You Can’t Ignore Vista Forever
Virtual Desktop Interface (VDI) can solve many of the challenges of managing physical PC’s including:
- Change control centrally instead of user desk side visits
- Ability to discard a user-contaminated virtual machine in minutes and return the user to productive work
- Fault-tolerant hardware running in the data center
- Backups of all user desktops
However, the best reason to use VDI may well be the impending switch to Vista from XP in the Enterprise. Eventually, Microsoft will force your hand and you’ll end up with the Vista upgrade spiral problem.
What better way to deploy Vista than to have it running on VDI so that your users can still access their XP desktops?
Serious deployments should also investigate the ROI (Return on Investment) for terminal devices (i.e. so called thin client hardware) in conjunction with VDI to avoid the double license “tax” of two operating system licenses per user. Some reported total cost of ownership ROI numbers for 1,000 desktops have been as high as a 200% ROI with a payback period of 5 months.
You can’t ignore the Vista upgrade problem forever. VDI may be just the ticket to avoid a mass user revolt while driving down your operational expenditures (OPEX) and saving substantial capital.
