Employee-owned PCs: Good Idea?
Jeff Jennings who heads up VMware’s VDI solutions recently told me that he thinks something like 80% of desktop machines are candidates for virtualization. I told Jeff that seems high to me in light of the fact that at least one analyst firm was only projecting that 5% of desktops would be virtualized by 2011. But Jennings thinks that if the trend now seen in Asia towards employee-owned computers catches on, it could also fuel the the movement towards VDI adoption. He says the top three drivers that VMware is seeing for hosted desktop these days are cost, manageability, and security.
With the employee-owned approach, users are given a stipend from the company to go out and purchase their own computers. He cited the example of recent college graduates coming into the corporate workforce who might want to keep use their Macs. Using VDI, they can bring their Macs to the office but via hosted desktop virtualization can access all the corporate applications they need or a full hosted desktop. Time will tell if this approach will translate well into US-based corporate culture.
Posted by Tom Valovic on 10/26/2008 at 12:49 PM