What Can Desktop Virtualization Do for Your Organization?

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G00229491

What Can Desktop Virtualization Do for Your

Organization?

Published: 27 January 2012

Analyst(s): Nathan Hill, Mark A. Margevicius, Philip Dawson

A number of desktop virtualization adoption expectations were reviewed

and prioritized by attendees at a recent summit workshop. Gartner reviews

the ability of these technologies to meet attendee expectations and ranks

them for assessment priority.

Key Findings

■ _{Feedback highlighted that there continues to be common misconceptions concerning desktop}

virtualization technology fit.

■ _{There is renewed interest in server-based computing (SBC) and application virtualization, as}

well as in the typically dominant topic of hosted virtual desktop (HVD), which represents a more balanced viewpoint across the desktop virtualization technology space.

■ _{Consumerization — especially the demand for the use of tablets in the enterprise — helps}

maintain a high level of interest in desktop virtualization.

■ _{The main challenges in adopting HVD continue to be cost and risks associated with}

transforming the desktop environment.

Recommendations

■ _{Build a program to assess which desktop virtualization technologies can aid the business, both}

tactically and strategically, especially when the use case and end-user needs are well-understood.

■ _{Ensure your primary drivers for adoption are valid — make sure you will get the benefits you}

expect. Plan how to manage and support implementation, especially organizational ownership and how the technology can integrate with existing operations and monitoring processes.

■ _{Review and assess your application portfolio to understand (1) whether there are licensing or}

maintenance restrictions in adopting a new model and (2) if there are potential compatibility or functional issues.

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Analysis

A number of potential drivers for desktop virtualization adoption were discussed during a workshop at Gartner's November 2011 Data Center and IT Operations Summit in London (see Note 1).

Specific emphasis was placed on determining whether there were valid business drivers to adopt these technologies, and several important considerations were explored, including technology issues and limitations, and how to integrate these technologies with existing infrastructure. The workshop highlighted a number of consistent technology justifications, along with the most prevalent issues related to adoption.

Many enterprises in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) are taking the opportunity to review how desktop virtualization technologies, such as HVD, can help with their key initiatives, as well as exploring some of the newer capabilities such as work space virtualization. The attendees at the "Virtualizing Your PCs and Client Devices Workshop" were able to share some of their experiences. The insights expressed by this group of business and IT leaders were generally consistent with those experienced by their peers in other regions.

Adoption Expectations

The workshop highlighted several areas where attendees had expectations of what desktop

virtualization adoption would provide them. The topics covered in the workshop are reviewed in the following sections and ordered according to the relative importance placed on them by the

participants, from highest to lowest. For each topic, we provide Gartner input on whether these are valid drivers and indicate their relative importance. This input directly reflects the feedback and advice offered during the workshop.

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The Gartner viewpoint rankings of high, medium and low priority reflect the relative importance of the technology in addressing the topic issue or use case, as well as the maturity of the solution.

1. Consumerization/Bring Your Own Device (BYOD)

Most participants were interested in how desktop virtualization could enable BYOD programs and give more flexibility to their end users. The idea of empowering end users via use of their own devices to deliver the highest levels of productivity in the workplace is certainly attractive and one of the hottest topics right now, but in many cases is at odds with defining and securing the corporate boundary.

Gartner Viewpoint — High Priority

Desktop virtualization technologies, including SBC, HVD, application virtualization and client hypervisors, all show promise in providing a way to abstract the access device from corporate content. The most interesting technology places the lowest set of requirements on the end device and maximizes flexibility of access. The smallest footprint is delivered via the use of a remote display protocol to present content that is being executed in a secure and controlled environment. In theory, any device that supports installation of the access software and supports secure

authentication techniques is a candidate to enable this solution.

It is important to note that non-PC access devices, such as Apple iPad and Google Android-based touch tablets, may not be a good fit to the content that is being accessed. In many cases, the demand for this model is driven by a desire to bring consumer tablets into the workplace, as well as to extend the functionality of smartphones. The form factor of these devices and the user interface may create difficulty in use and inefficiency that offsets benefits (for example, when using an iPad touch interface to manipulate Windows applications running on an HVD that is not touch-tablet-aware). This is particularly noticeable when a native resolution is far higher than that of the end-user device display capability. For this reason, Gartner believes that, in many cases, the significant investment in HVDs is not justified for providing tablet access alone. It needs to be part of a wider policy of enabling user device usage and access.

Arguably more important than the technical considerations are the policy and process questions that BYOD raises. These are explored in detail in "Gartner's View on 'Bring Your Own' in Client Computing."

2. Provide More Flexible Application Delivery to End Users

Second on the list of topics by priority was centralizing application execution using SBC, HVD and application virtualization technologies. These technologies present a number of opportunities to decouple the user's work space from the user's access device, introducing benefits such as more efficient software updates, higher system availability and avoidance of application execution conflicts. The participants saw these capabilities as closely linked to enabling BYOD programs, as well as improvement opportunities in operations and support.

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Gartner Viewpoint — Medium Priority

One of the key benefits of desktop virtualization is the flexibility it provides in delivering a work space and the necessary applications. Unfortunately, many independent software vendor (ISV) licensing agreements do not formally acknowledge install or access mechanisms that use non-native Windows installs. This may lead to limited or zero maintenance support, or a potential breach of the license agreement, with associated cost penalties. Even when vendors do support a given install or access scenario, the complexity of troubleshooting issues may still result in increased incident and problem management costs.

Organizations should review and assess their application portfolios to understand whether there are licensing or maintenance restrictions in adopting a new model, as well as more fundamental

technical compatibility or functional issues.

3. Operations Optimization and Centralized Management

With operations efficiency, the topic swung from enabling the business through evolution of end-user services to meeting business metrics in cost-efficiency of IT service provision. One of the greatest potential benefits from desktop virtualization relates to total cost of ownership (TCO) reduction through more effective and efficient operations and management.

It was interesting to note that, although many participants were tasked with cost reduction targets, this was not seen as the highest priority of the discussion. It also highlighted that many participants clearly understood than many desktop virtualization techniques, especially HVDs, were unlikely to reduce costs in the short term, primarily due to the capital expenditure requirement and the complexity of change.

This is an important driver for the adoption of desktop virtualization technologies. In order to capitalize on these efficiencies, labor optimization needs to be credited to other project-related activities or realized directly through staff reduction. It is also important to understand that the introduction of new tooling will increase complexity in the short term and disrupt operational organization structure and process. Optimizing operations specific to HVD are considered in "Hosted Virtual Desktop Organizational Models."

In order to minimize the disruptive negative impacts, it is important to ensure that the consideration for deployment is covered in the planning cycle to address technical staff training and operational changes.

Three areas that were called out included:

■ _{Single-instance OS management for security and patch updates with nonpersistent HVD}

models

■ _{Minimized regression and compatibility testing when migrating to a virtual application delivery}

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■ _{Assess dedicated fabric platforms for hosting HVD content, including the Cisco Unified}

Computing System (USC) and HP Converged Infrastructure (CI) architectures

4. Segregate User-Owned Data With Type 1 Hypervisors

Following the theme of BYOD leveraging HVD, this topic covered the use of client hypervisors to securely separate user data from corporate data on the same asset. Workshop participants were especially interested in the capability to wipe corporate information without impacting a user image or associated data. This led to a wider discussion on production readiness of the Type 1, bare metal hypervisor models of work space virtualization with vendors such as Citrix, MokaFive and Virtual Computer.

Gartner Viewpoint — Low Priority

Gartner believes this area requires more development, a maturing of life cycle toolsets and

increased availability of optimized endpoint platforms before it is ready for mainstream production adoption. It is an interesting model that has the potential to minimize asset requirements, but, at the same time, it is in conflict with the increase of devices per user in the consumerization trend. The main difference here is that both personal and corporate work space is designed primarily for content creation using a notepad form factor using specific compliant device models. As such, it really does not function as BYOD. This approach is extremely attractive in areas where multiple levels of network security are implemented, especially in defense.

Several issues exist with client hypervisor models, most notably the ability to deploy, synchronize and scale, along with the limited number of device models that provide a compatible hardware platform. Rather than reducing endpoint capital expenditure, this model is likely to increase spending in order to gain the flexibility of consolidating work spaces on a single device.

Considering the investment in this area and its rapidly maturing capabilities, it is likely that we will award it with a higher priority in the near future.

5. Enabling OS Upgrade

With all of the attendees looking to complete their migration to Windows 7 prior to Windows XP support end-of-life in April 2014, it was expected that a reference would be made to how desktop virtualization technologies relate to OS migration and upgrade. It was also clear that participants believed that these technologies would significantly aid migration, as a number of vendor marketing campaigns tie desktop virtualization business benefits to Windows 7 migration.

Upgrading to ensure vendor maintenance for an OS and the overlying applications presents an opportunity to implement desktop virtualization as part of an overarching program of change. Despite a number of vendor claims that HVD as well as other forms of desktop virtualization can help OS migration, it is more a complementary approach than enablement. HVD could be used to ring-fence applications that don't remediate on the legacy platform while rapidly deploying the new

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OS. However, this is a high-cost approach if the HVD is not intended as a strategic OS replacement for specific users.

SBC provides a solution for ring-fencing a small number of problematic applications, but even this is an inferior, although potentially far quicker approach to sourcing and packaging new platform-certified applications from each software vendor.

These technologies can directly provide benefit via work space virtualization and persistent personalization. Here, technology solutions that provide advanced profile migration along with application virtualization and layering capabilities can directly support OS migration — for example, by handling the conversion of the Windows profile structure from XP to 7, rather than provide a completely different architecture for consuming the Windows 7 platform.

Once a user is migrated to an HVD delivery model, it should be significantly easier and quicker to provision a new OS for that user. Thus, technologies such as HVD show the potential to drastically reduce the time frames involved in migration and evolve the process from a significant project undertaking to a service desk request. The complexity of managing personalization, user data and applications means that a significant effort will be required for the foreseeable future.

Taking into account the immediacy of maintenance end-of-life, the priority is to ensure a successful migration to Windows 7. If the addition of desktop virtualization deployment to the scope places that goal at risk, it makes sense to separate these projects and run them as separate entities. OS migration is not a driver for desktop virtualization adoption per se, but certainly an opportunity to review the appropriate opportunities for implementation of these technologies to create business advantage.

The relationship between Windows 7 OS migration and HVDs is reviewed in "Q&A: The Relationship Between Windows 7 and Hosted Virtual Desktop Technology."

6. Branch Consolidation

Among the technologies discussed, participants saw that HVD was particularly attractive as a means to consolidate resources to provide end-user services centrally, thus simplifying the

maintenance of an environment and reducing reliance on field service support staff servicing branch offices where IT resources are scarce compared with headquarters or large campus locations. One participant specifically called this out as a "Phase 2" of his centralization and consolidation strategy; with progress being mature on the server side, it was now time to start with desktops.

HVD can help remove end-user-related infrastructure from branch offices in a geographically distributed organization. It is especially attractive if undertaken in conjunction with a data center centralization and consolidation plan, often driven via server virtualization technologies.

This may be a good design ideal, but in many cases it cannot be fully realized. End users will be totally dependent on the network connection to the data center to gain access to any of their

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measures. It also generates significantly more data load when transferring discrete files to the user's endpoint, or spooling print jobs on top of keyboard, video and mouse redirection traffic. More importantly, it moves the majority, if not all of the user-created data, to the data center, where the cost of storage and backup is orders of magnitude greater. In many cases, it will be more cost-effective to retain branch print servers or local network-attached storage appliance devices, despite the maintenance impact at the branch.

One way to balance centralization with local site availability requirements is to review remote branches in a planning phase and designate a threshold based on end-user population and/or network demands. Below the given user threshold, all infrastructure is centralized; above the threshold, local infrastructure is justified on the basis of performance and availability. In many cases, this equation will be determined by the quality and capacity of the network infrastructure, and in most cases will be a compromise.

This process enables the consolidation of multiple sites sharing infrastructure in a simple single hub-and-spoke network model or a slightly more complex model, which consolidates infrastructure at larger branch offices that serve satellite offices that are below the end-user threshold.

One benefit of infrastructure consolidation is that an organization has better granular control over facilities change management. This is an important consideration when balancing the increased costs related to centrally hosted content against the increased security than can be realized.

7. Trading and Engineering Use Cases

Although trading and engineering use of HVD was covered as a single topic area, the two practices generated separate debates about their relative merits. Attendees from the financial services industry were familiar with challenges of minimizing disruption and maximizing availability to

members of their workforce that generate a significant proportion of their revenue. An HVD solution combined with the light form factor of a thin client; reduction in noise, heat and power in the

workplace; as well as minimized interruption from technical field services appeared to be one of the few scenarios where solution cost was far outweighed by the value of enabling the business and avoiding expensive downtime.

With engineering, the centralization of large datasets, the allocation of high-performance systems to low-density hosts and the potential to increase design collaboration across engineers seemed compelling on the surface, but concerns were raised about how responsive these detailed technical environments would be under all but optimum network conditions.

Gartner Viewpoint — High Priority for Trading, Low Priority for Engineering

The trading scenario is very compelling and often cited as a primary use case in the financial services industry. This is an example where high comparative direct cost of deployment is more than offset by a solution where there are extremely high-value users, and no downtime or

performance degradation is acceptable. Unlike many scenarios, it is likely to result in a significantly lower TCO through revenue loss avoidance, as well as management optimization.

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Both the trading and the engineering use case can function well on a high-capacity, well-managed local-area network. When used remotely over varying quality wide-area networks that are more relevant to the engineering use case, the user experience in dealing with detailed, graphically intense rendering is likely to be significantly impaired. That is why, in most cases, companies are still using high-performance workstations for execution of engineering and computer-aided design/ computer-aided manufacturing (CAD/CAM) packages. Despite multimedia enhancements in remote display protocols and associated codices, including Microsoft RemoteFX, Citrix HDX and VMware View with PCoIP, Gartner feedback from clients is that the user experience is often far from satisfactory.

8. Server-Based Computing Upgrade

Perhaps the simplest topic reviewed was the need to maintain existing desktop virtualization technologies for vendor support and maintain application and platform compatibility. For legacy SBC solutions, such as Citrix Presentation Server 4.5, the questions were not only should the participants upgrade to the latest product version, but whether they should migrate to an HVD as the natural replacement.

HVD is often quoted as an upgrade to SBC. However, the technologies are complementary and not mutually exclusive. HVD gives better granular control of an individual user-dedicated OS and avoids many of the application compatibility issues experienced on an SBC platform, such as Citrix

XenApp or Microsoft Remote Desktop Services. It also can accommodate application

personalization, while SBC limits you to a fixed set of apps. However, HVD has its own constraints in the form of Microsoft licensing restrictions, requiring per device Virtual Desktop Access (VDA) licenses or Software Assurance (SA) for full Windows OS access devices. It also requires a much higher capital cost entry point due to the high-performance storage and lower densities achieved on server hosting platforms. In addition, the use case of delivering a full desktop environment versus strategic delivery of specific applications differentiates the use case of the technologies, despite many service providers looking to SBC shared desktops as a potential HVD replacement.

If an organization is looking to expand and evolve its SBC environment to address use cases more suited to HVD, then this is a valid upgrade path. However, in most cases, it will make more sense to upgrade to the latest vendor-supported version of the product and look to embrace HVD for a set of separate or complementary use cases. "Using Gartner's Segmentation Model for Mobile and Client Computing" provides guidance on the type of scenarios that fit the different technologies.

9. Contractor/Consultant Onboarding

Contractor and third-party access provisioning was the third use case mentioned after the BYOD and trader/engineering use cases. This use case was raised by a single participant, but all members of the workshop agreed that this appeared to be a very compelling reason for adoption, and

understandably a commonly cited vendor example of technology value. Provisioning a full corporate PC for a temporary employee is not only expensive but often carries a long lead time that overlaps

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into the paid engagement. It is also harder to recover a physical PC than a virtual desktop hosted in the data center.

Delivering an HVD and allowing third parties to use their own devices are regarded as a far more efficient approach to meet access requirements, and can reduce lead time between commission and productive work, which in many cases means reduced cost or more effective and efficient use of contracted resources.

This is a prevalent and high-profile use case example for adoption of HVD; however, it should be noted that appropriate access controls are still required for the necessary corporate resources. Application and data provisioning to the HVDs will be required, just as in the traditional PC scenario. The real benefit is having a provisioning lead time of minutes rather than days, provided the

infrastructure is in place to accelerate the process compared with provisioning traditional PCs. Industries that see a high degree of seasonal variation in employee volumes, significant number of contracting engagements or the need to grant secure systems access to third parties warrant an agile provisioning solution. These organizations should view this as a high priority, rather than the medium rating that will apply to most companies.

10. Secure the Corporate Boundary

There are significant concerns around security, especially data security in conjunction with traditional distributed PC access, and that has been evidenced through a number of high-profile data loss incidents in the public and commercial sectors. Security is often cited as the No. 1 native benefit for the centralized options within the desktop virtualization family. Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) encryption and secure multifactor authentication (MFA) are common features of remote connection protocols, securing remote access while the execution environment is secured within the data center environment.

It may appear surprising to see this topic rated so low. Attendees found it very difficult to develop a compelling TCO or return on investment for adoption — specifically, the adoption of desktop virtualization technologies to help solve these issues. Although this perspective may vary among different attendees and likely among various verticals (for example, we would expect significant interest in defense, finance and healthcare), it is an important reminder that security is a high-priority attribute of any solution, but not necessarily the primary driver. Risk mitigation and avoidance

technologies, such as those connected with business-continuity-based solutions, suffer from the same type of business case challenges. Experience of direct, tangible business impact — such as increased volume of interest in HVD as a continuity solution following the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Japan — can overcome this barrier.

This is an extremely valid driver for adoption of desktop virtualization technology, as evidenced in "Case Study: Security and Flexibility Are Key Levers of Hosted Virtual Desktops." This can only be successful as part of a holistic approach to increased security and compliance management.

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Centralizing data, applications and execution environment provides the potential for improved management and control. However, if, for example, client drive mapping to an access device is not controlled, or if virtual desktop browsers are given unrestricted access to the Internet, this native security benefit is lost.

11. Use of Thin Clients to Reduce Power Consumption

Almost serving as a wild-card discussion topic, thin clients' low power consumption and resulting carbon footprint were put forward as potential compelling reasons for adoption. The relatively low power consumption in thin devices — especially in the newer vendor offerings of zero client — is often positioned as key feature and benefit for adoption.

Power reduction via the use of thin devices to access a centralized desktop virtualization solution is unlikely to function as a primary driver. It will become increasingly important as utility prices

increase and compliance penalties are introduced through local government initiatives. Power utilization certainly should be part of assessment criteria, but focusing only on thin devices limits the scope of assessment, ignoring the data center build-out and undermining the arguably more

compelling opportunity to reduce endpoint management and maintenance costs. The following points should be noted:

■ _{Thin clients have varying power consumption ratings. Several vendors have significant numbers}

of models with varying power requirements and power states.

■ _{The latest PCs have optimized power management as part of the operating system for most}

major components, including power stepping built into the central processing unit (CPU).

■ _{The power reduction at the edge will be partially if not fully offset by the new growth within the}

data center. This build-out constitutes the servers, storage and network infrastructure required to host centralized desktops and/or applications. There are very few use cases where a

dedicated thin device can replace a rich desktop as a stand-alone unit, except when used in "kiosk" mode.

■ _{The migration of power requirements to the data center increases the centralized power}

requirement and associated cost increase to the business. This is especially true if end users are using their own assets or working from a location where they own utility costs.

■ _{The reduction of power at the edge and, in turn, the reduction of local heat output will affect the}

local office/user environment ambient temperature, which in turn will impact the heating/air conditioning costs positively and negatively, according to geography and season. Although this effect may be minor, it should not be ignored.

Note 1 "Virtualizing Your PCs and Client Devices" Workshop

At Gartner's EMEA Data Center and IT Operations Summit, held in London from 28 to 29 November 2011, a desktop virtualization workshop, "Virtualizing Your PCs and Client Devices," reviewed the

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drivers and opportunities for deploying these technologies to address a number of business challenges.

Questions, observations and experiences were shared by 20 delegates representing private and public enterprises. The participants represented a variety of industries and both IT and business-side roles.

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What Can Desktop Virtualization Do for Your Organization?