be winning out ahead of the other.

“Virtualisation has more potential upside than a traditional Citrix solution, which probably explains why Citrix is so bullish on virtualisation themselves.” Nevertheless, he believes that VDI’s main problem is that it lacks a killer application.

“VDI hasn’t yet made a dramatic splash because it isn’t really driving a particular benefit. We can talk about the speed of provisioning, but if an organisation has a good SOE and a process for deploying that across its fleet then provisioning is slightly offset as a key win. The desktop replacement vendors selling thin clients also haven’t really provided a compelling experience either, although it is getting there with Wyse. Desktop virtualisation is disruptive, but it hasn’t yet reached a point where it is impacting the current market – it will come though.”

So if pretty much everyone agrees about the possibilities for VDI, what are the drivers towards implementation, but more importantly what are the inhibitors preventing its take up? Obeidullah believes the basic drivers for desktop virtualisation come down to making the corporate desktop environment more flexible. “VDI offers a way for organisations to avoid the regular desktop refresh cycle, which costs a lot of time and money. It can also help organisations meet environmental targets, particularly around reducing power consumption. Desktop virtualisation can enable businesses to replace traditional workstations with thin-client devices that utilise significantly less power.”

The Green IT credentials of VDI are also put forward as a compelling driver by VMware senior product marketing manager APAC, Andre Kemp. “As carbon trading becomes a reality for corporate Australia, virtualisation is the only technology that delivers cold, hard savings on Green IT emissions – power consumption; really the only technology that delivers immediately is virtualisation.”

Having the option to work from home, even just a couple of days a week, is cited as a compelling reason to choose one company over another for many knowledge workers, yet providing this flexibility presents security challenges for the IT establishment. As a result, some commentators see VDI as an important facilitator of new more flexible ways of working.

“Increasing the flexibility and portability of the corporate desktop environment will also lead to further changes in working arrangements with options such as working from home,” said Obeidullah. “Another trend that is gaining momentum is allowing employees to bring their own laptops to work. With the entrance of Gen-Y and the Millenniums into the workplace, organisations will need to be able to accommodate very tech savvy staff. Allowing people to use their own laptops, whether they are Windows, Mac or Linux, and then leveraging desktop virtualisation to deliver the corporate desktop would help engage and retain the next generation of workers.”

This view is echoed by Kaye. “Social change will play a part in VDI. Computers are integrating into people’s lives more deeply. Imagine a scenario where I have my MacBook Pro on which sits my iTunes, personal photos and tools for updating my blog. Wouldn’t it be great if I could bring my MacBook Pro into the office, my AirPort network adapter picks up a Wi-Fi network and it knows my MAC address? The Wi-Fi registers my MacBook Pro onto a secure VLAN and because the network can’t control the security posture of my computer, it decides to send me a VM of the company’s standard Vista SOE with Office 2007.
“I can access the Internet regulated from my MacBook Pro, but have a throttled connection whereas through my VM, I go through the company proxy and get access to the intranet. My Windows session knows all of my local printers based on my VLAN and on the MacBook Pro I get a slower old laser printer for personal stuff if necessary. I as a user then get the best of both worlds, I have my personal computing space with me all the time if I’m travelling or whatever, and when I’m at work the company gets to ensure I’m using its controlled environment. Obviously the big hole in my utopian theory is “who supports the laptop” but realistically that should be overcome pretty easily.”

AppSense vice president of sales Australasia, Sean Walsh, sees the VDI desktop delivery model as ‘a sleeping giant.’ But he argues that organisations looking to implement VDI fail to consider the personal aspect of the PC at their peril. “The most common mistake businesses make is treating a desktop as ‘just a desktop’ and not a personal device with a specific end-user. It is comparatively easy to virtualise 10-100 back- end servers which the user is not interacting with every day, however, when you get to the desktop – it’s personal!

“Businesses tend to forget about policy, profiles, security and personalisation in the VDI desktop delivery model. In a centralised environment, users may be less inclined to agree VDI is a positive step forward if their profiles and personal settings are neglected. Most importantly, productivity will be enhanced when users are working with familiar desktop settings that are predictable, consistent and responsive. As we move to multi-role staff, who are working from home and different locations, you will need an IT delivery model that is adaptable, flexible and swift, without breaking the bank.”

It is also quite possible that it will be a hybrid device – halfway between a traditional PC and a thin client – that enables VDI to break through into the mainstream. “Client side virtualisation, where the application sits in the data centre and is streamed down to the client over the network and they run the application on their machine using their own CPU, memory, hard disk, is a compelling alternative,” said Willis.

“The good thing about that approach is you can disconnect the client you can move around, it looks like it is installed on the machine but it isn’t actually installed, it runs in an isolation environment, what’s called a bubble, which has advantages in socialising applications, updating applications, making it quicker to deploy.

Disconnecting from the data centre may be easier said than done, however, as one of the main inhibitors identified to greater take up of VDI is connectivity.

“Once a user needs to run offline they often need to then look at a local desktop,” said Lightfoot. “That’s where some of the new technologies in application virtualisation which can be cached locally help, and then as our connectivity becomes ever increasingly more available and cheaper many of these barriers are disappearing.”