Precious few initiatives satisfy both budget slashing and visionary change, and rarely have two extremes had a better chance to prosper. Four years on from the long flagged economic slowdown, organisations that retrenched their operations to conserve budgets are now prepared to invest to improve efficiencies and support future growth.
There is a revival of the spirit that a good crisis should not go to waste. Within many organisations the momentum for transformation is being embraced while there is ready acceptance of radical changes, and in the knowledge that better economic times are ahead.
Unsurprisingly, technology is a catalyst for change. Within large organisations, the most transformative is desktop virtualisation. The power and attraction of desktop virtualisation is that it is driven by both the organisation’s need to control and manage centrally, and the end-users’ desire to choose their own IT equipment in order to be as productive as possible. It is simultaneously highly centralised and radically empowering.
The people’s choice and visionary change
Desktop virtualisation starts with the computing devices that individual end-users find most useful for succeeding in their job role as, regardless of personal IT choices, all devices can be managed through the same, centralised system.
At face value, desktop virtualisation appears to generate little more than savings in the IT department. However – and more importantly – it enables entirely new ways of working. The uniformity of end-user computing devices across an organisation is a result of trying to minimise the complexity of managing a large estate of PCs.
Consequentially, most end-users are left lumbered with an inappropriate ‘one size fits most’ device, becoming increasingly frustrated by the lack of functionality and convenience they would consider a given in a computing device of their own choosing.
End-users become far more productive and engaged when able to choose the most appropriate smartphones, laptops, tablets, netbooks and traditional PCs for them (generally for use from home). If that sounds fanciful, consider that 92% of companies with more than 500 employees know that their employees are already using non-company issued computing devices for work-related tasks.
Indeed, desktop virtualisation allows organisations to effectively manage the use of employee-owned devices for work-related tasks; a trend called ‘Bring Your Own’. According to research conducted for Citrix Global BYO Index, around 28 per cent of the workforce is already using non company-issued computing devices. This is expected to rise to 35 per cent by mid-2013.
Supporting employees to help them succeed, be more productive and better balance work and home commitments attracts and retains top talent, as well as new graduates who are ‘digital natives’ that expect far more from technology than most organisations currently provide.
CTO’s choice and a manageable network
Desktop virtualisation is also the most secure and cost effective way to support new types of workers, such as staff based at home. Similarly, freelancers, temporary staff, contractors, consultants and other third parties can all be quickly integrated into the central computing network through the provision of virtual desktops. By this same system, lost and stolen devices can be easily and instantly cut off, securing confidential data, and the same virtual desktop then provisioned to a replacement device. These capabilities provide full and fast disaster recovery.
Entire business models are being enabled through desktop virtualisation. Applications can be opened to third parties, securely, because neither the application nor the data leaves the data centre; it is simply displayed on a remote screen. Likewise, a third party contracted to produce intellectual property (for example, a software development company) will be saving its work straight into the commissioning organisation’s data centre as opposed to its own local servers.
A centrally managed, though personally appointed, IT infrastructure even supports the modern day equivalent of the private branch exchange. Individually purchased mobile telephones can be easily and quickly added into a unified communications package, ensuring that people are easily contactable in the most appropriate way according to their preferences, location and availability.
Organisation’s choice and cost efficiencies
The pressure to improve performance and efficiencies is relentless, and IT is usually at the forefront of both.
The degree of centralised management offered by desktop virtualisation brings significant savings to the IT budget, mainly through reduced administration, but also by extending the life of older PCs that can be used as thin clients. For example, having replaced 3,000 desktops with thin client devices, The Co-operative Group will save over £3 million on desktop PC upgrade costs over the following two years.
Alongside pure cost savings, desktop virtualisation can also deliver on a company’s desire to reduce their carbon emissions through energy reduction. Thin client devices consume less power, which leads to substantial power savings. A typical call centre, for example, may have two or three thousand PCs operating 24/7 consuming around 140W. Low-powered thin clients could take that down to just 12W per work station, potentially reducing energy consumption at the desktop by around 90 per cent.
Further efficiency savings can be achieved by ensuring that the datacentre(s) running virtualised desktops are well managed. At The Co-operative Group water-cooled racks and cold aisle containment is used, alongside Citrix server virtualisation, to save up to £459,000 per year on lower server, storage, and desktop PC energy bills.
Potentially the biggest single cost-efficiency of desktop virtualisation comes through the rationalisation of office space. By separating the PC hardware and software environments, individuals’ computing environments can be delivered on any machine. This method of delivering highly effective, and extremely straight-forward, hot desking gives organisations scope to reduce overall office space. Indeed, with desktop virtualisation making it easier for employees to work remotely and while mobile, some organisations have been able to increase the ratio of employees to workplaces from 1:1 to closer to 2:1.
Thanks to these ‘hot desking’ opportunities, offices that only fill to 40% of capacity on their busiest days can be scaled down and consolidated, creating massive savings not just in IT but across estate and resource costs. Citrix customers in some of business’ most expensive areas of real estate could potentially make enormous savings by closing entire offices.
Moments of economic difficulty are well noted for spurring innovation, and this crisis is no different. Now is the moment to embrace the momentum of transformation in the knowledge that companies will be faster and stronger when better times arrive. Technology will inevitably lead this transformation and desktop virtualisation is a vital technology to place at the centre of it. Virtual desktops significantly reduce IT administration costs; more than that, they emancipate workers to better fulfill their job roles and introduce new ways of operating.
Virtual desktops hold benefits across an enterprise. Here is just a sample of the functions that desktop virtualization can benefit:
Sean Wainer, Citrix Systems SA Country Manager
