* Taking virtualization from one end to another
The infrastructure virtualization trend in many industries today involves a bottom-up approach. Savings are gained by virtualizing the infrastructure under an application – the servers, storage and so forth – to deliver that application more efficiently. But we have often recommended that IT executives take an end-to-end view of applications, from the user all the way to the data center. So where does the other “end” of virtualization lie? At the user interface.
Your average end user in an enterprise has access to a mind-numbing number of applications. Enterprises have an average of 1,800 applications, which are available to various groups of users. The end user accesses these applications through a bewildering set of shortcuts, menus, Web pages, portals and connections.
For example, some applications, such as Microsoft Office, are started from the “Start” menu. Customer relationship management and enterprise resource planning applications may be available through a Web portal. Other applications may require the use of a terminal client or Citrix client. And each of the applications may require access to files (documents, spreadsheets, etc.), which are stored locally on a hard disk or remotely on a file server. If the user leaves the office and connects remotely through a VPN, many of the access mechanisms and storage options will change.
Does the end user really care where his or her applications are? Should the user need to know the difference between online, offline, local and remote access? If we take an end-to-end view of virtualization, clearly the user interface is lagging behind other virtualization initiatives. The storage may be consolidated, for example, but the user will still need to “find” the appropriate drive letter or network share.
All of this matters to the end user, but it also matters to the IT manager planning a virtualization strategy. The thing is, virtualization at the end-user interface (top-down) actually helps the infrastructure virtualization strategy (bottom-up). By abstracting the locations and access mechanisms of applications and data, the end user can concentrate on productivity and not on trying to figure out why the network drive is a different letter when accessed over a VPN.
Furthermore, virtualization of the interface gives the IT manager the opportunity to move resources to a different location in the infrastructure without changing the end user’s experience. In an ideal world, a local copy of Word can be transitioned to a terminal server without changing the way the application is started or the location of its storage. Local and remote files are synchronized, making it easier to manage mobile data and speed up storage consolidation. In other words, interface and application-access virtualization enables infrastructure virtualization and increases user productivity and sanity.
One company that addresses the interface virtualization issue is Propero with its workSpace software. Microsoft seems to be interested in this market as well, as indicated by the recent Microsoft Research Labs announcement of VirtualWifi, a wireless network connection virtualization tool. Clearly, interface virtualization is still in its early stages, but data center trends certainly point to the increasing importance of virtualization from the end-user perspective.
