Rethinking Client Architectures as a Competitive Business Advantage

By Roberto Moctezuma

Virtualization can be an effective competitive weapon for businesses, with benefits far beyond cost savings, efficiency and utilization. But with only one-third of companies recognizing virtualization as a business tool, most CIOs are still missing out on the opportunity to capitalize on the exponentially greater business results that can be delivered by virtualization.

Most IT managers understand that virtualized solutions equal quick deployment, increased hardware utilization, and simplified management. But those benefits are not always extended across the business, with an understanding of how these IT benefits can translate into faster time to market for new products and services, stronger security and regulations compliance, and greater work force flexibility.

This is the case at many companies, according to a study by Enterprise Management Associates. In an extensive survey of organizations using virtualization, the firm found that many companies' actual achievements with virtualization fell below expectations.[1]  A separate recent global research conducted by Penn, Schoen & Berland Associates on behalf of HP also revealed that while 86 percent of technology decision makers have implemented virtualization projects, the vast majority of respondents expect to have virtualized just 25 percent of their technology environments by 2010.[2]  And while many of those surveyed anticipate eventually reaching 75 percent virtualization of their total environments, only one-third of these technology implementers recognize virtualization as a valuable business tool. Two-thirds of those that have implemented view virtualization as only a technology enabler.

How do you take virtualization from technology enabler to business enabler? At HP, we are helping CIOs rethink virtualization in business terms, realizing the full potential of the technology to gain better business outcomes by taking a broader, more comprehensive approach to virtualization. This business-driven approach helps corporate leaders gain more value from virtualization projects by first considering the implications of any virtualization project on the business services provided by the entire IT environment, and then by putting proven best practices and technology leadership to work for their business.

When virtualization is implemented in a more comprehensive, business-focused manner it will allow an organization to realize greater business value from its virtualization investments. The focus should shift away from what virtualization can do for IT, to how IT can put virtualization to work to do a better job for the business.  This requires you to look beyond limited-scope, data center-based projects, and to exploit the advantages of virtualization through the processes and tools used to operate, manage and govern IT across the entire enterprise-from the data center all the way down to the desktop.

To garner greater value from virtualization, you need to rethink the data center infrastructure with an understanding that workloads are no longer inextricably tied to that data center in which they are first deployed.  At the same time, rethink applications and IT operations management, taking into account not just the physical but the virtual resources used to deliver IT services to the business.

While some businesses have taken these data center concerns into account, the benefits of virtualization aren't relegated to the confines of a data center. Most companies are still not exploiting the value of virtualization down to the client level.

Virtualization has emerged as a key way to achieve greater return on your overall client investment by improving the reliability, security, manageability and flexibility of your computing infrastructure. This can be accomplished by deploying secure hypervisors on traditional PCs, or by replacing conventional, distributed personal computers with centralized computing resources located within the data center. Employees then log in to their computing sessions through highly reliable thin clients featuring enhanced security and data protection.

How does this solve business challenges? We hear that our customers are routinely concerned about several key areas that virtualization can help resolve. The most common are challenges faced by many large enterprises today, such as compliance and security, keeping agile to ensure time to market delivery of products or services, and the need for more flexible work environments for their employees.  From an IT perspective, business continuity and disaster recovery, simplifying manageability, and reducing operating costs and resource consumption are the chief concerns.  Client virtualization is a cost-effective tool to help businesses overcome all of these challenges.

Client virtualization can improve security and simplify regulatory compliance by safeguarding sensitive data within the data center and eliminating data security exposure on the client device, rather than on individual PCs often located in multiple locations. This centralization of compute resources also radically simplifies software and hardware management and increases resource utilization across the client environment. 

Business continuity and disaster recovery strategies are also becoming increasingly important. If a site or location is inaccessible due to disaster or risk, client virtualization keeps business running by providing employees remote access to end-user applications and data, with enhanced security features, from virtually any Internet connection. Virtualizing the desktop and moving the compute resource into the data center also allows businesses to transcend physical location, as individual workers can log on and access information from any location with network connectivity, in a safe computing environment.

These same features also help workers be more productive. With automatic failover capabilities, downtime due to hardware failure is reduced to seconds, not hours or days as with traditional PC hardware. And getting business up and running can be as simple as connecting to the Internet.

Client virtualization also can help a corporation reduce their environmental impact and lower materials usage, as low-power consuming thin clients, blade clients and servers dynamically regulate power usage to optimize power consumption.  Energy-efficient thin clients, which deliver a robust personal user experience in a virtual client environment, offer up to 80 percent power savings over traditional desktop PCs with similar capabilities and their packaging is one-third the weight of equivalent desktop packaging, thus improving transportation fuel efficiency and helping to reduce carbon footprint.

So, now you're seeing the business benefits of client virtualization, and you're wondering how to get your organization on this path.  Virtualization deployments tend to follow a natural evolutionary process, starting with virtualization that projects target specific IT outcomes-such as virtualizing servers or storage to increase utilization and save floor space. As an organization gains more experience with virtualization, you can direct further investments in virtualization technologies outside the data center and start solving the business challenges that are complicated by a traditional computing architecture.

When it comes to client virtualization, one size does not fit all. The technologies that are ideal for one type of user might exceed or fall short of the needs of another user group. That's why it's important to match users with interoperable client virtualization alternatives. For example:

• Server-based computing solutions provide a cost-effective means to increase client security, enhance data protection and manageability for light-usage, task-based workers.
• Virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) provides basic productivity workers with the functionality of a stand-alone desktop while increasing security, decreasing cost and delivering higher reliability.
• Dedicated Blade clients can provide extra capacity and substantially lower operational support costs for power users while increasing security, reliability and business continuity.
• Local/Offline VDI provides combines the security and flexibility benefits of a virtual client environment with the cost savings and user experience of existing, traditional PC resources.

When you deploy multiple client virtualization approaches to meet the needs of different types of users, interoperability is essential. Otherwise you could end up with a complicated mix of incompatible technologies. So look for a vendor who can provide proven and tested thin clients, virtualization software, connection protocols, connection brokers and management tools that work across the full range of your virtual client solutions.  HP's approach begins with an integrated, comprehensive business view of virtual and physical resources-not a narrow IT view-to help you rethink your strategy in a virtualization context and truly capitalize on the promise of virtualization.

As EMA advises, organizations should treat virtualization as a strategy, not a project. In the firm's words, "Virtualization should be about the whole business, not just about IT, and about a range of long-term benefits, not just (or even) short-term savings."[3] •

As your organization deploys virtualization more broadly, and with higher expectations, don't forget to rethink common approaches in order to increase business impact and to gain greater value for your IT organization. You can't accomplish higher-level business goals just by virtualizing servers and storage. You need to rethink infrastructure barriers, applications and IT operations management, and even your client architectures. With the right processes, tools and virtualization technologies, and a proactive approach to management, businesses can ensure that virtualization is helping the organization achieve its business goals and priorities.

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[1] "Virtualization and Management: Trends, Forecasts and Recommendations," Enterprise Management Associates, Inc., 2008.

[2] "HP Virtualization Study," conducted by Penn, Schoen & Berland Associates, August 2008. The full report is available at www.hp.com/go/virtualizationresearch08.

[3] "Virtualization and Management: Trends, Forecasts and Recommendations," Enterprise Management Associates, Inc., 2008.