eWeek CIO Insight Baseline Channel Insider Web Buyer's Guide Microsoft Watch Linux Watch Security Watch Ziff Davis Enterprise My Profile My Contacts My Community My Media My Groups Hot Blogs All Blogs Communicate Polls Ziff Davis IT Link Click here for help
Ziff Davis IT Link

Log In

Member Name

Password

Forgot Your Password?

Masked Intentions Blog by mikevizard

A discussion of the underlying trends driving the news events of the day

Posts: 44 | Created on April 10, 2007 |  

Next Stop on the Virtualization Train is the Client

By mikevizard in Masked Intentions on Tuesday, September 25, 2007 12:08 PM  
Tags: infrastructure pcs virtualization | 1 Comment Post a Comment

The trajectory of adoption of virtualization in the enterprise has been an interesting phenomenon to watch. The first place we really saw virtualization being used was on workstation’s that were typically in the hands of developers that wanted to create applications in one environment that would actually run in another.
Then the great wave of interest in server consolidation and the uproar over server utilization rates followed. IT organization didn’t have enough people to run servers that were distributed all over the enterprise and the senior management was pushing to get more use of their existing hardware investments. It almost seems like virtualization has become the solution to every known IT problem under the sun.
Now the question that seems to stand before us is when will virtualization go mainstream on the client and what are the implications of such an event. There are a lot of good reasons for virtualization to take hold on the desktop from both the perspective of the IT department and the users that rely on PCs today for a lot more than just getting their work done.
For IT people, the ability to create a segregated section of a PC environment that they can essentially lock down is compelling. A lot of the security and help desk issues that IT people encounter are introduced by that fact that end users are using their corporate system to access Web sites for personal business that are rife with malware or worse yet loading applications that have not been sanctioned by the IT department to run on those systems. The end result of the latter activity is that updates to those applications usually require updates to the operating system and before you know it, the performance of the client is being compromised by any number of applications that are sucking the life out of system resources.
For end users, virtualization on the desktop brings forth some intriguing possibilities. Foremost among them is the ability to use their own machines rather then the usually under-powered machines that corporate IT usually doles out. A significant percentage of the workforce today already owns machines that they would rather use than the ones offered by corporate IT, And for those that don’t, incentives could be developed that would essentially help tem buy their own machine for work purposes. This may require some creative accounting work so people can get reimbursed for what amounts to a business expense, but the end result would be a workforce that would probably tend to upgrade to latter model machines that tend to run more reliable software.
The end result of this would be that the upgrade cycle for client systems would be in the hands of individual end users rather than in the hands of IT departments that are limited by accounting constraints when it comes to upgrading capital equipment.
IT will probably take a few years for this virtualization scenario to work itself out, but vendor such as VMware and Sentillion are already pushing the benefits of client virtualization so we should expect to see a lot more discussion about this issue going forward. And oddly enough, this may be one of the few times in recorded IT history where IT people and end users are actually on the same side of an issue.
Comments 

Thin Clients!
Virtualization integrates different Platforms.
The Internet Bridges them all.
Thin Client Module set's the standard.

Saturday, March 29, 2008 2:38 AM

Log in to post a comment!


Create, Communicate, Collaborate
 
Ziff Davis Enterprise

Ziff Davis Enterprise Home | Contact Us | Advertise | Link to Us | Reprints | Magazine Subscriptions | Newsletters
RSS Feeds | White Papers | ROI Calculators | Tech Jobs | Tech Podcasts | Tech Video |

Baseline | Careers | Channel Insider | CIO Insight | DesktopLinux | DeviceForge | DevSource | eSeminars |
eWEEK | LinuxDevices | Linux Watch | Microsoft Watch | Mid-market | Networking | PDF Zone |
Publish | eWeek Security | Strategic Partner | Web Buyer's Guide | Windows for Devices

Developer Shed | Dev Shed | ASP Free | Dev Articles | Dev Hardware | SEO Chat | Tutorialized | Scripts |
Code Walkers | Web Hosters | Dev Mechanic | Dev Archives | IT Marketplace | igrep

Use of this site is governed by our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy

Copyright ©1996-2007 Ziff Davis Enterprise Inc. All Rights Reserved. Ziff Davis IT Link is a trademark of Ziff Davis Enterprise, Inc. Reproduction in whole or in part in any form or medium without express written permission of Ziff Davis Enterprise, Inc. is prohibited.