VDI Customer Stories from the New England VMUG Winter Warmer 2012

Another year, another New England VMUG at Gillette Stadium. Last year the mood at Gillette was a little different. The Patriots were coming off of a shellacking from their rivals the New York Jets. This year the atmosphere was dramatically different. The Patriots had just put an end to Tebow-mania with a defeat over the Denver Broncos and were set to play the Baltimore Ravens at home for the AFC Championship. Being a little superstitious, I decided to hold off publishing this blog until after the AFC Championship was decided.

Here’s a picture snapped from the VMUG floor of the Patriots doing a walk-through on the field.

So, let’s get to talking about the VMUG…

As we’ve come to expect from VMUGs run by Dawn and Chris Harney, this was an awesome event. The VMUG was sold out with some of that Patriot excitement and energy spilling over to the attendees. We had a lot of really good conversations with those planning, piloting, and deploying VDI. We also talked with those who had attempted VDI and failed due to some of the complexities that Unidesk solves, but they’re now reconsidering because of overall market maturity and new advancements like layering. Here is some of what I heard and how Unidesk can help.

Applications that Can’t Be Virtualized

“Our VDI project stalled when we hit applications we had trouble virtualizing. We quickly realized that building applications into the base image was going to create a management headache that would not be any better than what we are doing today in our physical environment.”

HOW UNIDESK CAN HELP: Unidesk can package and deliver applications that app virtualization technology can’t. And it’s much easier and faster to layer an app with Unidesk than virtualize – up to 10X faster. Because of this, you don’t need to build applications into your base images, which makes patching and updating Windows much simpler. A prime example is Ohio Department of Developmental Disabilities. They currently have 1,500 virtual desktops in production with Unidesk, and they’re all based off of one gold image. Read their case study or watch the following video on packaging and delivering applications with Unidesk versus other application virtualization technologies.

High Storage Costs and Need for Persistence

“We’ve deployed 200 virtual desktops to off-shore developers. Since they require persistent desktops we created full clones. As you might imagine, this caused our storage costs to go through the roof and our project was way over budget. We are now thinking of moving to a non-persistent model to save on storage, but are worried our developers might reject their virtual desktops if they cannot personalize their desktops and install their own applications.”

HOW UNIDESK CAN HELP: Unidesk enables you to give your end users a truly persistent desktop but with the storage savings of a non-persistent desktop. With our layering technology, the base OS images and all applications are only stored once and shared across all desktops. Our personalization layer captures all changes a user makes to their desktop, including user-installed applications. The end result is a persistent desktop with the storage savings of a non-persistent model.

Too Complex to Manage

“We piloted VDI about a year ago, but decided not to move forward with the project as there were too many moving parts, we didn’t have the expertise in-house, our end-users didn’t want to be locked down, and to be honest – we didn’t see how we could justify the project from an overall cost perspective.”

HOW UNIDESK CAN HELP: When I showed the customer the chart below, I got a head nod and a “Yup, that is exactly what we were dealing with.”

Unidesk greatly simplifies the management of your VDI environment. With Unidesk, you have 1 console, not 4 or 5. And our 1 console lets you do desktop provisioning, Windows patching, app delivery, personalization, and storage reduction in a fraction of the time as your typical VDI stack. Read our white paper on building a business case for VDI.

It’s great to see that VDI is being adopted by a wide variety of organizations, and that layering is making a difference. Now back to those Patriots…