Achieve the IT manageability benefit of VDI without the instability of a client hypervisor
The Endpoint Management Challenge
IT professionals are pressed to find new solutions for managing desktops because of IT forces such as migration from Windows XP to Windows 7 or Windows 8. Traditional desktop management techniques don’t work well with modern operating systems. Virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) is one way of dealing with these challenges, however, choosing a VDI can cause unexpected consequences such as compromised user experience and larger IT expense than originally anticipated.
VDI solutions are different from traditional desktop management solutions. With VDI, IT typically manages one Windows image and one copy of corporate applications for everyone in the organization. Generally, this approach results in improved security and manageability over traditional desktop management approaches. However, VDI comes at the expense of endpoint performance, as well as cost and implementation complexity.
I use SmartDeploy to maintain one baseline image for over 59 different types of hardware and found it to be excellent in handling the hundreds of drivers necessary to make that all happen. I would give it my highest recommendation.
Brandon Mincey, Sr. Systems Administrator, United States Navy
Skyrocketing Data Center Expense
VDI runs the desktop image on a server in the data center instead of locally on the endpoint. This creates two significant problems. First, VDI introduces significant data center capital expense issues. Implementing a VDI solution requires compute capacity for each desktop with a high-speed connection to high-performance storage. For many organizations, this investment in data center assets duplicates the storage and compute power already on the desktop. Second, the software licensing costs and legal complexities to properly license the solution often prohibits implementation of VDI.
Compromised User Experience
The second and more significant issue is that VDI delivers a sub-standard experience for users. Because users cannot take advantage of local execution on the endpoint, they cannot work offline or in degraded network conditions, run multimedia applications over the wide area network (WAN), or run graphics-intensive applications. VDI solutions attempt to overcome these limitations with additional hardware and software solutions, but this additional hardware and software comes at significant additional expense and still may not provide the user experience that is possible from local execution on a conventional PC.
SmartDeploy as an Alternative to VDI
SmartDeploy provides the best of both worlds. Like VDI, SmartDeploy lets IT create and manage a layered, single image that can include common corporate applications. And it does so without any dedicated infrastructure or hardware that VDI requires. Customers use SmartDeploy with their existing data center, network, desktop infrastructure, and skillset of the IT staff. All the expense, configuration, and confusion associated with VDI implementation are eliminated.
And the best part is, SmartDeploy enables a single image to run directly on the endpoint without the hassle and hardware compatibility issues of hypervisor for maximum performance. Users enjoy the native performance of the endpoint and IT retains control of the image. All of this without the cost and complexity of VDI solutions, which makes everyone happy.
Next, learn how SmartDeploy
compares to Symantec Ghost