Tipping the ROI Scale on Desktop Virtualization
The benefits of desktop virtualization are becoming more and more obvious. For many, it represents (and is) a better way of doing things, but better doesn’t always win. Desktop virtualization ROI calculations are becoming a big problem for IT organizations—especially for IT organizations that see its benefits but need to justify the investment to executives. Here are a few business use cases ESG has recently been involved with that may help tip the ROI scale in desktop virtualization’s favor:
- Eliminating the need to build additional data centers. ESG recently spoke with a company that was interested in investing more in offshore development, but wanted to maintain control over its intellectual property—this organization wasn’t about to hand over the keys to the kingdom. Using desktop virtualization for its offshore developers, the company was able to keep its data and applications in an existing data center located in the US. The only other option would have been to build out a new data center offshore and duplicate the test and development infrastructure.
- Enabling desktop disaster recovery. A recent investment firm ESG spoke with had to maintain employee production even in the event of a local outage, a fire, etc. The CIO went to the firm’s IT department and basically said, “Go find a solution or we risk losing business.” The IT staff deployed desktop virtualization and stored employees’ virtual desktop images in a secondary data center located out of state. Employees can now remain productive even as the local office experiences interruption.
- Increasing billable hours. ESG recently contacted a health care organization whose doctors complained about the 3-5 minute logon times they experienced with the terminals located in patient exam rooms. They had no idea what desktop virtualization was, but they did know that the current situation was untenable. The hospital’s IT department started looking into various ways to solve the problem and ultimately deployed desktop virtualization, achieving logon times in the range of mere seconds. This improvement immediately equated to more billable hours for doctors spending less time with technology and more time with patients, easily justifying the investment.
Here are some other real world justifications for desktop virtualization that ESG has encountered:
- How many hours does it take an administrator to reimage a desktop? If desktop virtualization can reduce imaging from 3 hours to minutes and the company does this across tens of thousands of endpoints, the math starts looking pretty good.
- What is the economic cost of data being lost or disclosed? Security is one of the top drivers of desktop virtualization. CIOs are constantly balancing risk and desktop virtualization can produce some favorable returns that help mitigate that risk and give CIOs a bit more peace of mind.
The Bigger Truth
No one will argue that desktop virtualization requires an initial investment, but its clear goal is to reduce its TCO per employee over time. Most initial deployments are not driven by a favorable ROI model, but rather are driven by senior level IT executives who understand not only how it can help solve a list of challenges found at the endpoint but also its strategic value in terms of the future of the company.
If you aren’t yet looking at desktop virtualization, you should start. Initial deployments are targeted at a small end-user community, but ESG is now beginning to see deployments over 10,000 and plans for even larger deployments over the next 24-36 months.
