VDI vs Traditional PCs: Views of Industry Experts

Given the pace at which hosted desktops are gaining popularity, there are all sort of predictions on the way forward for traditional desktop PCs. Will they get severaly marginalized, or be re-born in different avatars? We interacted with Srinivasan T, MD of VMware for India and SAARC; Amrish Goyal, director for Windows client at Microsoft, and Gernot Fels, principal product marketing manager at Fujitsu Technology Solutions. Here's what they have to say on different aspects of the subject.

Has VDI become a serious threat to office desktop PCs?

"Yes we do think that VDI will surpass the desktop PCs in the near future. Today employees are bringing different devices to the office and are expecting IT to provide a consistent enterprise desktop experience across all these devices. Desktop virtualization makes it possible to provide the same desktop experience on a variety of devices while ensuring a greater level of security.

Since desktops are available only as images to users, any changes they make on their desktops are reflected on the server and no data is saved on client devices. This reduces the chance of potential loss or theft of data.

For instance, with PC-over-IP (PCoIP), data is transmitted to user devices as pixels in an encrypted format. VMware's View 5, which features this technology, enables PCoIP Secure Gateway Connection, which allows users to access desktops without using VPN, and SSL for encryption.

We are entering the Post-PC era wherein the job of providing applications and data would no longer belong to any one device, or any one operating system as Paul Maritz, CEO, VMware rightly put.

A recent report by Frost & Sullivan predicts that the desktop virtualization market, including hardware, software, licensing, and management tools, is estimated to have been USD 79.24 million in 2008 and is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 33.31 percent from 2008 to 2015."

-- Srinivasan T, MD, India and SAARC. VMware

"We don't think VDI as a serious threat to desktop PCs. We are seeing a robust and continuous growth in the PC business in India and globally. Microsoft Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) is an alternate delivery model that allows users to access secure and centrally-managed desktops running in the data center. Based on our experience, we believe that VDI is good for every customer but not for every desktop and current adoption level reflects our belief. "

-- Amrish Goyal, Director, Windows client, Microsoft

"There is not one answer to this question. According to analysts' predictions (e.g. Gartner), virtual desktops will strongly increase in numbers. However they will not replace all desktops. A strong trend is visible in the coming years to all sorts of mobile devices which should enable access to your workspace anywhere, and anytime. This can only work, if your workspace is centralized, and virtualization is the prerequisite for centralization. However, regarding centralization, VDI is only one option, and certainly a great option for knowledge workers. But if you consider task workers, server-based computing using terminal server infrastructure will be absolutely sufficient and even be the more cost-effective solution. Considering power users with highest performance demands, the much better choice today — if centralization is demanded — is to move the entire desktop/ workstation hardware to the data center and make it accessible from any device. "

-- Gernot Fels, Principal Product Mktg Mgr,

Fujitsu Technology Solutions

With VDI coming in a big way, what's the way forward for desktop PCs? What sort of trends do you see there?

"Analysts foresee a gradual transformation of today's IT workplaces into workspaces which are fully dynamic. They come into being dynamically on demand at logon and cease to exist at logoff. The basis for this are centralized concepts based on virtualization, which in turn is the basis for cloud computing. For access, various types of devices will be used. People foresee proliferation of devices, among which certainly mobile devices including smartphones will dominate. In cases where stationary access devices are used, they will become leaner and thinner. But again, this will not happen from one to the other day. When all of this happens, the future will show."

-- Gernot, Fujitsu

"A number of organizations are evaluating VDI, but we have not seen a large scale adoption. VDI is capital intensive, and requires large investments in back-end servers/data centers and 24x7 connectivity. Device proliferation and the demand for connectivity from an increasingly mobile workforce is a growing trend for most organizations. Users want seamless, reliable, consistent and secure on-demand access to their applications and Windows from wherever they are and from numerous devices (laptops, mobile devices, home PCs). IT is challenged to efficiently empower users with these consistent and robust experiences while making sure confidential corporate data is secure with only authorized people having access to it. Today the next-generation worker expects IT to roll-out changes and new capabilities in days/weeks, not months. IT is challenged to quickly provision users with the corporate resources they need. As IT looks for solutions to manage the corporate environment within existing budgets; many new client technologies have emerged to help address these issues; each vendor has their own infrastructure and interface, and their adoption can drive up cost and

complexity of client management. VDI is one such solution."

-- Amrish, Microsoft

"We believe that we are entering the Post-PC era. In three years from now, more than 80 percent of devices that connect to the Internet will not be desktop PCs. The job of providing applications and data will not be restricted to any one device or operating system. Our customers and partners would need to create technology that embraces a world where people are tapping the Web and applications from a variety of devices. (modified from Paul Maritz's VMworld Conference quotes.)

A trend we foresee is customers moving from virtualization to full-fledged cloud infrastructure. With fifty percent of the world's infrastructure running on virtualization, the cloud is the next logical step. A virtualized infrastructure such as that running on VMware's technologies enables quick provisioning of IT resources across locations with IT infrastructure integrated together to form a cloud infrastructure.

Organizations today need to respond to business demands at various locations. Desktop virtualization with its ability to integrate with a cloud infrastructure seamlessly, allows faster deployment of IT resources for employees in remote locations, thereby enabling businesses to be set up and run faster and in a seamless manner."

-- Srinivasan, VMware

While VDI definitely provides a lot of benefits, it also comes at a cost, and might actually turn out more expensive than purchasing desktops. So what should be the minimum VDI deployment size to make it financially feasible for an organization?

" While the entry cost for VDI may seem higher than a desktop, it offers a great Return on Investment and reduces the OPEX associated with desktops over a longer period. For instance, as all virtual desktop images are hosted on a centralized server, it takes lesser time to set up and manage a virtual desktop as opposed to a desktop PC.

Also as data and applications belonging to a user are stored along with the virtual desktop image on the server, there is no static application or data hosted on the virtual desktop client device. Therefore, the same device can be used by multiple users, especially in scenarios wherein employees work in shifts. This not only reduces the need to deploy additional desktops, it also eliminates the need to configure desktop PCs with different settings for different users. Owing to these reasons, a virtual desktop infrastructure offers greater utilization and therefore a greater ROI."

-- Srinivasan, VMware

"Many organizations are evaluating Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) as an alternative to traditional PCs for their office workers. The perception is that VDI desktops accessed from thin clients will reduce costs and optimize service desk operations. While VDI may result in savings in overall hardware costs, these savings will be offset by higher software and engineering costs. After all the costs are tallied, VDI is more expensive than a well-managed PC environment for office workers."

-- Amrish, Microsoft

"This question cannot be answered in general. It strongly depends on the requirements and the customer-specific situation. A couple of years ago, I even “virtualized” a customer over the phone. He had Fujitsu PRIMERGY servers in place with server virtualization software from VMware, whose licenses covered already all the 20 virtual desktops he wanted to add. And due to the fact that the added value of a connection broker was not really relevant for this customer, at the end of the day, the only thing he had to invest in — in addition to some minor implementation services, was a Thin Client Kit from Fujitsu that turned his PCs into thin clients. This certainly was an extreme case and not the rule, but it shows that a general answer is hardly possible. On the other hand, it's worth mentioning that in particular for the small businesses (up to 20 rep. up to 40 users), Fujitsu created so-called infrastructure bundles which represent a sort of VDI solution out of the box. These bundles seem to be very attractive, because everything needed comes pre-configured and pre-installed."

-- Gernot, Fujitsu