What are YOUR stages of VDI opinion?

July 18, 2012

A decision to virtualize desktop infrastructure is not made in a day. Many organizations that look into virtualizing their desktop infrastructure go through distinct stages of learning, understanding and accepting VDI. These are the three stages of VDI acceptance I typically see.

Stage 1 – Excitement

When we first learn what VDI promises to deliver, it does sound exciting – no more need to get to a user’s desk to look at a broken desktop or laptop; users can fix most of the issues just by restarting their VDI session, etc., etc. Oh! And those Thin Client devices are so cool and shiny. If we can replace traditional desktops with thin clients we already are saving so much money. After all, industry analysts promise 40% TCO savings with VDI.

Stage 2 – Denial

But wait… We need to buy so much extra VDI software, servers and storage hardware. Plus, what about our heavy graphics applications, old homegrown software and user experience? Forget about it! This looks too expensive and there are too many unknowns here.

Stage 3 – Cautious acceptance

Okay… It looks like we should not expect to save much on the hardware and software after all. On the other hand we still need to support more users with less IT staff, provision desktops faster, make sure that our sensitive data is not sitting on desktops and laptops, and that we can easily roll-out new applications on end-user devices. VDI will also help us migrate to Windows 7, possibly Windows 8, and maybe even help us implement a BYOD (bring your own device) policy.

After going through these stages, most organizations come to the conclusion that VDI can address some of the challenges they need to solve. Now it is time to figure out how to deploy a desktop virtualization solution.

Way too many IT departments jump directly into a pilot. Some of those quickly discover that the combination of VDI software and hardware they are trying is not a “one size fits all” solution, and some user types cannot even run their applications in the pilot environment. In some cases these pilots are proclaimed to be grossly unsuccessful and the organization perceives VDI to be a bad choice for their IT.

There is a better way. Starting from a well thought out plan and leveraging assessment toolsets to profile existing clients can maximize VDI benefits and optimize desktop infrastructure costs. And speaking of costs, thorough cost analysis is one of the most important steps when planning for VDI. VDI cost structure is very different from that of traditional desktops:

To make an unbiased and informed decision on whether VDI is a good fit for your organization, all those new costs need to be accurately forecasted and compared to costs of the legacy desktop infrastructure. That’s where OnX can help. For over six years OnX has been providing in-depth financial analysis of desktop infrastructure virtualization initiatives including detailed financial metrics covering ROI, TCO savings, Net Present Value (NPV) and Internal Rate of Return (IRR).

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