Gaining Ground

Managing a desktop fleet, or creating an optimal distribution of desktop
resources has always remained a challenge for the IT departments. The
conventional approach is to give standalone desktops to each user and either
manage the services individually or through a managed service provider. PC fleet
management in recent times is getting major attention due to the growing
complexities involved in managing it. In a conventional desktop management
approach, the management tasks are multiple, and hence, they consume a whole lot
of administrative time in managing the desktops individually. The tasks that
take most of the time are the ones like installing and maintaining hardware and
software, spam filtering, and administering user permissions. Moreover,
security-related tasks are also increasingly becoming a large part of desktop
management. To manage the desktop maintenance tasks, IT departments use many
techniques like creating and managing group policies, setting standards, among
others.

There are some software tools also available to help manage the lifecycle of
Pcs, but success with these software tools depends on both the technology and
how well IT organizations are equipped to use the technology. Given this
backdrop, the panacea lies in virtualization, which has now become the hottest
technology in the town. There are many vendors in the fray offering multiple
solutions that range from application virtualization to VDI. Today with
virtualization, a whole lot is changing in the realm of storage, servers and
desktop manageability. Virtualization is a macro concept and enterprises have to
make the best use of it and align it with their respective problem areas. If we
look things from a desktop management perceptive, the most used one right now is
apps virtualization, and in selective areas VDI is getting used.

New Technologies

The essence of any virtualization is simplicity, manageability, higher
productivity. These key performance areas lead to higher RoI and lesser TCO. For
instance, an enterprise can create many virtual PCs using one desktop and
multiple users can access it with their own personalized settings. So, in a
typical apps virtualisation, the solution changes them into network-available
services, resulting in dynamic delivery of software to multiple users. In this
users and their application environments are no longer machine-specific.
Machines themselves are no longer user-specific. This enables IT to be flexible
and responsive to business needs, and significantly reduces the cost of PC
management.

With numerous vendors in the fray, each one is trying to create new
virtualization technologies to capture the market. One of the new entrants in
the virtualization space is LG Electronics. The company, with its new network
monitors, is pioneering a new type of virtualization. Here the virtualization is
embedded within the monitor; this new technology is developed by LG in
collaboration with NComputing. According to company sources, the solution has
two partsthe LG Network Monitor and NComputings X550 integration kits. Each
integration kit supports five additional users on a shared PC, and with two
kits, eleven users can share a single PC. One can set this up in minutes. In the
first instance, the user needs to install the X550 PCI card into the shared PC
and load the vSpace software. Secondly, the user has to connect the LG Network
Monitors to the PCI card. Users connect their keyboards and mice directly to the
LG Network Monitor, which in turn delivers a full computing experience.

Says R Manikandan, senior GM, business solutions, LG India, "We are
aggressively targeting the education sector with the network monitors, and it
offers lower TCO by sharing a desktop with eleven users, thereby reducing the
power consumption and also reducing maintenance costs." Sources in LG says that
its network monitors work on the principle of desktop PC virtualization and it
has been developed to meet the demands for a low cost solution to the PC
replacement cycle. Interestingly, the LG Network Monitor can help redistribute
the mostly unused 90% of the PC resources to several users, and this, according
to LG, can reduce the TCO by 60%.

LG is aggressively pitching on education vertical to put this solution to
schools. If we take a for instance a class of forty students, and the school
wants to give every student a PC, there are two ways of doing sothe traditional
method of one desktop per student, or by using the network monitor that can
create a virtualized environment, thereby enabling each student to have a
virtualized PC. LG has put in place a pricing model that works about Rs 15,000
for per user. Since its initially meant for the education vertical, the
solution providers tied up for this initiative will deliver education content to
be used in the network monitors. Another unique thing of a classroom using
network monitors is that the teacher will be interacting with every student
through his desktop.

Says Manikandan, "We have adopted N Computing technology in our product.

Our value additions are in integrating the technology in our monitor and
improvising the same to work better on a 10-feet distance from the host PC.

We have also worked on the software development to support virtual IP for
each user in a networked environment, and also provided isolation software to
give selective access to software and application in a virtualised environment."

Clearly, the network monitor is an innovative concept and can change the
dynamics of classroom teaching. By using it, teachers can give high degree of
personal attention to every student as they are connected with each student and
can monitor what they are doing. According to Manish Sharma, VP, Asia Pacific,
NComputing, "Desktop virtualization could be an emerging concept, but the drive
to cut down purchase and set up costs is real. When companies and users ask the
smart questions on why they need to buy ten computers, if all they need to buy
is one, the proposition becomes very compelling."

While LG and NComputing are pioneering a very innovative concept, other
players, like VMware, Citrix and the likes are also innovating a lot. VMware is
taking desktop virtualization to whole new levels. For instance, its latest
offeringVMware View 4is the industrys first purpose-built solution for
delivering desktops as a managed service. Using this solution, one can transform
desktop management into a simplified and automated process, reduce the total
cost of desktop ownership by 50%, provide end users a consistent high
performance desktop experience, and bring the power of the data center and
VMware vSphere to ones desktop.

Citrix, meanwhile, has just announced its Xen Desktop 4 as part of its open
desktop virtualization program to drive virtual desktop deployments. The Citrix
open ready desktop virtualization program includes more than 10,000 products
from over 200 vendors that have been validated as ready-to-deploy in production
environments with its recently launched XenDesktop 4. This solution gives
customers the flexibility to run heterogeneous environments, lowering costs, and
maximizing their RoI. It also makes it easy for customers to gradually add
desktop virtualization capabilities at their own pace, simplifying desktop
computing, increasing security, and enhancing end user productivity.

Says Souma Das, area vice president, Citrix India, "IT/ITeS companies in
India are turning to desktop virtualization to improve user flexibility,
centralize desktop management and lower overall IT costs. BFSI and BPO sectors
are early adopters of this technology as this has facilitated ITeS and BPO
agents to work from any PC in any office."

Other players in the fray, like Sun Microsystems, are also going aggressive
on the VDI space. For instance, Suns VDI Software 3 is aimed at bringing more
agility in a VDI environment. Sun pitches its solution will usher in a new
dimension in creating a simplified management, higher flexibility and peak IT
utilization rates for desktop deployments. Moreover, its open architecture will
enable IT departments to design a virtual desktop environment using a broad
range of client device, virtualization hosts, and virtual desktop operating
systems. Complimenting Suns VDI is the Sun Ray software which the company calls
it as a secure and cost-effective solution that brings rich multiple virtual OS
cutting across Windows, Linux to Solaris using the Sun Ray thin clients.

The company terms the Sun Ray software as unique as it removes management of
complex PC or embedded OS thin clients from the desktop equation by offering a
complete virtual desktop. The architecture consists of: Sun Ray Thin Clients or
Sun desktop access client enabled PCs and Sun Ray software. The environmentally
friendly Thin Client is a low-cost device that, when plugged into the network,
delivers a secure, network desktop. Sun Ray software has three core components:
Sun Ray Server Software, Sun Ray Connector for Windows, and Sun Desktop Access
Client.

Going Forward

Looking at the way things are evolving on the desktop virtualization space,
its increasingly becoming mainstream. Virtualization is well entrenched on the
server side and gaining ground on the desktop side. The recent key developments,
like LGs network monitors and other solutions rolled by players like VMware and
Citrix augurs well for further escalation of desktop virtualization. This makes
even emerging concepts like VDI to accelerate ahead. According to a Gartner
report, is says that by 2013 VDI revenues are expected to climb to $65.7 bn with
49 mn users. Industry experts aver that newer and cost-effective technologies
will create a compelling value proposition to enterprises to adopt desktop
virtualization in a big way in the days ahead.

Shrikanth G

shrikanthg@cybermedia.co.in