Understanding the reality of a virtual desktop environment
Maximising agility is essential in today’s dynamic and digital workplaces. Users need the flexibility to move around an organisation, its desks, its departments and its devices. Fixed end points with fixed datasets and applications don’t just impact productivity and mobility for individual users; they impact continuity, quality and profitability for the entire business.
Desktop virtualisation has been promising to deliver greater agility for several years, but few organisations have succeeded in unlocking its full potential. In 2011, analysts forecasted that 30 per cent of desktops would be virtualised; three years later that figure was adjusted to less than 10per cent.
Low adoption rates are not surprising given that earlier solutions often pushed up both capital and operational expenditure, resulting in a poor return on investment. Thanks to new technologies, however, this is no longer the case.
As a result, desktop virtualisation is now back on the CIO agenda and set to become a key component of the digital workplace.
Desktop virtualisation best practice
- Analyse workstyles and define personas to map desktop virtualisation solutions to the right user
- Safeguard the user experience with proactive infrastructure management
- Use desktop virtualisation as an enabler for other business initiatives
- Adopt a hybrid approach to cater for evolving business and user needs
