Australian research shows that the tightening of IT budgets from the economic downturn, and mounting evidence that virtual desktops are more expensive than well-managed full desktops, will dampen enthusiasm for this technology in 2009.
commentary In 2008 virtual desktops were one of the hottest IT
infrastructure topics, however, the tightening of IT budgets from
the economic downturn, and mounting evidence that virtual desktops
are more expensive than well-managed full desktops, will dampen
enthusiasm for this technology in 2009.
IBRS advisor, Kevin McIsaac (Credit: IBRS)
This was clearly highlighted at a recent peer network
round-table, which we facilitated, where we confirmed our long-held
view that virtual desktops are not a general purpose replacement
for a full desktop PC and that reports of mass roll-outs of virtual
desktops are pure vendor hype.
The peer group at these round-tables consisted of desktop and
infrastructure experts from 19 Australian organisations, many of
which are the largest IT-consuming organisations in Australia and New Zealand.
As part of the discussion, we polled the attendees on the number
of virtual desktops deployed into production and found only five
(26 per cent) responses.
Furthermore, the two largest production implementations had only
700 and 600 virtual desktops respectively. Out of the approximately
286,000 desktops deployed across all 19 organisations, only 1,585
(0.55 per cent) were virtual desktops and the highest virtual desktop
penetration in any single organisation was only 2.3 per cent.
Based on the plans that these organisations have to roll out virtual
desktops, a generous estimate is that by the end of 2009 production of virtual desktops will be 1.6 per cent of all desktops. A more realistic
estimate is well less than 1 per cent.
What is now clearly revealed, is that even after years of
intense marketing, extensive product development, and in the face
of considerable interest from IT organisations, the uptake of
virtual desktops is still very low and mainstream adoption is a
long way off, if ever!
This reality should be compared to vendors' press releases, and
the accompanying news stories, that routinely indicate massive
uptake of virtual desktops and position it as a revolutionary
technology that is on the verge of going mainstream.
In our research we identify five common scenarios for using thin
desktops:
WAN-enabled client/server applications: most of the
organisations we spoke to already used Terminal Services or Citrix
Presentation Server for delivering some applications. Since Citrix
is highly effective in this scenario, and current virtual desktop
products do not support delivery of individual applications, it is
unlikely virtual desktop use will grow in this scenario in the next
few years.
Small remote offices: a few of the organisations were using
Citrix Published Desktops for this purpose and there was some
interest in using virtual desktops in this scenario. However, there
was no clear consensus at the round-tables that a virtual desktop
would work better than Terminal Services or a Citrix Published
Desktop.
Of the five organisations with production implementations of virtual desktops, all were used for offshore developers.
There was considerable discussion about the impact that
introducing thin terminals has on supporting new technologies, for example VoIP, multimedia and unified communications, with the view that
thin terminals were currently constrained, but that this constraint was
slowly being lifted.
Secure remote access: several organisations already used
Terminal Services, or Citrix, to enable users to access a desktop
from remote locations. At least one organisation had optimised this
to enable staff to seamlessly move from a full desktop in the
office to a thin desktop at home, while retaining the same user
experience — that is, access to data and applications.
Over the next 18
months, as new technology enables virtual desktops to be migrated
from the server to the desktop and back again, the use of
virtual desktops may start to challenge Terminal Services in this
area.
Harsh environments: while there was some discussion about
this, there were no clear consensus about the benefits of using
thin terminals over PCs in a harsh environment.
BPO and offshore developer desktops: interestingly, of the
five organisations with production implementations of virtual desktops, all were used for offshore developers. As discussed in earlier
research, this is the best, and perhaps only viable, scenario for
virtual desktops.
While there was interest in the use of Virtual Desktops, all
organisations found it difficult to create a compelling business
case that favoured a virtual desktop over a full desktop, Terminal
Services or Citrix Application Delivery technology, except for the
BPO and offshore developer desktops niche.
Dr Kevin McIsaac is an advisor with Australian analyst firm Intelligent Business Research Services. He has 25 years of IT experience and is a recognised expert in infrastructure, operations and vendor management. Prior to his current role, he was research director of META Group's Asia-Pacific Group division. He has also held leadership positions at Computer Associates and Functional Software.
