SNW Europe 2011: VDI's for security, not savings

Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) might be a hard sell to cash-strapped IT departments, but the security benefits make it appealing to enterprises.

This was the view of Randy Kerns, senior strategist for the Evaluator Group, who claimed security was the proof point to convince company bosses to part with their money, rather than future cost savings promoted by some vendors.

During a presentation at SNW Europe 2011 in Frankfurt today, Kerns explained how he had seen numerous federal government agencies in the US implement VDI due to the huge scale of desktops they had to run and refresh. But he didn’t believe the cut in hardware replacement costs was what won the contracts.

"The justification of implementing VDI is not about money, it has always been based around security,” he said.

“They [the federal government] want to keep the government data in the data centre but do the processing on the device… that is what VDI [offers] and that is how they get the funds."

Kerns even went as far to say the economic case was “unclear” and there were only “soft” benefits that he could see to allow companies to cut their costs.

Kerns concluded: “The security case [for VDI] is very clear.”

Last week, Citrix announced the latest update to its VDI-in-a-Box offering, aimed specifically at small and medium businesses (SMBs). The major marketing line for the product was a reduction in complexity and the chance to shave 60 per cent off costs by using just one server.

For more news and views from SNW Europe 2011, visit our news round-up page here.