You’ve probably heard a few CIOs – maybe even yours – complain about how operational costs consume an excessive share of overall costs. As IT increasingly evolves into a profit center, virtualization is the magic word that comes up when CIOs talk shop about cost reduction in conjunction with desktop management. Not surprisingly then, virtualization of the desktop has begun to surface as a viable and cost-justifiable alternative to the standard, physical laptop/desktop system.

Desktop virtualization, aka Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI), aka Hosted Virtual Desktops (HVD), is a technology where the user’s working environment is completely virtualized in a virtual machine running on a hypervisor in the datacenter. But how do you know if it’s for your company?

First, let’s consider the basic requirements for VDI. These are the fundamental elements that support a virtual desktop project. They are:

• Server virtualization – Servers will be needed (along with network and storage access) to host virtual desktop systems
• Brokering/session management software – Connects the end user device to the virtual desktop system
• Provisioning/configuration management tools – Enables the ability to provision virtual systems and perform ongoing configuration management functions (i.e. application, content and patch management)

Herein lies your organization’s first significant hurdle: consider the impact to IT staffing with regard to skills requirements. VDI, by its very definition, is going to thrust two groups together that haven’t typically interacted (or possibly worked well) with each other in the past – desktop engineering and data center administrators.

So what other issues might your organization encounter during a desktop transformation?  And what are the actual benefits of enterprise-wide VDI deployment?

• Compared to traditional PC workstations and laptops, still the overwhelming platform of choice for most companies, costs are significantly reduced in a VDI environment with centralized management and administration.

• A virtualized desktop can always be accessed from anywhere in the network and the user can access it from any computing device
• Isolation ensures a very high degree of security

There are MANY more advantages to desktop virtualization, all of which can be found in a new resource, “The Desktop Transformation Project,” where we go into much greater detail behind this technology. We also examine the current market situation and demonstrate the potential benefits to be achieved when VDI is correctly integrated with IT management and the respective business processes.

To access your free copy, click here: http://www.matrix42.com/downloads/WP-VDI-demystified