Key Factors in Planning a Virtual Desktop Infrastructure - Technology

Desktop Virtualization is considered the next step in virtualization evolution. Many organizations have virtualized at least a part of their infrastructure, regardless of the type of industry. Gartner Inc. estimates that there are three to four million virtual desktops in production today and predicts that there will be 50 million by 2014. Virtual desktops and application virtualization provide IT and end users with a wide range of performance and flexibility options as they increase desktop security, reduced desktop and application management responsibilities and reduced calls to your service desk. When planning for a desktop virtualization deployment, every organization needs to consider these key factors:

a) Main Drivers - The organization needs to determine the main drivers in moving the desktops to a VDI, or virtual desktop infrastructure. It is also important to ascertain if the business is looking for ways to improve security of digital assets or if it is looking for an efficient way of migrating desktops to Windows 7. Only by defining the reasons and expectations, can the success of any project be ensured.

b) Kinds of Users - In any desktop virtualization project, it is vital to identify and catalog all users. Users can be defined as workers who utilize MS office applications or users who use specialized applications. Cataloging all users, functions and application usage can help with virtualization.

c) Types of Endpoints It is also important to ascertain if aging PCs need to be replaced by thin clients as current endpoints and possible use of thin clients need to be considered to get an accurate project scope.

d) Adequate Support - Having a VDI solution in place is the most important factor that needs to be considered in the environment that is going to support virtual desktops. Desktop virtualization is an augmentation or an application that runs on a virtualized data center infrastructure. Virtual desktops are basically desktop images that reside in a virtualized data center.

e) Training Plan - The approach to desktop virtualization implementation is not that different from the deployment of any other technology. Training plans need to be carefully considered during the research and planning stages of various factors like the existing technology, affected users deployment, etc.

It is no simple task to implement a virtual desktop infrastructure. Workspace virtualization of your desktop infrastructure can reduce support costs and improve data and application security.