Top 5 Ways IT Can Deliver Ubiquitous Access Cost-Effectively
#5: Bring-your-own-device
By enabling employees to use their own devices to work, IT can get out of the business of provisioning, tracking, and managing employee access devices. This saves significant time, and money, especially because 80 percentof companies are looking at Windows 7 migration this year. For certain use cases, rather than buying new Windows 7 PCs, companies may be able to offer partial reimbursement for employee-owned devices.
#4: Enable self-service provisioning
For IT to truly get out of the business of provisioning end-user devices, it must be easy for the end-users to setup their device for corporate access. For instance, look to setup a self-configuring URL that users can go to which automatically downloads the required receiver and configures the tablet to access corporate desktops. This makes self-service easy and error-free.
#3: Manage the corporate desktop image, not the access device
Yes, the number of end-points from which users can access their desktops is growing, but by de-coupling the Windows desktop itself from the end-point, IT can focus on managing the corporate desktop images, not end-points. IT can have an accounting desktop, an executive desktop, etc. as packaged desktop images that users get provisioned based on their roles and privileges. They access these desktops from iPads, Android devices or their own PCs, but IT is not managing the devices, just the corporate desktop images.
#2: Consolidate, cut desktop management and support costs while improving security
Once you have decided to de-couple the desktop from the end-point, a logical next step is using desktop virtualization to streamline the process. By running virtual desktops on servers, you not only improve security but also cut ongoing management costs through consolidation. Say, for instance, there are 50 users in accounting. Rather than having 50 individual PCs to manage, you simply update and patch the accounting master image and with desktop virtualization tools, users will receive their personal virtual desktop from your master images. Companies have cut over 80% of desktop management and support costs using virtual desktops or VDI.
#1: Cut capital costs
As counter-intuitive as this may sound, you can actually cut upfront costs while increasing access. Here’s how companies are achieving exactly this: A) They reduce the cost of procuring end-points through bring-your-own policies where the company is not paying the full cost of the end-point as they would with a PC. This cuts down the end-point costs . B) Look for a virtual desktop solution that runs on inexpensive off-the-shelf servers and does not require high upfront infrastructure investments. Traditionally, VDI required expensive shared storage, connection brokers and management servers, which made the capital outlay very high.
New VDI grid architectures eliminate this overhead with an all-in-one appliance design that does not require any separate management servers or shared storage, and still delivers key features like high-availability and dynamic virtual desktop provisioning and management. For under about $500 per desktop, you can get an entire virtual desktop solution implemented from scratch. Add that to the cost of any partial reimbursement, and you are still looking at an attractive cost proposition.
Posted by Krishna Subramanian on 05/06/2011 at 12:47 PM