With their servers almost completely virtualized, IT/ITeS companies are expected to embark full steam on the desktop virtualization path. Vendors are only waiting for the caution to subside. By Mehak Chawla
IT/ITes, as a vertical, has always been ahead of others in terms of technology adoption curve. Partly because they don’t lack in-house talent and mostly because being technological hubs, they are often expected to drive innovation for other companies. These innovations are, more often than not, piloted within these IT/ITeS companies and after the waters have been tested, these technologies reach the doorstep of their customers.
Desktop virtualization has pretty much gone through the same curve. While the pilots started almost half a decade back, the actual implementations, ones with benefits percolating down to the client, have started gathering momentum as late as last year. A report by Gartner also substantiates this upward trend in desktop virtualization adoption, estimating that by 2013, 40% of all corporate desktops will be virtual desktops. Gartner also says that the desktop virtualization market is estimated to be worth at least $ 1.8 billion by the end of 2012.
With their servers almost completely virtualized and storage well on the virtualization path, IT/ITeS companies have been the torch-bearers of desktop virtualization in the country. However, they are still treading somewhat cautiously, especially in the wake of mass phenomenon like mobility and BYOD and the extensive security framework that these require. The cap on IT spending, that came as a ripple effect of the slowdown has only added to this dilemma.
Server virtualization in India is almost a given now. It is also fairly simple to accomplish since all the applications reside in the same environment. The complications, however, are manifold in a desktop environment. As a result, even the IT heads of IT organizations are facing several hurdles in the way of virtualizing their desktops. The vendors too, are struggling to put the pieces together. Once this caution is relegated to the back seat, we can expect the vertical to open the floodgates for desktop virtualization.
Down the beaten path
Despite slower adoption curve of desktop virtualization, experts believed that in years to come, it will take much the same course as server virtualization did. With education already pacing down the desktop virtualization lane, and IT/ ITeS well on its way, this proposition doesn’t look so unlikely.
Education was the first vertical to adopt desktop virtualization in a big way, and with its steam cooling off, vendors are trying to persuade the IT/ITeS CIOs to move beyond the pilots. However, the numbers aren’t catching up as swiftly. A reason for this, according to Deepak Varma, Regional Presales Head, South India, EMC, could be the general low rate of virtualization adoption in India. “Proliferation of virtualization solutions in the Indian market is still at a nascent stage where virtualization is yet to percolate to all layers of IT,” he remarked.
Though there is significant interest in the IT/ITeS vertical for desktop virtualization, the hype cycle is yet to translate into adoption cycle. Elaborated Varma, “Companies are doing prototypes, even in-house ones to test the waters with respect to desktop virtualization. Real deployments (500-1000 computers) are still not happening. Pilots ranging from 1-100 systems, however, are catching up.”
Others were of the view that thanks to reduced costs in terms of refresh cycles, IT/ITeS is likely to adopt desktop virtualization more enthusiastically than other verticals in the near future.
Arvind Gautam, Vice President, Sales (Emerging Business and Practices), AGC Networks, felt that desktop virtualization has caught up slowly because there was no clear cut RoI established around it. “Off late however, IT/ITeS have started adopting at a good pace. A good reason for this is the drastic savings that an organization incurs because no obsolesce of desktop hardware needs to be taken care of. Once you have adopted desktop virtualization you don’t need to have a very robust hardware infrastructure. The pain point of hardware upgrades is taken away.”
Another interesting development happening in this space is that some IT companies are dragging virtualized desktops out of their training environments and taking them to their clients.
Opined Seemant Chaudhry, Desktop Transformation Evangelist, Citrix India, “When desktop virtualization took off in India, IT/ITeS companies weren’t sure where to start from. However, now they are confident about taking desktop virtualization out of their training centres and right to their customers. IT/ITeS is amongst the first verticals to be passing on the benefits of desktop virtualization to their customers.”
This move is driven in a big way by the $ 70 billion IT exports industry of the country. BPOs and service companies have traditionally been spending heavily on compliance and security tools on every desktop. With desktop virtualization, they only need to invest in centralised security at the data centre level and not in end point security, and that often translates into considerable savings. Saving on CAPEX in terms of hardware costs is the other thing that is propelling IT companies to invest in desktop virtualization.
Said Vinod Krishnan, Director, Advanced Technologies, VMware India & SAARC, “The need to consolidate data centres, save money on hardware, power and cooling is driving the adoption of desktop virtualization in the IT/ITES segment as well.”
The other macro trends like mobility and BYOD are also making their presence felt in the desktop virtualization space.
Growth accelerators
One of the reasons that made IT/ITeS travel fast down the virtualization road was that it helped them fulfill their security and compliance needs by clearly compartmentalizing client information. The evolving security and compliance scenario, especially in the services domain, is also the biggest push for desktop virtualization in most cases.
“Security and compliance adoption has been much faster for IT organisations because of virtualizing their end points. Also, the end point management pain points get resolved,” observed Chaudhry. There are other reasons, like realisation of heightened benefits from server and storage virtualization that is making IT organisations consider the investment in desktop virtualization.
Explained Rama Evani, Senior Director and Head for IT Services, DST Worldwide Services, who are just beginning to virtualize their desktops, “Desktop virtualization helps corporates to increase their benefits from server and storage virtualization. A lot of IT/ITeS SMEs are also virtualizing their desktops because of reduced hardware costs.”
Elaborating on the organisational benefits of desktop virtualization, Evani added that for them, desktop virtualization has reduced organisational costs, increased productivity, ensured security and organised access to data. Seamless recovery is another advantage of desktop virtualization, he added.
If industry view is to be believed, then so far, saving hardware costs is the biggest driver, especially for services companies dealing with the downturn, for evaluating the proposition of doing desktop virtualization. As Varma mentioned, “The biggest advantage of desktop virtualization is lower costs both in terms of hardware and its hassle free management.”
Security, an often complicated equation in terms of Cloud, is the most prominent established benefit of desktop virtualization. “Since, all the information that is being referred to for this type of implementation is stored safely on a server, an organisation can set up a secure place quickly and protect the content still. It is this rapid time to productivity and great flexibility that is making virtualization so compelling for IT/ITeS,” explained Dan O’Farrell, Senior Director, Product Marketing at Dell Wyse.
The security and time to value are huge benefits and two of the major reasons, according to analysts that will prompt more and more IT companies to eventually move to a virtualized solution. Additionally, the cost saving and ability to expend less effort on upkeep also results in notable savings. Also, a virtualized solution makes the life of the IT team a whole lot easier because of the centralised environment.
Of mobility and BYOD
The mobility and BYOD wave that is sweeping across large enterprises, especially IT/ITeS ones, is playing a significant role in pushing desktop virtualization beyond the testing phase. For one, with desktop virtualization, the IT heads do not need to fret about alien devices latching onto their networks. Also, since the devices themselves are secure, the threat from external elements are lessened considerably. As Chaudhary observed, “Security is the first and foremost advantage of desktop virtualization because whatever the threat, there is no fear of end point data being destroyed.”
The other big factor here is that virtual desktops can make application management easy, and that is encouraging organisations to embark upon their BYOD and mobility roadmaps. Evani mentioned, ” Managing legacy apps can also be easier with desktop virtualization. New trends like BYOD and Mobility are propagating virtual desktops because device support becomes crucial in these scenarios.”
Since both end point protection and management is taken care of in a desktop virtualization scenario, VDI is gaining popularity amongst IT enterprises looking to create or provide private Cloud. The other big advantage that experts are seeing with desktop virtualization is that it provides an easy migration route. Desktop virtualization has a huge role to play every time an organisation undertakes a migration. Today, a migration path for moving to Windows 7 or 8 is a common use case scenario for doing desktop virtualization at the backend.
“When you go virtual with your desktop, it doesn’t matter where you are located anymore – all you need is a device to deliver that desktop to you. Thus, virtualization becomes a key enabler for BYOD and mobility. To function as a concept, BYOD only needs a desktop you can get to from any location and the ability to subscribe devices as “double duty” devices – for both personal and business use. As well as assets to the organisation, they need to act differently for the way they are used,” noted Farell of Dell Wyse.
Companies today want to create an environment where they can carry out services and business processes without being constrained by endpoints, locations, or working models, but within the predefined protocols. They also need to give users choices about how and where to work.
“Additionally, enterprises are experiencing a proliferation of endpoint device options and places and that proliferation is making traditional ways of managing desktops obsolete. Therefore, businesses today are steadily transitioning to a holistic solution that permits desktops to be deployed with ease and security and are going the whole hog with desktop virtualization,” summed up Krishnan of VMware.
To virtualize or not to…
While there are many organisations waiting only for the budgets to open up before they go full steam on desktop virtualization, experts warn that it may not exactly be a cake walk when it comes to the actual implementation cycle.
According to Terry Burgess, Regional Manager, Asia Pacific, Quest Software, “Server apps are easy to virtualize since they reside in the same environment but desktop virtualization is laced with challenges like security and access. Mechanism to doctor security within the data centre is a big challenge.”
Also, even as vendors argue over the cost effectiveness and RoI of desktop virtualization, additional costs associated with it can play spoilsport. Gautam of AGC agreed, “A significant challenge in desktop virtualization is the cost of upgrade of server and storage that is required to go on to the next level.”
Varma of EMC elaborated on some other challenges of desktop virtualization, “Organisations should be careful about virtualizing their desktops because it puts a huge load at the back end IT. It is not a cake walk and requires strategic planning. First and foremost, desktop virtualization requires centralised storage which most organisations don’t have. Doing desktop virtualization over improper storage design is a common mistake that enterprises commit.”
An enterprise also has to keep in mind that desktop virtualization is very CPU and cache hungry. At times, it can cascade into something exactly opposite than envisioned as an organisation can also lose productivity time because of slow boot.
Enterprise architecture is apparently the most threatening weak link in the desktop virtualization ecosystem. Observed Vikram K, Director, ISS, HP India, “With desktop virtualization, your core infrastructure is getting virtualized, so companies need to tread carefully. Enterprise architecture, unless validated, can pose a significant challenge in the process of desktop virtualization.”
Chiradeep Rao, Regional Director, India & SAARC, Extreme Networks, suggested that unless organisations go about desktop virtualization in a phased manner, yeilding RoI can be tricky. “Desktop virtualization only helps when benefits of server virtualization are established in terms of security and management. Enterprises have been struggling with network orchestration.”
Some believed that scattered offerings and lack of clear definitions around RoI have also complicated this virtualization space. A clear example of this in the Indian market is that VDI is being hailed as desktop virtualization but it is actually only one of the components in a wider gamut of desktop virtualization.
Like server-like desktop
As of now it is fairly clear that large scale implementations of desktop virtualization are yet to pick up in the IT/ITeS vertical. However, sooner than later, desktop virtualization is expected to follow in the footsteps of server virtualization.
A good reason behind that conviction is the fact that technology has evolved, and the space has matured enough to take care of some significant hurdles like centralised management and access points. Explained Srikanth Karnakota, Director, Server and Cloud Business, Microsoft, “VDI has taken off in a significant way in IT/ITeS but it is not yet mainstream. However, what happened to server virtualization will soon happen to desktop.”
As desktop – as – a – service begins to garner some popularity in the Indian marketplace, we can expect virtual desktops moving beyond tests and pilots in the IT/ITeS organisations.
IT/ ITeS work enivronments,at the end of the day, have a lot to do with flexibility and client support and they are always actively scouting for easy to install options where they don’t even need IT support on-site. Desktop virtualization, in the year to come, could become the default answer to that dilemma.
