Virtualisation does not take bank holidays

The return to work is helped by a wet and windy day, which means working is the lesser of two evils, gardening being the other. Today will be sort out e-mail, as the rest of the world does not share the same bank holidays as us, and then doing my article for the company blog. This will be an update from my recent trip to Orlando to IBM Pulse.

Where are the big deployments of Desktop Virtualisation?

As an analyst I have been talking and writing about virtualisation for some time, and in fact desktop virtualisation, server hosted format that is, has been promising large benefits for over a year now. However, the uptake in the user community remains low, and this has prompted me to do some investigation.

The first issue appears to be that organisations are struggling to get the server side virtualisation projects working and bedded in, and this experience has made them more cautious than they were 12 months ago.

Secondly, the emotional attachment employees have to their desktop/laptop computer is proving to be harder to break than most observers first thought. This in its self will not stop any determined organisation, but does require some ground work to be conducted before these beloved items are removed.

Finally, the problems of getting power in to data centres is causing a re-think, because if all the desktop computing power is to be housed in the data centre then this will require significantly more space and power. Currently, data centres are finding it difficult to increase their power supply, and must first reduce consumption before they can accommodate this new centralised demand.

I believe that server hosted desktop virtualisation will become the de facto standard approach, but it will take another three – five years before it gains sufficient momentum to overtake the deployments of PCs.