Idc Quantifying Business Value V Mware View

WHITE P APER
Quantifying the Business Value of VMware View
Sponsored by: VMware

Michael Rose Randy Perry
September 2009

IDC OPINION
An analysis of organizations adopting a centralized virtual desktop (CVD) computing
www.idc.com

environment with the use of VMware View shows that investment in the technology
can result in significant business value with very high return on investment (ROI). Our
analysis also yielded the following observations:
F.508.935.4015

Organizations deploying VMware View saved on average over $610 per
supported end user per year compared with organizations using unmanaged
PCs. Savings came from lower device and IT staff support costs — over $480 —
and improved productivity (reduced downtime) — over $130.

Organizations leveraging the advanced capabilities available in VMware View
P.508.872.8200

Premier, such as ThinApp application virtualization and View Composer image
management, saved an additional $122 per year compared with organizations
that had not deployed ThinApp and View Composer with VMware View.

To maximize the value associated with the adoption of centralized virtual
Global Headquarters: 5 Speen Street Framingham, MA 01701 USA

desktops, organizations must be aware of the limitations of the platform, such as
performance, mobile access, and datacenter capacity.

METHODOLOGY
IDC's ROI model draws upon surveys conducted of IT professionals who have
deployed VMware View as their CVD platform. IDC's estimate of ROI is determined
through the following three-step process:

Measuring the savings from reduced operations costs (consolidation of hardware
and software, avoided staff hired), increased operations efficiency, increased
revenue, and improved user productivity

Ascertaining the investment made in deploying the solution and the associated
training and support costs

Projecting the costs and savings over a three-year period and calculating the ROI
and payback for the deployed solution

IDC uses the net present value (NPV) of the savings over three years in calculating
the ROI and payback period for the deployment. The NPV of the savings is
determined by subtracting the discounted three-year investments from the discounted
three-year benefits. IDC uses a 12% discount factor to account for the returns that
this capital could have realized if invested elsewhere (opportunity cost).

IDC uses the following assumptions in its calculations:

To quantify savings from IT efficiency, IDC multiplies time values by burdened
salary (salary + 40% for benefits and overhead).

Because the full benefits of the solution are not available during the deployment
period, IDC prorates the benefits on a monthly basis and subtracts the
appropriate amount for the deployment time from the first-year savings.

The ROI and payback period estimates presented within this white paper represent
IDC's estimate of the general business value realized through the successful
deployment of VMware View either as a platform used to manage users who
otherwise are difficult to control with traditional tools or as a desktop computing
platform for a homogeneous segment of the overall desktop environment for which a
server-based computing architecture is appropriate.

IN THIS WHITE P APER
This white paper provides a quantitative measurement of the business value, defined as
the expected ROI, associated with the use of VMware View as a platform for the
targeted deployment of a CVD computing architecture. It further provides an analysis of
the View Composer and ThinApp features of VMware View, including a quantification of
the value associated with the features and an overview of how they work.

SITUATION OVERVIEW
To ensure that PCs continue to be operational in order to maximize the productivity of
employees, IT must perform a range of tasks. Although the extent to which these tasks
pose challenges to IT varies significantly depending on the number of desktops in the
environment and the regulatory requirements that must be met, the requirements for
maintaining a desktop environment are fairly consistent and are often viewed in the
framework of a PC life cycle. The PC life cycle includes the following tasks:

Acquisition. PC hardware and software must first be acquired. Depending on the
size of the organization, IT may have very high or very low levels of involvement.

Deployment. After the acquisition of PC hardware and software, the IT
department is responsible for maintaining an inventory of the PC's assets,
preparing the PC for delivery to the user by installing applications and data, and
then physically delivering the device to the user.

Maintenance. After original delivery of the PC to a user, IT is responsible for
maintaining the PC to ensure that it continues in its working state by providing
software updates, keeping track of any hardware/software changes made to the
PC, and servicing the PC in the event of failure.

Retirement. Once a PC has reached the end of its useful life for a given user, IT
is responsible for performing the tasks necessary to remove it from the
environment or give it to another user. This process can involve various tasks,
but typically it includes deleting sensitive data, removing installed applications to
harvest licenses, and disposing of the device.

2 #219701 ©2009 IDC

To simplify the tasks that make up the PC life cycle, technology vendors have
developed a range of solutions that have been adopted in significant number,
including configuration management databases (CMDBs), electronic software
distribution (ESD) tools, asset management tools, and desktop virtualization enabled
through the use of hypervisors, among many others.

Simplifying PC Management Through
Virtualization

Of the technologies currently available, hypervisors represent the most recent addition
to the set of tools that can be used to efficiently manage PC environments. After a
tremendous growth in demand for the use of hypervisors for server virtualization to
enable hardware consolidation as well as other capabilities, hypervisors are now being
applied to the desktop environment in various ways. In many cases, legacy hypervisor
platforms are installed on physical PCs to provide users with the ability to run multiple
isolated and unique desktops on one physical PC, enabling users to run a Windows OS
and Mac OS side by side on the same PC, for example.

More recently, IT organizations have been leveraging server virtualization for the
purposes of hosting multiple isolated and unique desktop environments, which end
users access remotely from their desks through thin clients. This model is referred to
by IDC as centralized virtual desktops (see Figure 1).

FIGURE 1

Centralized Virtual Desktops

Source: IDC, 2009

©2009 IDC #219701 3

The use of hypervisor technology as an infrastructure for desktops enables a far more
flexible architecture. The elimination of the logical bond between physical PC
hardware and the applications delivered by the PC can significantly simplify the many
tasks necessary for the management of the PC. By using this new architecture, IT
organizations can more effectively and efficiently manage their desktop environments,
particularly for end users who are largely outside the lasso of existing desktop
management tools.

The Benefits of Centralized Virtual Desktops

Enterprises have discovered that the use of virtualization to support desktop
workloads, like the use of virtualization in support of traditional server workloads,
creates a range of significant benefits. These benefits include improved IT
management efficiency, improved price efficiencies, and improved functional
capabilities. Examples of these benefits include:

Enablement of thin clients. Because little computational execution occurs at
the edge in a CVD environment, the computing architecture becomes less reliant
upon the horsepower in endpoint devices. This creates an opportunity for IT to
significantly drive down the cost of endpoint hardware either by extending the life
span of existing PCs by repurposing them as CVD endpoints or by replacing
aging PCs with a thin-client device, which typically operates across a life span
twice that of a standard PC.

Improved data security. The ability to move data from the edge of the IT
environment into the datacenter inherently reduces the security risks to an IT
organization. Centralization of data access can mitigate the risk of data leakage
and theft and simplify compliance procedures.

Simplified data backup. Because centralized virtual desktops reside entirely
within the datacenter, it is easier to ensure full compliance with backup policies.
Furthermore, depending on how the platform is architected, the use of
consolidated images and delta files may further simplify the abstraction and
collection of important data, thereby simplifying backup processes. A legal firm
concerned about backup explained, "On a regular computer, the hard drive can
crash and data can be lost. With centralized virtual desktops, the system is
constantly backing up that data."

Simplified disaster recovery. Virtual machines significantly simplify disaster
recovery because central IT staff can easily revert virtual desktops back to their
last known good states. Thus, IT no longer needs to provide spare endpoints that
are up to date with the latest image.

Time to deployment. In particular, when thin clients are used within a CVD
architecture, the process around deployment is significantly simplified because
nothing is installed on the endpoint device. According to a healthcare provider
executive, "The benefits of the virtual desktops start with the ease of deployment
of applications…If it [traditionally] takes me an hour per PC over a period of a
year deploying new applications to that PC, now I probably only spend 15
minutes to do that same deployment to the virtual PC."

4 #219701 ©2009 IDC

Simplified PC maintenance. When used appropriately, virtual desktops can be
far easier to maintain than traditional PCs. Because of the unique characteristics
of virtual machines, it can become quite simple to patch applications,
provision/deprovision users, migrate to new operating systems, and perform
auditing duties. One legal organization highlighted this aspect, saying that "the
big benefit for us has been centralized desktop support."

Flexibility of access. Because corporate desktop environments are centralized,
access to them can be provided to users who do not have access to their
corporate PCs, in situations where users need to work from home, away from
their desks, or among other remote worker situations. As the manager of a CVD
for a major European bank's IT department explained, "We have about 2,500 to
3,000 people going to our new building, but we are going to have considerably
more people than that in the new building…They will be able to sit anywhere they
like…or...go to another building and still get access to the same desktops as well.
So it's all about the flexibility."

Challenges for Centralized Virtual Desktops

Even when CVD environments are appropriately designed, there are still certain
limitations inherent within the architecture that limit the applicability of centralized virtual
desktops for a large percentage of the IT environment. These limitations include:

Up-front capital expenditures. Compared with the up-front capital expenditures
of deploying a traditionally distributed PC, the up-front capital expenditures
associated with building a CVD environment can be significant. These
expenditures include storage infrastructure, server hardware, virtualization and
virtualization management software, and network infrastructure. Additionally, this
new model requires Microsoft Windows licenses for CVD, namely Vista
Enterprise Centralized Desktop.

Datacenter capacity. Datacenter capacity constraints can significantly limit the
extent to which an organization can support centralized virtual desktops
internally. With the increasing scarcity of datacenter floor space and power, the
capacity available to host desktops on hardware residing in the datacenter can
ultimately limit the extent to which this architecture can be used.

Performance. The performance limitations associated with centralized computing
architectures are familiar to many IT managers given their experiences with other
server-based computing platforms such as Microsoft's Terminal Services.
Limitations in the areas of bandwidth, latency, and graphics capabilities act to limit
the types of end users to whom CVD technology can be deployed today.

IT contention. The requirement for desktop operations management to rely on
server administrators within the datacenter can create a challenge for those
looking to leverage CVD within their desktop environments.

Network connectivity. Like all other centralized computing models, CVD
requires continuous network connectivity and cannot operate "offline." A host of
new technologies are promising to enable access of virtual desktops offline, but
these technologies are mainly still in beta use.

©2009 IDC #219701 5

Although the preceding limitations seem significant, one must keep in mind that the
centralized virtual desktop is an emerging technology that significantly improves as its
capabilities continue to expand.

Enabling Centralized Virtual Desktops with
VMware View: Understanding the Value

There are three primary platforms through which an organization can deploy an
end-to-end CVD architecture. One of these platforms, VMware View, is available from
virtualization pioneer VMware. Although VMware View is a new name, it is in reality
an evolution of VMware's previous CVD platform, referred to as Virtual Desktop
Infrastructure (VDI). As a result, VMware's product offering is far from being in its first
iteration. In fact, it has been available through other product names since 2005.

VMware View is available in two editions, Enterprise and Premier. IDC believes that
both editions of the platform can provide a very strong base with which to architect a
CVD environment, with the latter platform adding features that quickly become
valuable as the environment scales.

VMware View Enterprise
The Enterprise version of VMware View is the base offering and includes all of the
components necessary to deploy centralized virtual desktops. These components include:

VMware vSphere. The hypervisor and its embedded services enable multiple
unique virtual desktops to be executed by a single piece of hardware. This is the
same VMware Virtual Infrastructure that has been used by many organizations to
virtualize parts of the datacenter.

VMware vCenter Server. The platform, formerly named VirtualCenter, allows for
the monitoring and management of a virtual environment. vCenter gives
administrators control over capabilities such as VMotion, Distributed Resource
Scheduler, Fault Tolerance, and High Availability. This is the same vCenter Server
that has been used by many organizations to virtualize parts of the datacenter.

VMware View Manager. This product provides a second level of administrative
control specifically as it relates to virtual desktops within the environment. It
provides necessary capabilities for the management of a virtual desktop
environment such as session management, group policies, and authentication.

In combination, each of the preceding components represents a primary building
block necessary for a robust and manageable CVD architecture. From IDC's
perspective, the Enterprise edition of VMware View is ideal for those organizations
that are either making their first foray into centralized virtual desktops or building an
environment that will be used to provide desktops to a limited number of end users.

VMware View Premier
The Premier version of the View platform introduces two new, and in some cases
very important, features and a third feature that is equally important but currently
available only in experimental mode. The added features in Premier are as follows:

6 #219701 ©2009 IDC

VMware View Composer. View Composer is an image management technology
that works to drastically simplify the software updates and changes made to
virtual desktops that are necessary for their continued productivity, such as OS
and application patches, application upgrades, and other tasks. Additionally, the
View Composer architecture significantly reduces storage requirements by using
VMware's linked clone technology to consolidate multiple unique images for each
virtual machine down to one shared image.

VMware ThinApp. ThinApp application virtualization enhances the simplification
and scalability provided by View Composer by isolating and separating
applications from the OS in the base virtual desktop image. The virtualized
application can then be stored on a file server so that it can be streamed into a
virtual or physical desktop, enabling the sharing of a single application package
by multiple users and simpler management of the application.

VMware Offline Desktop. Offline Desktop is an experimental-mode technology
that enables end users to "check out" personalized virtual desktops running on
the CVD environment to a notebook computer for use offline and then "check
back in" to the same desktop running in their CVD environment.

Enabling Centralized Virtual Desktops with
VMware View: Quantifying the Value

Unquestionably, the use of centralized virtual desktops is optimized in certain use cases
where there is a high density of end users needing to uniformly access business
applications. In all scenarios, CVD architecture has two primary value propositions:

Improved operational efficiency. The deployment and maintenance of PCs
throughout their life cycle involve a series of steps as outlined at the beginning of
this document. The use of centralized virtual desktops can drastically improve the
efficiency with which many of the tasks are performed.

Improved control over data and users. By centralizing the storage and
execution, IT can better manage its access, thereby eliminating potential security
risks and in some cases more easily complying with government regulations.
Centralization of the desktop, and in particular the deployment of thin clients, can
also vastly simplify support for geographically distributed end users and contract
workers. As one distributed banking firm manager pointed out, "It's actually
cheaper now for us to provide a remote user with a virtual desktop and a thin client
than to give them a normal client."

To quantify the value associated with the benefits experienced with the particular
application of CVD technology using VMware View, IDC interviewed 14 customers,
nominated by VMware, to articulate their experiences using the platform. These
companies represent the typical virtual desktop user across a range of business
sectors and sizes. IDC quantified the value that these organizations have received
through the use of VMware View and compared it with the costs of migrating from the
traditional desktop model to the centralized virtual environment. The following
sections discuss the findings from IDC's research.

©2009 IDC #219701 7

Delivering Desktop Uptime
Although often not taken into consideration in cost analysis done by IT organizations
because of their indirect nature, and because the costs do not show up on any
balance sheet, employee hours lost due to either the maintenance or the failure of
employee PCs certainly impact the business.

Figure 2 presents our findings of the relative loss in employee hours and their
respective value in dollars of lost productivity. The analysis presents the employee
time and dollars lost due to issues related to PC downtime (software and hardware
and configuration issues), help desk (time to resolve issues), security (virus removal
and the like), and then the time involved in restoring the client to full operation. The
numbers thus represent time consumed, on an annual basis, for the average desktop
user because of issues with or maintenance of the user's PC.

FIGURE 2

Differences in Annual Employee Productivity Loss Due to PC
Issues: Traditional PC Versus VMware View

Notes:
Calculations assume a professional end user with fully loaded annual compensation at $50,280.
Model assumes end users remain partially productive (on average 50%) during outage times.
Source: IDC's Business Value Research, 2009

8 #219701 ©2009 IDC

As would be expected, user downtime and time spent dealing with the help desk are
reduced by 68% and 57%, respectively. This reduction is largely due to the benefit
associated with having desktop software executed on a virtual environment, with its
inherent high availability, and, in most cases, the provisioning of a highly fault-tolerant
and practically stateless thin-client device with the user. Thin-client devices drastically
reduce hardware maintenance issues that spawn help desk calls and user downtime,
and centralized virtual desktops are highly available and in the event of a malfunction
can be reverted back to working states very speedily and efficiently.

As can be seen, by provisioning centralized virtual desktops with, in many cases, thin-
client devices at the edge, organizations can accrue significant soft-dollar savings.

Delivering Lower Platform Costs
The costs for building and maintaining a desktop environment tend to have a much
more direct impact on IT budgets than any other IT operation. These costs include not
only the entirety of the physical infrastructure but also the payroll costs associated with
the human IT resources necessary to maintain and support a desktop environment.

Figure 3 represents a comparison between the annual platform costs for traditional
PCs and centralized virtual desktops deployed through the use of VMware View over
a five-year period. Note that the consumption of available and existing resources
(such as network bandwidth) is not included in this analysis because of the
arbitrariness associated with any quantification of these costs and because they are
often counterbalanced with savings in comparison with the alternate platform (i.e.,
bandwidth savings from the elimination of delivering applications and patches to a
traditional PC are offset by the bandwidth consumed by a remote display protocol
used with a centralized virtual desktop).

©2009 IDC #219701 9

FIGURE 3

Differences in Annual PC Infrastructure/Support Costs per
User: Traditional PC Versus VMware View

Notes:
Costs represent annual costs averaged over a five-year period.
VMware View sample includes a mix of both Enterprise and Premier implementations.
Server and datacenter storage costs refer to the costs of that hardware devoted to the CVD.
Software refers to the server operating system and virtualization software required to operate the
CVD.

Although no direct costs are associated with server, datacenter storage, and software
to host a traditional desktop environment, it should be noted that there are indirect
costs associated with these technologies. For example, the delivery of applications
and the recording of asset inventory and desktop configurations require the use of
storage devices, server hardware, and other software. However, for purposes of this
comparison, we are assuming that there are limited existing desktop management

10 #219701 ©2009 IDC

tools beyond those inherent within Microsoft Windows client and server platforms.
Certainly, depending on the assumptions made, it is clear that there is an incremental
cost for these components when deploying centralized virtual desktops because of
the network-based storage, server infrastructure, and licensing costs associated with
the architecture.

Nevertheless, it is clear from IDC's research findings that savings in IT staff labor and
hardware devices are the most important component of ROI, and maximization of these
savings is absolutely essential to the cost-effective deployment of centralized virtual
desktops. When these savings are not realized, as can occur when the technology is
deployed for the wrong purposes or is designed inefficiently, the operational cost
savings can be significantly reduced and result in lower, if not negative, ROI.

Reducing the IT staff labor costs normally required to manage desktops accounts for
79% of the cost savings delivered by the CVD environment. Centralizing the desktops
in a secure and integrated environment reduces the hours IT staff spend in traditional
desktop management by 55%. Table 1 presents a more detailed view of the specific
desktop initialization, deployment, configuration management, support, and retirement
tasks that respondents indicated are directly affected by the centralized desktop
approach. It presents how much less time IT staff needed to spend on each desktop
management task category after they implemented the centralized desktop solution.

T ABLE 1

VMware View's Effect on Desktop Management and Support Labor Tasks

% Less Labor Required for VMware View Versus a Traditional
Desktop Management and Support Task Category PC Infrastructure

Providing deskside service for end users 94

Desktop imaging/reimaging 85

User administration (i.e., desktop move/add/delete) 68

OS/application patching 65

Hardware configuration 65

Patching, upgrading, and supporting applications 58

Packaging and deploying applications 57

Managing and supporting the desktop images 50

Application testing and provisioning 39

Providing help desk support for end users 32

Security management of data or access 30


©2009 IDC #219701 11

All of the data presented in this white paper is representative of the tactical
deployment of CVD technology by, in IDC's opinion, sophisticated IT managers. Most
of the individuals surveyed have consolidated desktop images and adopted an
efficient management model for virtual desktops. As a result, Table 1 shows
significant IT labor savings in the area of desktop imaging (85%) and deskside
service (94%). Less dramatic reductions are found in areas such as data
management and application testing, which are less affected by the move to a virtual
and centralized environment.

The Case for View Premier

IDC also compared the costs incurred by companies that had deployed the View
Premier package (the version of VMware View that includes View Composer and
ThinApp) with the costs incurred by companies that had not implemented the View
Premier package. The analysis revealed that View Premier delivers major benefits.

Compared with companies that had not deployed View Composer, companies using
View Composer reduced datacenter storage costs required to support the CVD
architecture by 36%. This reduction in datacenter storage cost translated to a savings
of $18 per year per desktop.

Figure 4 shows that using the ThinApp capabilities significantly increased the
automation and control of all tasks associated with application management. As one
manager put it, "I don't have to use tools like SMS to deploy the package. I can just
get this executable that I've created, put it out on file share, create a link, and
everyone has access to it. It gives me some disaster recovery because when I put it
in this one location, it replicates out to my DR [disaster recovery] site. So I have that
application in DR, without really having to do anything except copy the file." The
reduced IT labor costs yield an additional $104 per desktop annually (19%) in
comparison with non-ThinApp implementations.

12 #219701 ©2009 IDC

FIGURE 4

Relative IT Desktop Labor Savings: Traditional PCs, VMware
View Without ThinApp, and VMware View with ThinApp


©2009 IDC #219701 13

The combination of ThinApp and View Composer in the View Premier package
generates a total of $612 in incremental benefits per desktop over a five-year period.
VMware charges a $100 premium for the package, which in turn increases annual
maintenance costs by an additional $25 for a total five-year cost of $225. Figure 5
shows that View Premier pays for itself in a little over seven months.

FIGURE 5

View Premier (ThinApp and View Composer) Costs and Benefits
per User Pro Forma: Five-Year View


Quantifying the ROI of VMware View

Table 2 represents the estimated ROI per desktop associated with migrating a
traditional PC environment to centralized virtual desktops deployed through the use of
VMware View for five years. The analysis takes into consideration the cost increases
and cost savings associated with the investment as outlined in the preceding figures
and discounts those cost savings, or cost increases, by a rate of return that
represents the return on capital that could reasonably be anticipated with an
alternative investment (opportunity cost).

14 #219701 ©2009 IDC

T ABLE 2

Five-Year ROI Analysis of VMware View

Total benefits $4,634

Total investment $924

Discounted benefits $3,322

Discounted investment $711

NPV $2,612

ROI 367%

Payback 5.61 months

Discount rate 12%

Deployment time 2.74 months

Note: Deployment time refers to the time to deploy once a firm has decided to move ahead with CVD; it does not include
time for "proof of concept" or prototyping phases that occur before production deployment.

It should be noted that the preceding ROI analysis represents a collection of
assumptions, outlined at the beginning of this white paper, that IDC believes are
prudent and provide us with what we believe to be a reasonably accurate measure of
a median ROI.

As can be seen in Table 2, the proper tactical applications of CVD technology through
the use of VMware View provide IT organizations with a significant return on monies
invested. Even more important in today's economic environment, with its limited
access to capital, the payback period in which dollars invested are equal to dollars
saved is a very short 5.61 months following deployment.

FUTURE OUTLOOK
IDC expects that in the next three to five years, the vast majority of enterprise IT
organizations will either have in place extensive proof-of-concept implementations or
be deploying CVD in production.

IDC also anticipates that the use of virtualization as an infrastructure used to manage
desktop environments will continue to expand in tandem with the growth in the
capabilities and maturity of virtual desktop platforms. The preceding ROI analysis of
VMware View provides evidence that growth in management capabilities will drive
adoption of hypervisors as a desktop management platform. Customers expect this
advancement. As one executive put it, "The goal is to have all employees on virtual
desktops…but that's the dream. It will take time. We'll wait for technology to catch up

©2009 IDC #219701 15

with us." Although there is a strong ROI associated with the use of VMware View
Enterprise, the use of View Premier offers equivalently high returns on investment
while making the platform more scalable and making it applicable to a larger
percentage of end users in the organization.

IDC sees the growth in capabilities of virtual desktop platforms as a two-tier model,
with growth coming through evolutionary improvements in CVD platforms such as
1
VMware View and revolutionary improvements taking the form of type-1 hypervisors
becoming available for desktop PCs to host virtual desktops at the edge. IDC's
understanding of the nature of these changes is noted in the following sections.

The Evolution of Virtual Desktops

Early adopters of CVD technology will continue to provide a proving ground for
software vendors that will be investing heavily in what they perceive to be a very high-
growth market. An increasing number of CVD platforms will become available within
the market, driving competition in pricing as well as products and features.
Additionally, smaller vendors that have developed niche products to address certain
problems with server-based computing and consolidated image management will
continue to be acquired and their products will be integrated into existing CVD
platforms, creating more seamless, simple, and comprehensive platforms.

The Revolution of Virtual Desktops

A key innovation that is on the cusp of becoming available is hinted at with the
inclusion by VMware of an experimental-mode offline virtual desktop capability.
Taking this concept one step further, ISVs in the near future will begin offering bare
metal type-1 hypervisors as part of their platform offerings at the same time that PC
OEMs will begin offering them as an integrated part of certain PC product lines (much
the same way as ESXi is an integrated part of certain server product lines). In IDC's
opinion, this is a revolutionary change because it has the ability to transform the way
desktops are managed for all users across the entire organization.

The use of client hypervisors will eliminate many of the aforementioned limitations
associated with CVD (refer back to the Challenges for Centralized Virtual Desktops
section) without sacrificing any of the benefits that organizations experience with the
consolidated image and application management and other benefits that are
facilitated by that architecture.

1
Type 1 (or native, bare-metal) hypervisors run directly on the host's hardware as a hardware
control and monitor that in turn allows "guest" operating system(s) to run on another level above
them.

16 #219701 ©2009 IDC

CHALLENGES/OPPORTUNITIES
Because the use of centralized virtual desktops is a fairly new phenomenon, IT
organizations will find that testing and proofs of concept take longer and cost more for
CVD technology than for many other technologies that they deploy. To maximize ROI
on these projects, organizations must have a comprehensive testing phase so that
there are no significant surprises when the technology is put into production.
Furthermore, there are many potential "gotchas" associated with centralized virtual
desktops that can be easy to miss unless the proofs of concept take into
consideration all of the variables that exist in the production environment.

To address the complexities associated with the use of CVD architecture, IT
organizations should take a conservative approach regarding the setting of
expectations with their management teams. This will ensure that projects are not
"oversold" and that the reputation of the technology is not hindered if certain
objectives are not met.

Additionally, IDC encourages IT management to consider hiring services
organizations that have built practices specifically around the planning and
implementation of virtualization environments, in addition to other server-based
computing environments such as Microsoft's Terminal Services.

CONCLUSION
An analysis of customers deploying centralized virtual desktops enabled with the
VMware View platform in production clearly shows that IT organizations can expect to
yield significant value when deploying the technology appropriately. Because CVD
leverages the benefits associated with a flexible foundation, made possible through
hypervisors, IT organizations can begin to manage users and desktop use cases that
typically were difficult to control before the advent of centralized virtual desktops.

Copyright Notice

External Publication of IDC Information and Data — Any IDC information that is to be
used in advertising, press releases, or promotional materials requires prior written
approval from the appropriate IDC Vice President or Country Manager. A draft of the
proposed document should accompany any such request. IDC reserves the right to
deny approval of external usage for any reason.

Copyright 2009 IDC. Reproduction without written permission is completely forbidden.

©2009 IDC #219701 17

Idc Quantifying Business Value V Mware View

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