like persona management, application virtualization, the ability to create a stateless desktop can happen on any device now. Persona management is that ability to extract the user profi le information out of the system image, which makes replication and moving the desktop from place to place very easy.
Q: DO YOU HAVE AN EXAMPLE OF A CUSTOMER BENEFITING FROM THESE ADVANCEMENTS IN DESKTOP VIRTUALIZATION?
A: [Fosina] We have a great example. One of our customers was a large school, and they were adding buildings to their campus, and right from the beginning they went with virtual desktops instead of physical. They wanted to quickly provision labs and desktops for diff erent environments and for the convenience of allowing students to connect with their own devices— that was very easily realized in a VDI environment, thanks to new technologies in VMware View that allow for easy expandability.
Q: HOW ARE THE COMBINED STRENGTHS OF CISCO’S UCS AND VMWARE’S HORIZON VIEW ADDRESSING SOME OF THOSE CHALLENGES THAT YOU MENTIONED?
A: [Fosina] VMware Horizon View is the desktop virtualization foundation of Cisco’s desktop virtualization architectures. It enables IT departments to simultaneously deliver fl exible user computing and off ers high levels of desktop data security, which is key. The integration between Cisco and VMware also simplifi es the physical and virtual infrastructure and management associated with the desktop deployments.
Q: HOW IS CISCO HELPING IT DEPARTMENTS DEVELOP THE APPROPRIATE INFRASTRUCTURE TO MAKE THEIR VDI INITIATIVES SUCCESSFUL?
A: [Fosina] Cisco is not about the products as much as they’re about architectures. An architectural approach allows for a modular approach, which off ers fl exibility in an unpredictable environment. What Cisco has done is create validated designs with VMware View, which lets you create an environment that is cost-eff ective, scalable, and easy to manage.
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Q: WHAT ARE SOME OF THE FIRST STEPS ORGANIZATIONS SHOULD TAKE TO GET STARTED WITH A VDI PROJECT?
A: [D’Ancona] There are two really important things to do. One is to assess their current environments and really fi nd out things like how their physical PCs are operating, how many users are actually on at a particular time, and what types of applications are being used. The next thing is to get started with a proof of concept (POC), to fi nd out how this new technology will work in their environments. That’s where you want to start, with an assessment and then a PoC.
Q: WHAT DOES THE PROOF OF CONCEPT INVOLVE?
A: [D’Ancona] At PC Connection, we start with acceptance criteria, which is a list of all things the customer would like to prove in their PoC. Then we have a great proof of concept appliance that we’ve developed that we can send to our customers. They get to use that for 45 days, and within an hour of turning that appliance on they have everything they need to get that VDI working—the server, lots of memory, and network switches. We spend two to three days at the customer site not worrying about the infrastructure but teaching them how to accomplish everything that they said they wanted to prove. And what they get out of that is a report at the end of each week that shows them what really happened in their infrastructure as they tested out all this technology. That gives us the beginnings of what we need to architecturally design a proper implementation for that customer.
CONNECTION/BUSINESS IT 2013.Q4
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