Getting Started

Every long journey has a beginning. While I’ve already begun with a reprint of an article I recently wrote for Business Management magazine on the tremendous TCO / ROI benefits of desktop virtualization it probably makes sense to provide some personal background and focus for future entries.

I’m a 15+ year veteran of high technology. I’ve served in a wide variety of roles including public relations, analyst relations, business strategy, product manager and product marketing for companies such as SGI, Applied Materials, Apple, Cypress Semiconductor, Sun Microsystems, VMware and a variety of start ups. I’ve seen products -- good and not as good -- come and go. Some spark the imagination for what’s possible and some simply derivative. I can’t tell what will succeed but certainly in retrospect I can tell you why something did or didn’t.

Just for full disclosure I should mention that technology wasn’t my first love -- and it wasn’t my first job foray following school either. My first love is politics. I spent four years working for the Lt. Governor of the State of California followed by a stint as Silicon Valley political fundraiser for Senator Dianne Feinstein. I only disclose this as I’m very apt to fall into a political discourse at the drop of a hat. Ultimately everything that we do, see or experience is impacted by our local, state or federal government so it’s important to remember how everything impacts everything else we do. With that said I’m a big fan of free enterprise and capitalism. I’m not a fan of unregulated enterprise run amuck; we’ve seen what that can do. Nothing is truly free (unfortunately).

On with the show...

Desktop Virtualization: Smart IT Infrastructure for Challenging Economic Times

(Originally published in Business Management (Q2 2009):  http://www.busmanagement.com/article/Issue-15/Data-Management/Desktop-Virtualization--Smart-IT-Infrastructure-for-Challenging-Economic-Times/ )

by Benjamin Baer

With the recent economic downturn, almost every industry sector has reported a decrease in their IT budgets. Reshuffling their priorities for the new year, organizations will focus on inefficiencies and redundancies in their IT infrastructure.

With analysts expecting IT spending to slow or decrease in 2009[i], IT managers must discover which technologies will enable them to cut their costs, leverage existing investments and improve overall management.

Over the last ten years, server virtualization - data center optimization products from VMware, Microsoft, Citrix and others - has materialized as a technology that offers flexibility and greater return on investment from IT resources. In these tough economic times, virtualization can provide great advantages to companies by significantly cutting operational and infrastructure costs, and in many cases, increasing productivity. Today, new approaches to virtualization are emerging that leverage existing infrastructure and can optimize desktop infrastructure in much the same way.

Server-based desktop virtualization moves the management and security-sensitive components of a PC - software, memory and drivers - to the data center. By using this approach, organizations can centralize and improve desktop management while concurrently cutting maintenance and deployment costs, improving security and reducing energy consumption. Desktop virtualization can also help create a computing infrastructure that enables quick growth, flexibility and scalability as opposed to traditional PCs, which because of their infrastructure costs and deployment model, have limited flexibility and much higher operational costs.

In any desktop architecture, there are three components of measured cost: initial acquisition cost, short- and long-term maintenance costs (which, when added to acquisition costs, are often referred to as "total cost of ownership), and the harder to quantify, green and security costs. With IT budgets decreasing, one of the greatest advantages of desktop virtualization solutions is that organizations do not need to invest heavily upfront before obtaining short- and long-term benefits such as flexible deployment models, higher endpoint security, longer endpoint lifespan, and centralized management, to name a few.

Debunking Desktop Virtualization Myths
As with other emerging technologies, a number of myths surround the implementation of desktop virtualization.  These myths include beliefs that virtual desktops deployments 1) are more expensive because of the cost of the back-end infrastructure, 2) do not offer end users the same user experience as a traditional PC, and 3) cannot support peripherals and changing user demands.

What IT often does not realize is that with newer server-based approaches to desktop virtualization, virtual desktops work within the same infrastructure as traditional PCs and are often less expensive to implement despite the back-end server and platform virtualization needs. The cost of a server plus the cost of a virtual desktop deployment is the same or less than the cost for the same number of PCs with the same amount of computing power. Additionally, by deploying desktop virtualization instead of traditional PCs, IT managers realize additional time, green and cost savings that traditional PCs do not offer.

While traditional thin client computing has netted many customers the benefits of centralized management and more secure endpoints, many new built-from-the-ground-up desktop virtualization solutions have far exceeded what older thin client computing alternatives could achieve. New solutions exist that can provide a seamless Windows user experience, access to all the peripherals and devices an end user may want to use along with all the benefits of centralized deployment and management. Some of the solutions can even provide a more robust security component than the thinnest thin client.

Improved Management with Desktop Virtualization
Gartner recently announced that effective management of the PC can reduce the total cost of ownership for desktop PCs by 42 percent.[ii] By centralizing control of desktops within the data center, server-based desktop virtualization makes management significantly more effective while leveraging virtualization so that organizations can get more out of underutilized servers.

With central management, IT managers can easily roll out software, updates and security patches. Instead of attending to each computer on-site, which can take hours or even days for some remote branch offices, IT can manage desktops from the data center and instantly provision new desktops for users - eliminating the break-fix cycle and required on-site repair work. During difficult economic times, this means lower operational costs, quicker time to deployment and a far more flexible infrastructure that can adjust quickly to end user demands. Central management also enables desktops to plug into a unified disaster recovery and business continuity infrastructure. If a user's desktop crashes, the user can easily be provisioned and returned to the last working instance of their Windows desktop.

With server-based desktop virtualization, security is better managed - desktops and their users can be assigned and identified regardless of where users are accessing their desktop.

This secure and reliable log-on process can integrate tightly with directory services such as Microsoft Active Directory. Rather than maintain a separate database of users that might become out-of-sync, desktop virtualization connection brokers typically query Active Directory directly for each log-on attempt. IT administrators only need to perform user account management in one place: Active Directory.  The same authentication process can also be created using LDAP directory infrastructure.

With so much time saved through centralized management, IT is able to drive strategic technology initiatives focused on contributing to the bottom-line rather than tactical initiatives such as maintaining an end user's desktop.

Going Green
Although most organizations will decide to implement desktop virtualization because of its initial and operational cost and time savings, green benefits are another significant way that organizations can save with server-based virtual desktop solutions.

According to an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) report to Congress, data centers consumed about 60 billion kilowatt-hours (kWh) in 2006, which was around 1.5 percent of the total U.S. electricity consumption for that year.[iii] For organizations, lowering energy consumption is not just about benefitting the environment, but also about saving money. With desktop virtualization, the client device at the desktop uses less energy per hour than the average 350-400 watts per hour used by a traditional PC. Even with the energy consumed by the server hosting multiple desktop instances in the data center, the energy spent with desktop virtualization is still far less than with PCs.

For further savings, organizations may also begin to audit the amount of energy they use to determine if cuts can be made and if departments are meeting organizational energy standards. Many energy companies[iv] have created rebate programs as incentives and allow organizations to submit green IT initiatives for possible rebate.  In most cases, they also provide free energy audits, so that companies are able to track what they save. By addressing the energy use of PCs and deploying desktop virtualization, companies will find an excellent way to reduce consumption while cutting costs.

Security and Additional Benefits Realized
Acquisition cost savings may be the impetus for adopting desktop virtualization, but they are only the beginning of realized savings. Many companies that deploy virtual desktops say they experience many additional benefits - the most important of these being increased security. Because of centralized management, IT is able to control who is accessing what computer when. In addition to access and identity management, IT has complete control over USB ports and can determine how certain users may or may not use them. This works twofold: preventing the spread of malware or a virus from an infected end user USB peripheral like a flash drive, as well as preventing the removal of unauthorized data onto these types of devices. Even when users have authorized access, certain solutions record USB operations, allowing businesses to keep track of all their information assets. Central management also enables companies to more easily comply with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act regarding required email retention by making it easier for IT managers to determine what remains in storage.

These capabilities will only enhance desktop utility in an era where flexibility and transient workforces become de rigueur. As temporary workforces ebb and flow, desktop virtualization can provide a powerful security solution for IT by ensuring that any employee who has access to company resources doesn't also provide an insecure portal to the company's intellectual property.

Because of the security-enabling component of desktop virtualization solutions, end users also have more mobility. If IT can ensure that end users only access their particular desktop image no matter which desktop device is used, then IT can also enable the end user access to their desktop from multiple locations. This ability increases the flexibility of desktops and enables IT to support a variety of Windows usage models depending on the business. For example, a call center consisting of multiple agents performing the same tasks and running the same applications will use a pooled Windows collection model. In this model, a common set of identical virtual machines is maintained so that when a user logs in and starts a new session they are assigned an arbitrary virtual machine. Alternately, a cloned Windows collection model can be used for deployments where workers require a dedicated virtual machine, but can still benefit from simplified management and use of a common template. This model permanently assigns each user a specific virtual desktop; however, the Windows image originates from the same template. The Windows collection models also enable far better licensing control and management for IT to ensure that not only are software licenses current but also optimized for the number of end users.

Finally, if an organization does decide to adopt desktop virtualization, they can take comfort in the fact that their solution has longevity, and will not quickly become obsolete like traditional PCs. Many studies have concluded that the average PC will have to be upgraded or depreciated over three years. The useful life of a desktop virtualized client solution can be twice the length of a traditional PC. As long as the desktop hardware device is capable of handling the software updates made on the server, the solution will still work. This means that a company has the ability to purchase now and easily scale out in the future, without worrying that their technology will be outdated.

Pano Logic & Pano Virtual Desktop Solution
A truly unique, built-from-the-ground-up desktop virtualization comes from a company called Pano Logic[v].  The Pano Virtual Desktop Solution (VDS) provides a complete Windows desktop with support for USB peripherals and a native video and audio experience. This level of Windows support and feature-rich Windows user environment is even more significant when you consider that Pano VDS is delivered through the industry's only zero client. That is, the Pano desktop is a completely stateless, CPU-less, memory-less endpoint; the device doesn't even have a fan. To the IT manager this means a device with the highest levels of security, robustness and deployment flexibility.

Additionally the Pano VDS provides self-help options and the ability for quick and easy desktop configuration changes creating flexibility that offers users a superior Windows experience compared to traditional PCs.  This capability is enabled by IT managers in minutes and provisioned remotely from the data center.  In case of a Windows or application error, Pano VDS can also provide end users the ability to return to the last working Windows instance. This capability improves help desk implementations and empowers end users by giving them the capability to help themselves.

The Pano Logic green story is differentiated as well.  The Pano zero client desktop consumes only 3% of the energy consumed by a traditional PC - just three watts - and only 18% of the energy when including its share of the server's power. The Pano VDS also provides a smaller packaging footprint, resulting in savings on waste disposal. The average PC weighs 30 pounds and requires 5-10 pounds of packaging to ship. The Pano VDS client is 18 cubic inches in volume, with a shipping weight of 1.1 pounds, of which only 3.5 oz is packaging - reducing shipping and waste disposal costs.

As the Pano client does not have any software, operating system or moving parts, its useful life can be twice the length of a traditional PC. By leveraging a server-based Windows instance, the Pano solution is future-proofed.

Conclusion
While the future of the economy remains uncertain, organizations should look to invest in technologies that will protect and leverage their existing investments as well as streamline IT processes to cut costs and make IT more nimble. A desktop virtualization solution like Pano VDS is a great investment because it cuts initial and maintenance costs while improving management and green savings. However, it also gives organizations desktop flexibility and results in a host of secondary benefits which often can save as much time and money as the primary benefits.

References:
[i] www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=776112
[ii] www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=636308
[iii]yosemite.epa.gov/opa/admpress.nsf/0de87f2b4bcbe56e852572a000651fde/4be8c9799fbceb028525732c0053e1d5!OpenDocument
[iv] For example, Pacific Gas & Electric in Northern California (http://www.pge.com/hightech/)
[v] www.panologic.com