Waiting for Godot was a play written by Samuel Beckett about some itinerants waiting around for a character named Godot. While I don’t want to explain the plot, I will say that the characters spend time twiddling their thumbs waiting for something to happen. That same twiddling occurs while you’re rebuilding your user’s XP or Windows 7 machine… even if you’re just restoring an image. I remember when the Ghost imaging program was introduced as the savior of the IT community. It was for a while, but has been clearly trumped by VDI. Why?
A company’s IT department is asked to do more with less. And while they work furiously to put out fires and still have time to do proactive work, they waste an eternity rebuilding PCs for new users, users who have introduced malware, users with PCs that don’t properly and all manner of reasons. And how about when IT is asked to setup 10 PCs for a new group of interns?
So how long does that take? An hour, two, all day? And that 10 user XP or Windows 7 deployment? With a properly figured VDI deployment, how about 3 minutes for a single XP or Windows 7! And how about 12 minutes for deploying the 10 PCs!
As all the work is done at the server and the master images are prebuilt it just takes a few clicks (before finishing the cup of coffee) for almost the entire process to automatically complete. And even the single malfunctioning user’s computer is still only under 5 minutes as the operating system, XP or Windows 7 is separated from the two additional layers – the applications and the personalizing layer. It’s truly remarkable.
The Gartner Group has reported that they think that VDI will achieve 40% penetration of the installed enterprise base within a few years. You need to do your own proof of concept; you’ll be amazed and won’t spend your time twiddling your thumbs waiting for Godot.
