Lessons learned on desktop and application virtualization

By Christina Torode, Senior News Writer | Feb 9, 2009

1 comments

Delicious

Digg

Email

Print

Server virtualization has hit its stride in companies large and small. Desktop and application virtualization, on the other hand, has a few growing pains. It is still unclear what the full capabilities of the technology are, whether CIOs should wait to see if the technology evolves further before incorporating it into their desktop strategy, and how vendors will ultimately charge for their products.

Add to that mixed messages from vendors on what they think your company needs: virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) vs.application virtualization vs. a client hypervisor vs. application streaming, or all of the above, and it is easy to see why a lot of CIOs are still performing due diligence.

Here, experts share a few tips on getting started with desktop virtualization and lessons their customers have learned along the way:

Make sure you find out how your software licensing will work on virtualized desktops. One customer had to pay Microsoft $300,000 after an audit of an application virtualization project. The company was using Symantec Corp.'s Norton Ghost disk cloning technology to create ghost images of four different desktop models. 'They figured they should only be charged for four images, even though those four images were being used by 800 users,' said Ty Schwab, CEO and founder of Blackhawk Technology Consulting LLC in Eugene, Ore.

His advice: Check with all of your vendors to make sure you understand how they license and charge for virtual desktops and applications, particularly smaller vendors that for the most part haven't figured out new pricing models for virtualization.

Double up on projects. Planning a hardware refresh, or an OS upgrade? Many CIOs considering desktop virtualization are waiting for the release of Windows 7. It's less costly than building XP images for virtual desktops and then doing it all over again for Windows 7, advised Chris Wolf, an analyst at Burton Group Inc. in Midvale, Utah.

Map user profiles. Create a profile of groups of users in the company as you formulate a desktop virtualization strategy: What applications are they using? How often are they on the road? What kind of functionality do they need in terms of multimedia? When you are ready to conduct a pilot, start with groups or users who are task-oriented, such as those using point-of-sale applications or contract workers who do not need a lot of functionality to get their job done. Proving out the ROI in test groups will allow you to see where the technology is the right fit. From there you can branch out and customize the technology to the needs of more demanding users to avoid pushback.