IDC White Paper

Driving Productivity with the Anywhere, Anytime Virtual Desktop

This paper discusses the benefits of Virtual Client Computing (VCC), including the technology's ability to offer increased worker productivity, enhanced data security, greater energy savings and an improved return on investment over traditional computing models. It explores the challenges facing companies looking to implement the technology, forecasts some of the related technology markets, and examines the real-world benefits enjoyed by six forward-looking organizations that have already rolled out VCC. Situation Overview The VCC model accomplishes its intended benefits by moving either the users' desktop operating system and/or some of their applications off of the local desktop and into the datacenter, to be accessed by the user over a network. The potential benefits of this shift include enhanced data security, easier desktop manageability (resulting in greater uptime), and increased worker productivity since an employee can access their virtual desktop from just about any connected device (including their own, which opens up the possibility of BYOPC—Bring Your Own PC—programs within an organization. Other potential benefits include greater IT flexibility, lower power and management costs, and real hardware savings based on the implementation of simpler endpoints that cost less than a standard PC. What company--and IT organization--wouldn't be excited by these prospects? However, once the enthusiasm passes and corporations set about actually implementing VCC, they realize the complexity of the task before them. Often times the difficulty stems from the lack of basic understanding about the various technologies that comprise VCC. And sometimes it’s as simple as not knowing which vendors with which to partner.

Sponsored by: Wyse and Citrix