Johannesburg, 31 Jan 2011
The pervasive nature of information and communication technology (ICT) continues unabated, with virtualisation now coming to the fore as a clean, green, efficient and more secure option for businesses.
Tony de Sousa, enterprise business unit manager at Datacentrix - a black empowered provider of computing power, business value and solutions - says virtualisation carries a number of significant benefits in terms of data security, management and flexibility.
“What has really kick-started virtualisation is its cost-efficiency and positive impact on the organisation's bottom line. Once users become familiar with the concept, the real benefits become visible and tangible in the form of improved control of data, easier deployment and achievement of regulatory compliance, higher security, reduced support costs and extended device life cycles.”
Security in the mobile compute space is of specific concern to many customers. Client virtualisation can provide an organisation with the peace of mind that should a laptop be lost or stolen, the data contained on the device is encrypted and can be destroyed based on policy, having the added benefit of having the end-user back up and running in a matter of minutes, as all data and applications still reside securely within the data centre.
There are also environmental benefits from lower power consumption, which De Sousa says is a strong motivating factor for most of South Africa's corporate organisations.
Typically IT environments today are driven within a broad strategy of workplace transformation and virtualisation is one of a number of elements deployed to provide an effective business infrastructure and architecture for conducting successful business.
De Sousa says business in South Africa has, for some time, been adopting virtual communication technologies such as remote video, virtual meetings, virtual learning, e-mail, instant messaging and social networking sourced from a wide selection of access devices.
“Virtualisation can be implemented as VDI (virtual desktop infrastructure) or as HVD (hosted virtual desktops), enabling end-users within an organisation to access their data and applications from suitable devices, no matter where they are located. Desktop virtualisation, however, needs to be carefully considered and planned with close attention paid to determining appropriate workplace environments and a detailed virtualisation strategy.”
A “segmentation audit” of users must be executed upfront as this will determine whether or not their specific needs can be met by virtualisation. Typical segments such as call centres, telesales/support, marketing, trading, development and research need to be evaluated and the personnel within them are usually classified or graded as task, productivity or knowledge workers or performance users.
“It is also important to assemble and examine information about the existing environment, covering the entire IT system and including workstation types, the operating system, the available applications, all devices that may be locally connected, including printers, faxes and other devices such as scanners and their locations,” says De Sousa.
There are a number of solution options available and the selection should be based on suitability in terms of the applications required by the business. “Experience leads one to be wary of bringing in diverse IT equipment suppliers and deployment teams in the setting up and management of the VDI as this can lead to less than perfect configuration and evaluation cycles that take longer than really necessary. It is preferable to have a single line of responsibility and that is the approach that has always been adopted by Datacentrix.”
Scaling and sizing of virtual solutions has advanced over the past few years to cater for up to 1 000 users. However, De Sousa says that because the general approach has remained static, there can be negative impacts on cost-efficiency.
“Datacentrix has overcome this by ensuring that the virtual architectures we implement for our customers are sourced from an OEM supplier whose design is scaled to thousands of users, not hundreds. Other blade and storage architectures designed to be modular have also emerged and have been tried and tested with VDI solutions, ensuring that clients can add virtual capacity as their needs expand.”
Opportunities for virtualisation are also being created by the looming migration to the new Windows 7 operating system and De Sousa says virtual migration can significantly reduce the cost of doing so compared to traditional operating system migration, and complete the exercise in half the time.
“Datacentrix is well positioned and qualified to address the entire spectrum of virtualisation implementation. Our technicians have extensive skills, knowledge and expertise in the three main client virtualisation solutions available in South Africa. This means one partner and a single line of responsibility for companies wanting to go the virtual route.”
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