PERSPECTIVE Q&A
IA: The security case for thin clients was vindicated very recently. What exactly happened? MC: Just the other week, we had an incident reported to us by a member of staff in one of the LifeHouses. Someone had called her on the phone purporting to be from the IT department, and it was the usual scam – they said ‘there’s a problem with your PC, could you just go to this website and click on this link, and download this bit of software’. Because our thin client environment allows us to put security controls in place, she wasn’t able to do that.
Then the guy on the phone asked her
to start up what we believe was a remote assistance request, which of course we disallow via our security policies. Apparently, he got extremely frustrated because he was getting absolutely nowhere. We were very pleased to hear he had been successfully thwarted.
PUSHING FORWARD IA:How has your use of that desktop infrastructure progressed since that project? MC: Once we had gained some experience with the thin client devices, Terminal Services, and the server farm at the back end, it occurred to us that we could use our SSL virtual private network (VPN) to present Terminal Services. That allowed us to give people working
remotely or from home access to the Terminal Services desktop with a good level of security wrapped around it. At that point, you’ve got a very secure path into your back-end infrastructure. So, simply by thinking orthogonally about what we had and what we could do with it, we were able to support those occasional home workers without any more investment.
36 INFORMATIONAGE APRIL2011
IA:How has that been received? MC: That has proved so popular. Some of the users have actually said that accessing the system from home is faster than their desktop PC at work. But we’re only serving them a very tightly managed, vanilla desktop image. And we started thinking, what would it take to serve up a desktop that’s more geared to our more demanding users, and could support things like desktop publishing? That’s what made us look into virtual
desktop streaming, and we’re now heavily involved in a virtual desktop infrastructure [VDI] implementation.
IA: What is that VDI project based on, and how far have you got with it? MC:We have a pilot going with approximately 60 users, based down at our training college in London. We’re using Xen Desktop from Citrix, and again thin client devices from Wyse. One of the early adopters is my boss. His PC was having some issues, and he asked us whether he should replace it with a PC or laptop, and we mentioned that we are trialling virtual PCs. He said, ‘I’m prepared to give it a go’. He’s using one of Wyse’s Xenith thin client terminals, and he likes it very much. It’s quick and it can support multimedia.
IA: What is the business case for extending the VDI infrastructure to
more of your regular desktop users? MC: There’s a very long mean time between failures on these devices. Therefore, you don’t have to find the budget to replace your desktop PCs quite so often. It means not suffering performance
degradation of PCs and laptops, and it’s just easier to support. Also, we’re reducing power consumption compared with a standard desktop PC.
IA: Where do you see desktop virtualisation taking you in future? MC: For me, the end game is getting staff to bring in their own computers, which I think is a fascination proposition for charities. If you’ve got the infrastructure in place, then why wouldn’t you stream a virtual desktop onto an employee- owned device?
IA: Does that mean that you may require employees to have a working laptop in future? MC: It’s a little way off, but I think that’s where we might be heading. When you employ someone, they should come with the tools for the job. Plus, it shifts responsibility for
maintenance of the device onto the user – if you haven’t got a working laptop, then you aren’t going to work. There are a lot of HR and legal issues, but I think we can get there.
www.information-age.com
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