As businesses become more dependent on technology, the requirements of workers and IT providers are often at odds. Desktop users want freedom and flexibility, while IT departments must ensure control and manageability.

Virtualization can help. By balancing end-user and IT requirements, enabling isolation, encapsulation and mobility, desktop virtualization can provide a dynamic, on demand environment capable of meeting users’ needs all under the watchful eye of IT. And, in many cases virtualization can reduce capital and operating expenses by eliminating the need to maintain a PC at every desk.

Customer Challenge

Unlike server virtualization projects that are limited to the datacenter, desktop virtualization directly affects end users across an organization. Reluctance among users to release control of their desktop to IT staff can inhibit adoption of desktop virtualization, depriving companies from cost savings and operational efficiency benefits of this technology.

To enhance the success of an organization’s transition to desktop virtualization, IT organizations need to determine:

• Which user groups and applications will benefit most from being virtualized—in terms of response time and agility
• The order in which those user groups and applications should be virtualized to achieve success.

Desktop Infrastructure Virtualization Assessment Service

Developed from our extensive work enabling desktop virtualization solutions with our customers, the Desktop Infrastructure Virtualization Assessment can help determine the best way to implement desktop virtualization to meet your organization’s business needs.

The Desktop Infrastructure Virtualization Assessment service will:

• Assist you in defining end user “use cases”
• Classify end user groups and determine virtualization candidacy
• Analyze your environment to determine readiness
• Provide a requirements and recommendations report

LightEdge Consultants will work with your organization following a four-phase approach, which includes:

• Interview—LightEdge Consultants will start by identifying your organization’s business drivers to gain a clear understanding of your current infrastructure, end users, applications and project and technical requirements.
• Collect—Our consultants will use a combination of assessment questionnaires, LightEdge tools and third party toolsets to gather information to define end user use cases and user and application candidacy. They will collect inventory, usage and performance data regarding desktop inventory, end user and application environments.
• Analyze—We will apply project requirements to current environment and perform Gap Analysis, Application & User Analysis. Users will be grouped into “Use Cases” depending upon their requirements and each use case is assigned attributes to represent those requirements.
• Report—LightEdge Consultants will create a detailed summary report on your end user environment create and provide recommendations on how best to move forward with your desktop virtualization deployment.

The end result will provide you with detailed knowledge of your end-user environment, an understanding of which users and applications are appropriate for virtualization and a high-level forecast of the requirements to adopt the technology.