I am enamored at the amount of negative opinion and “old-school” mentality in the leadership and management of some IT organizations. It’s 2010 people! Virtualization is only valuable if you leverage it for both its infrastructure centralization benefits and the capital gains realized with both servers and desktops no longer being the responsiblity of IT.
My personal opinion, of course, but one that experience has told me could fruit millions of dollars in savings to large enterprises, and eliminate unnecessary expenses for even the smallest of businesses.
Its simple. VDI. No more desktop support, partnership for “exclusive deals” on vendor hardware through a company discount program for BYOPC (including deals on better warranty/support plans), detailed specifications/requirements, and a total paradigm shift for the IT scope as a whole.
– Stipend the employees for some subset of the PC costs (whether or not they buy from the partner, or buy new at all).
– Eliminate significant desktop support/engineering/security headcount and costs (no need to associate staff to software distribution, service desk or antivirus maintenance for more than a virtual image and the underlying architecture)
– Provide marketing program and self-help avenues that clearly state the new IT scope and direct users to the appropriate support, whether internal or vendor. Reducing Incidents and Service Requests.
I think the bigger fear here is that by truly consolidating IT into managing only the data center and authentication to those services (ITAAS – IT as a Service!) many of the detractors here simply fear for their future if they don’t have their limitations, rules, and CONTROL issues to hide behind.
Its 2010, not 1999 – Service Provider companies like mine are finding ways to save companies major $$ with approaches like these. Your cushy old-school jobs aren’t safe. The safe money is in looking at how you could be doing this yourself.