Virtual desktops thrive in the cloud

Virtualisation for the little guy

The attractions of desktop virtualisation are the same for small businesses as for the top end of town but vendors such as Microsoft’s Jeff Alexander are sceptical of a widespread acceptance due to infrastructure cost. He says virtual desktops are of little use to a small business of fewer than 25 users.

“When you’re trying to virtualise a desktop there are a bunch of things you have to do at the back end to make that happen,” Alexander says. “That may be more expensive than they’re willing to do.”

The infrastructure cost is a barrier to such deployments, which is why it is often paired with server refreshes that deliver the grunt needed. “You can’t deliver all this on low-end hardware,” Alexander says.

This is why Microsoft has 250- seat minimum and Citrix rarely gets involved with less than 1000 desktops. VMware’s Wakeman says the benefits of desktop virtualisation kick in at 500 seats where management is a major issue.

“For a small IT team there is a distinct return on investment around making desktops easier to patch and manage,” Wakeman says.

But it presents a major opportunity for managed service providers streaming applications from their data centres, although perceptions over lost control need to be countered by the savvy reseller.

The hosted model would make desktop virtualisation more 

attractive to smaller companies that are unwilling to pay for servers powerful enough to handle the heavy workloads of virtual desktops.