Trimming the fat

10ZiG Technology’s Martin Pladgeman discusses the role of virtualisation and the migration to thin clients in business today.

CXO. Cost is obviously a key area for consideration for desktop virtualisation. What is your advice for companies finding it hard to calculate the cost benefits of virtualisation?
Martin Pladgeman. The cost benefits of desktop virtualisation include the savings found by managing desktops centrally therefore decreasing upgrade, support and maintenance costs, the reduction in energy consumption, and long term hardware savings. These benefits are significant, but calculating them is certainly not cut and dry. I recommend that companies looking to adopt virtual desktops reach out to desktop virtualisation vendors for insight on what to expect based on their specific plans and requirements. Often these vendors have information from customers who have already gone down this path. Many vendors offer resources like whitepapers and ROI calculators on their website which help with both calculating the actual cost and the cost savings. Here's an example of a savings calculator: Quest Solutions ROI Calculator www.vworkspace.com/ROI-analysis.aspx

Does desktop virtualisation offer the potential for enhanced enterprise agility and what benefits does it offer in this regard?
Virtual desktops offer cost savings in addition to increasing productivity, enhancing security, and providing easier management across the enterprise. With centralised management, deployment of new software and the ability to clone and patch is very simple allowing companies to take advantage of new features quickly giving them a competitive edge.

What effect, if any, has the economic downturn had on the adoption of this technology and way of working?
Most companies in this economy are looking hard at any purchase. More research and thought is going into purchases to determine the ROI. The advantages of desktop virtualisation are that it offers a fairly quick ROI, therefore we find that companies are still pressing ahead with these types of deployments. There are also many companies conducting their testing now so that they are ready to proceed when the time comes. I expect that we'll see many companies adopt desktop virtualisation in 2010.

What are the common misconceptions that still exist today with
virtualisation?
There's a misconception that desktop virtualisation is expensive. Many compare the price per virtual desktop versus what they are currently spending per desktop, but that doesn't factor in the cost savings found with the reduction in energy consumption, long-term hardware savings, savings found by managing the desktops centrally, etcetera. Calculations typically include the cost for all new thin clients to replace current PCs, but that's not always necessary right away. We offer software, Thin Desktop, which repurposes old PCs into thin clients. This allows customers to save money and leverage their existing infrastructure while benefiting from a standard user interface, centralised management and increased security. With software like this, companies can replace their PCs with thin clients when they are ready. After moving to thin clients, customers will realise significant long term savings with their new hardware because thin clients have no moving parts therefore they typically last twice as long as a PC.

In your opinion what does the future hold for virtualisation?
Clearly new technologies are coming to the forefront like PCoIP, RDP7, RGS, Ericom Blaze, and so on. This will offer improved performance for desktop users over WAN and LAN connections and the promise of graphics performance close to a PC. With the management benefits and now the performance enhancements it's clear that thin clients are the end device of choice, providing companies with low power consumption, no moving parts, locked down security and easy deployment. It is difficult to see why any environmentally aware company with a VDI deployment would continue to purchase PCs. I believe within the next couple of years we'll see a significant increase in desktop virtualisation and thin client deployments.

Martin Pladgeman is President of 10ZiG Technology, a leading developer of enterprise-class thin clients. 10ZiG offers a wide range of thin client hardware including thin clients optimised for virtual desktops. He is a VMware certified professional and expert in the field of desktop virtualisation. For more information, visit www.10zig.com.