GUIDELINES FOR HOSTED DESKTOPS
While user needs vary, there are some general guidelines as to where hosted desktop virtualization can work best. Companies that have remote, task-based employees who typically spend the bulk of their time accessing Office suite applications could benefit from desktop virtualization. So, too, could organizations that employ contract workers or need to provide business partners with applications but not hardware. Even users who need processing-intensive applications such as accounting or ERP can get their desktops delivered via virtualization provided there are plenty of server resources available in the data center.

Hosted desktop virtualization is likely insufficient for organizations that rely heavily on rich media or 3D graphics, or require serious computing power for heavy-duty financial analysis. (There may not be enough performance when many virtual machines run on one server.) Desktop virtualization is also a poor fit for mobile workers, because they won't have access to data or applications. Yet despite the limitations inherent with hosted desktop virtualization, the technology can provide channel partners with significant opportunities.

Joe Brown, president of Accelera Solutions Inc. in Falls Church, Va., for example, can speak firsthand about the potential of desktop virtualization. Accelera is a provider of virtualization technologies (both server and desktop) and has seen its business grow nearly 800 percent over the past three years. "We've grown due to our focus on the virtualization space," Brown says, adding that channel partners should think of the markets for server and desktop virtualization as distinctly different. "Right now, desktop virtualization is a very trendy new thing that everyone is interested in," Brown says. "It can enable customers to shed the burden of supporting even a small number of desktops as well as provide a flexible computing environment."

EASIER ADMINISTRATION

Indeed, eliminating the burdens related to desktop management is one of the key selling points of desktop virtualization. Providing patches and software upgrades is greatly simplified in a virtualized environment because there is only one physical machine--the server on which virtual desktops are running--that needs to be administered. In a virtualized environment, "you can take a single desktop image and deploy it to a workforce regardless of differences in hardware," says Chris Wolf, senior analyst at the Burton Group, an IT research firm. Desktop virtualization can also enable companies to upgrade applications without upgrading desktop hardware. And from a user's perspective, a virtualized desktop may even perform better than a physical PC. "Users' virtual desktops can start as a clean image," Wolf explains. "With no excessive software, they boot really fast. It's just power up and be off and running."

Another key selling point is that support headaches can be significantly alleviated because the applications and operating system run on a central server. Any software-related problems can be fixed without sending a support person to an end user's location. Andi Mann, research director at Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) Inc., an IT research and consulting firm in Boulder, Colo., believes SMBs in particular can benefit from desktop virtualization's support paradigm because they just don't have the internal resources to address end-user problems quickly in a traditional desktop environment. With desktop virtualization, those end users who are distributed or who work remotely "don't have to wait for someone to show up and fix their system," he says.

The biggest benefit that hosted desktop virtualization can deliver is in the area of security. With all data residing in the secure confines of the data center, a lost or stolen laptop is more of an inconvenience than a security threat. End users still have access to the data they need to do their jobs, but they no longer have the onus of storing and securing that data. For many companies, "the security benefits of desktop virtualization far outweigh the costs," says Lambert.

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