Many server-based desktop virtualization solutions have a significantly smaller footprint, with some solutions using less than one twentieth of the materials required for a traditional PC, which results in far less e-waste filling landfills. The elimination of the physical desktop PC not only alleviates the landfill issues, but it also eliminates a significant potential security threat as well:  the expensive process required to ensure discarded PC equipment contains no private or confidential data that could leave a company vulnerable to significant privacy liability.  Since desktop virtualization solutions like those from Pano Logic have no local memory or drive state, no confidential data (or data of any kind) is resident on the desktop device.

Additionally, zero-client desktop virtualization solutions can have a useful life twice the length of a traditional PC because they do not have an operating system, software or moving parts on the device which can fail or quickly become outdated or obsolete. As long the desktop device is capable of handling the software updates made on the server, the solution continues to work.

With smaller footprints and a longer shelf life, the server-based desktop virtualization solution also cuts down on the amount of packaging used to ship and deliver solutions door-to-door. An average PC weighs in at 30 lbs. and, with hard drives, memory and other internal electronic components, is a heavy and fragile piece of equipment. The 5-10 lbs. of packaging it takes to ship a PC results in over 125 thousand tons of foam and cardboard shipped with this years commercial computers.  The energy and cost to ship these units around the world, while difficult to calculate, is not insignificant.  The resulting landfill costs are also quite high.

Going beyond green

Of course, server-based desktop virtualization helps organizations realize savings far beyond those that benefit the environment. These additional benefits are often the primary reason companies initiate virtualization in the data center and at the desktop.

In the past, CIOs and IT managers were familiar with many of the benefits of server-based computing and thin clients, but getting started was always a difficult proposition. The process of moving to server-based computing required a careful study of user types, application types, application testing, architectural review, and end-user and administrator training. The result of this complexity is that a company had to commit to a larger scale deployment and the changes involved required a long time to realize the promised returns on investment. Those companies that made it work are better for their efforts, but many companies did not get to that point.  In addition, traditional thin client models required changes to the end user experience.  Often, application access or peripheral support was sacrificed in order to achieve some of the back end cost savings.  This forced larger training efforts and smaller deployments - increasing costs and lowering possible ROI.

Today, the biggest impetus for IT to adopt desktop virtualization is that their organization has already adopted hypervisor-based server virtualization, realized significant savings and wishes to leverage existing virtualization infrastructure for further savings. What has made server-based computing easier is that many desktop virtualization solutions integrate seamlessly with existing virtualization infrastructure and even use the same management tools, enabling IT managers to get started and feel comfortable with their new solution right away - realizing benefits from day one. Getting the first few users up and running requires little additional management overhead, particularly for those IT organizations already employing managed PC practices and data center virtualization. Using these existing skills, organizations can reap the benefits of these solutions quickly and also easily scale as the PC refresh cycle permits.

Once deployed, server-based desktop virtualization solutions centralize management and enable easy software updates and security and patch rollouts. They also improve security and provide users with options like self-help and desktop mobility.

Although the draw for IT to implement server-based desktop virtualization is often not green, more and more organizations have realized that with virtualization, green benefits often correlate with cost savings. In turn, these cost savings result in a significant environmental impact that will lower an organization's carbon footprint and e-waste volume while changing the future of green computing.

Green IT , Pano Logic