2010 Prediction: Michael Palin, Leostream

By Michael Palin
published: Monday, December 21 2009

2010: The Virtual Year Ahead

In 2010, the adoption of virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) will accelerate. Leostream has seen a dramatic increase in the number of trials and proofs of concept (POCs) in the past year and many are developing into larger deployments. While 2009 saw individual deployments serving thousands of users, the year ahead will include deployments into the tens-of-thousands as enterprises gain more confidence in their ability to scale VDI easily and truly meet the demands of end users. With over 200 deployments under our belts, this reflects the majority of feedback we’ve received from the customers, partners and peers we’ve worked with in the industry.

Yet, while significant and healthy gains are undoubtedly ahead, this may not be the “break-out” year for VDI that some anticipate. One of the issues standing in the way of rapid market adoption continues to be the complexity involved with deploying VDI. I believe this hurdle can be crossed if market leaders, such as VMware and Citrix, take measures to resolve the deployment, management and scalability issues that currently complicate or handicap their solutions. If and when this happens, I believe we will see the market expand dramatically for everyone in the desktop space.

As companies undergo large-scale migration from physical desktops to VDI, more emphasis will need to be placed on re-thinking the business processes. Specifically, VDI architects will need to pay closer attention to the access rules for corporate resources, taking into account user needs, locations and organizational requirements. This process is often more complex than many realize at first. So it makes sense that solutions that have been proven to implement business rules accurately in real-world, deployments (not just trials or POCs) will be the ones to benefit most of all.

No single vendor has the perfect, unified, “single-stack” solution. Enterprises looking at VDI learned that in 2009. As a result, they are now mixing and matching components to meet IT management objectives for cost, control, resource utilization, and most importantly, end user experience. With this in mind, the focus will shift to products that enable heterogeneous VDI solutions. More and more, enterprises understand that vendor lock-in may prevent the future adoption of a more effective technology. A heterogeneous approach opens the door to newer products or open source platforms that can be more cost competitive. They also understand the importance of vendor-independence and that being able to use existing resources for greater ROI makes interoperability essential.

With increasing sophistication in the market, enterprises are also looking beyond “VDI packages” and drilling-down to examine the true cost and value that individual components offer. The connection broker, for instance - the critical software management layer that ties desktop images in the data center to the user’s end point device – comprises about 5-10 percent of the cost of a VDI deployment. Yet, it is often this component that brings large-scale desktop virtualization projects to a halt if it is not robust, scalable or if it fails to interoperate with existing resources. Those spearheading large VDI deployments have come to understand that there’s no such thing as a “free” connection broker – and going with the wrong one will cost a company much more in the long run.

Internally at enterprises, as the physical-to-virtual migration accelerates in 2010, those involved in desktop or data center oversight will need to significantly change their management systems. From resource management to licensing issues, the virtualized environment is a different world. Management systems in place will have to be expanded to gain the flexibility necessary for integrating infrastructure, addressing new business rules, procedures and policies.

Virtualization has attracted a great deal of attention in the past few years, and now, “market hype” is beginning to fade. That’s good. No one questions the tremendous financial and operational benefits enterprises stand to gain through a VDI. However, market maturity means that success for vendors in the year ahead will be defined by proven product performance, continued innovation, and perhaps most importantly, “real-world” experience.

Those that can eliminate the complexity of VDI for enterprises – ones with a demonstrable ability to “make it work” and products proven to deliver best-of-breed performance – are going to accelerate as fast as this rapidly developing market does in the year ahead.