OPTIMISING YOUR DESKTOP STRATEGY: PRINCIPLES AND PRACTICE

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1 WHITE PAPER : DESKTOP STRATEGY OPTIMISING YOUR DESKTOP STRATEGY: PRINCIPLES AND PRACTICE Desktop virtualisation offers considerable operational benefits and potential cost savings. In spite of this many organisations are still deploying full desktop PCs with locally installed operating systems and applications for the majority of their users. This is normally due to historic practice, and is where the skills and knowledge of their inhouse staff lies. However, a number of factors have come together to drive changes in desktop strategy: 1. An increasing organisational demand for flexible working and the cost savings it can deliver 2. The addressing of technology limitations and dependencies with thin client and application virtualisation 3. The need to develop Windows 7 migration plans, with Microsoft dropping support for Windows XP in April 2014, and the launch of Windows 8 4. The inclusion of hardware virtualisation capability in all new desktop processors 5. Increasingly powerful server hardware with larger memory which 64 bit OS uses effectively 6. Lack of investment due to the recession, which has delayed many desktop upgrades. WHAT SHOULD YOU BE CONSIDERING? This white paper is designed to guide organisations that are reviewing their desktop and flexible working strategies through the decision-making process. It outlines the process Fordway recommends they take, discusses the options and tools available to assist with the process, and details the benefits they can expect to obtain from following our advice. In this paper the term desktop is used to cover end user computing devices such as standard PCs, laptops and other mobile devices such as tablets and netbooks but does not include smartphones or PDAs. User computing includes anyone who accesses corporate resources, whether from their office, home or any location with network connectivity, or carries corporate data on a device. CONTENTS Why change is needed to optimise user computing performance An effective strategy reduces cost Organisations have clear requirements for desktop performance Fordway s six golden rules to guide desktop strategy Begin with user classification How virtualisation can help Desktop options available Places to find immediate cost savings Avoiding organisational issues Fordway s recommendations

2 WHY CHANGE IS NEEDED TO OPTIMISE USER COMPUTING The three main issues most organisations face today in relation to desktop services are: 1. Cost although a strategic asset, an organisation s IT infrastructure and the services delivered from it, or provided by third parties on the organisation s behalf, is seen as a cost of doing business. Every organisation wants better capability at a lower cost 2. Flexible working the ability to work from anywhere using any device and access the relevant information in a timely and convenient manner. 3. Resilience - IT underpins almost all business processes and services must always be available, even in the event of a disaster. We believe the following issues are also important: Process improvements - good process will save more money than good technology SLAs - can you commit to your users what they will receive? Disaster recovery - it s not just a nice to have any more Agility - how fast can you respond to changing business requirements? Security - loss of reputation as important as actual data loss Green - what are you doing to minimise energy consumption? Every IT professional therefore is under extreme pressure to ensure optimal performance across all areas of the business. The changing nature of IT service provision and the challenges IT professionals face is summarised in Figure 1 below. Figure 1: the drivers of IT change Source: As a result of these pressures, IT departments need to look at their desktop deployments to evaluate how effective they are in meeting the current requirements of the business. Challenging established thinking to ensure our clients achieve the best from their IT infrastructure

3 AN EFFECTIVE STRATEGY REDUCES COST PER DESKTOP In most organisations provisioning and supporting desktops costs between 50 and 75% of the total infrastructure IT budget. While there is some debate as to exactly what should be included in these figures, the generally accepted industry average, based on figures from leading analysts such as Gartner and IDC, is that to supply, licence, manage and support a corporate fixed desktop is around 2,000 per year. Fordway s own analysis across a range of both commercial and public sector organisations has provided an average figure of 1,879 per year. This comprises: Purchase (includes screen): 240/year Manual provisioning and updates: 174/year Client licensing and software maintenance: 479/year Network and server infrastructure to support basic user services (file and print, ): 245/year Power consumption and cooling: 61/year Helpdesk and user support: 680/year SURVEY SHOWS OPPORTUNITIES FOR IMPROVEMENT Fordway surveyed 29 organisations to investigate their desktop deployments, comprising 11 local authorities, 2 central government departments, 2 NHS trusts and 14 private sector businesses with 350 to 14,000 users. The average number of users was 2,200. Average daily desk occupancy 53% Average hourly logged in users across all surveyed clients 65% 47% of PCs were not switched off overnight For the majority of the organisations the biggest single issue preventing flexible working is user profile issues Almost all of the surveyed organisations had more software licences than they needed. For a mobile worker with a corporate laptop the cost is between 2,200 and 3,400 per year due to the higher purchase price, mobile networking and communications costs plus the higher support cost. We put the figure at 2,344 per year. Best practice suggests that an effectively implemented and managed desktop strategy can easily achieve a cost of 1,200 per desktop per year, and that 1,500 per laptop per year is possible.

4 ORGANISATIONS HAVE CLEAR REQUIREMENTS FOR DESKTOP PERFORMANCE Before looking at how to achieve these lower costs, let s look at what are desktops required to deliver. Across our clients, many common themes on required desktop performance have emerged. Most organisations would like the following as a minimum: Users: Ability to log in from anywhere and access any application or service they require Have their data securely backed up even when stored locally Be able to support different devices/operating systems according to user preference, including Macs Reduce time for systems to boot, log on and access the information they need If they make a mistake or their equipment fails, be able to reinstate their system quickly, ideally to an agreed service level. Desktop team: Reduce the cost and time to provision new desktops and recover from local machine or user driven failure Reduce the support overhead of managing the desktop and supporting the users Ensure patches and other fixes can be installed easily and quickly with no impact on existing systems and applications Allow user self-service where possible to reduce the workload on the Service Desk Standardise the environment where possible to make supporting users simpler. Senior management: Ensure users have the tools and applications they require to do their jobs Deliver a consistent and reliable service to defined agreed service levels Require less people to support users Reduce the time to provision or change desktops Reduce the time required to troubleshoot and fix user desktop issues Rationalise and reduce licensing costs, whilst ensuring compliance Have capability to rapidly deploy new applications, technologies and updates in response to business requirements No unbudgeted costs: deliver this for agreed fixed costs and considerably less than the current spend. Challenging established thinking to ensure our clients achieve the best from their IT infrastructure

5 FORDWAY S SEVEN GOLDEN RULES TO GUIDE DESKTOP STRATEGY Having determined business and user requirements, we need to evaluate the best way to deliver them. Until recently there were two potential desktop deployment options for most organisations, fat client PCs or thin client server based computing. Today there are potentially half a dozen, including both of the above, hosted physical (normally blade) PCs, hosted virtual desktops, desktop as a service and hybrid variants integrating elements of the above. After working on desktop strategy with numerous organisation in the private, public and not for profit sectors with 50 to 10,000 users, Fordway has developed seven rules to assist our clients with their user computing strategy and enable them to realise the benefits of evolving technologies. These rules apply irrespective of which deployment and management strategy the organisation chooses. Fordway s seven rules: 1. Consider the entire environment of all users as a whole and plan accordingly 2. It s a journey; you don t have to do it all at once but need to have a clear map of where you are going 3. No single deployment method will meet every user s needs in larger organisations 4. Rationalise deployed applications 5. Standardise, standardise, standardise: minimise exceptions unless they are business critical 6. Centralise desktop provisioning, configuration and management irrespective of deployment method 7. Have effective, tested change control and release management processes in place or implement them and train your staff before you start.

6 BEGIN WITH USER CLASSIFICATION One of the biggest issues with PCs is their name personal computers. Our experience is that this unfortunate historical legacy leads most users to believe that, in some way, the device is theirs. Simplistically, you provide the end user device to allow the person to access corporate applications, resources and information; do you allow company van drivers to respray your vans in the colours they want and add wide wheels? One of the foundations of an effective desktop strategy is to classify users according to job requirements and need, and then provide the most relevant device, services and applications for each user type. We begin with a simplistic classification which divides the user community into three broad groups: Transactional worker people in the organisation who use IT to undertake business processes, have simple office productivity requirements or access formatted information such as reports. Most senior managers fall into this category. Information worker people in the organisation who need to access and analyse data from various disparate sources or develop applications and need guaranteed resources to deliver their work effectively or access to the registry or underlying OS. The ability to change the wallpaper on your desktop does not count! Specialist worker these users typically have specialist requirements which cannot be met by a standard desktop device, usually due to a requirement for high resolution graphics (such as CAD and specialised layout work) or the need to view and edit high resolution streaming video. We then subdivide each of these classifications into fixed, flexible or roaming users: Fixed - the employee accesses services from the same device at the same location most working days, usually the office. This classification includes permanent home workers. Flexible - the user needs to log on at multiple locations either inside or outside the corporate firewalls, using a corporate device or home PC with some form of network connection. Most home workers fall into this category. Roaming - the user is mobile and requires ability to work disconnected where network connectivity is unavailable, unreliable or expensive. Challenging established thinking to ensure our clients achieve the best from their IT infrastructure

7 HOW VIRTUALISATION CAN HELP Everything in IT is going virtual. Whilst the hype is unavoidable, virtualisation provides some extremely useful technologies that can make implementation and management of your desktop estate considerably easier. However, you don t have to do it all at once. Definition and implementation of desktop strategy is a journey. Provided you have defined and set the standards, tools and processes, implementation can happen at the pace and cost that suits your organisation. Fordway defines three types of virtualisation that can assist with desktop strategy. Application virtualisation where an individual application with all its required drivers and settings is packaged and streamed into another server, or desktop environment, and runs without needing to make changes to the client Presentation virtualisation where users are provided with their view of a shared desktop running on a server Desktop virtualisation where a complete desktop with its own operating system is delivered to an endpoint. Collectively these are often referred to as endpoint virtualisation. A more recent development is client virtualisation, where a hypervisor running on the user device itself allows multiple discrete desktops or services to run locally with differing personalities and privileges in their own secure, protected environment. These desktops can either be installed locally or delivered from the datacentre. Corporate versions of Windows 7 (Professional and Enterprise) include this functionality as a Type 2 hypervisor, which means it sits on top of the Windows OS. The most prevalent Type 1 hypervisor, at least in the next few years, is Windows 8. The Professional and Enterprise editions include HyperV, which boots before Windows and allows multiple desktops to individually boot with no requirement to boot the full version of Windows. Alternative Type 1 client hypervisors are available from Citrix; XenClient, normally bundled as part of the XenDesktop suite; and smaller companies such as Virtual Computer NxTop (now owned by Citrix, their technology is being incorporated into XenClient) and Neocleus (now owned by VMware). Apart from HyperV the promise of Type 1 client hypervisors has yet to be realised, particularly due to hardware compatibility. Figure 2: a simple diagram of desktop virtualisation options

8 CORPORATE DESKTOP OPTIONS AVAILABLE Broadly there are five potential ways to deliver corporate desktops today: traditional PC (fat client) thin client (server based) hosted virtual desktop hosted physical desktop (blade PC) desktop as a service. Traditional PC (managed full client) Most organisations still provide user devices as full client PC or increasingly laptops with all software loaded locally. Numerous surveys have shown that this is the simplest method of delivering desktops, but it is also the most expensive option by a considerable margin. It requires the lowest level of support staff skills to provision, and support is straightforward until something goes wrong. The most common support problems are that the person who installed and configured the PC is unavailable, documentation is not complete or the Service Desk has no record of what has been installed. This style of operation also brings significant licence management issues, and is why most organisations are actually over-licensed. Taking into account staff time, the interruption to the business and the support costs, this is easily the most expensive way to operate and manage a desktop environment. In our analysis an average of 62% of the annual cost of a corporate desktop is support and licensing of the device; the other 38% covers all other costs, including acquisition, running costs and write-off. Roaming users who wish to log in to multiple devices are also problematic in this environment. Unless PCs are configured with roaming profiles, which requires maintaining multiple user accounts on each PC, the user cannot log on at multiple locations. Options are to implement additional applications such as RES or Appsense to do this, or commit to ongoing Microsoft licensing agreements, pay Software Assurance and implement their recently released U-EV. Desktop management tools such as Microsoft Systems Centre Configuration Manager, Altiris Suite, WinInstall and ZENworks have been deployed by many organisations to control and manage the desktops with limited success; we see a large number of failed or partial deployments. A major factor in this is these tools need significant input to create the images to deploy as well as significant ongoing administration overhead. You also need robust change control and release management to stop rogue installations. When they come to light, problem management of rogue installations typically begins with conversations such as we were just trying to be helpful, he/she is a senior person and was very insistent etc. Should your strategy be to continue to provide full PCs then to reduce costs you will require properly deployed configuration and update management, with all non-standard applications (i.e. those not implemented for all users on every desktop) deployed using application virtualisation and streaming. Notebooks should also be treated as a managed full client. We recommend installing a basic set of productivity applications and using application virtualisation or streaming for all others. Alternatively, the latest thin client and VHD technologies allow limited disconnected use. Challenging established thinking to ensure our clients achieve the best from their IT infrastructure

9 Thin client or shared remote desktop In thin client desktop delivery, a standard desktop is created on or the components streamed to a server or pool of servers, often using Application Virtualisation. Each user gets a unique session delivered from the common server resources which are shared across all users. The desktop delivered depends on each user s login rights and there is now good personalisation capability if the standard Microsoft RDSH is enhanced with Citrix XenApp or Quest vworkspace. This is the cheapest method of delivering and supporting desktops, and uses proven technology with good scalability. However, supporting and managing it requires skills and expertise that most desktop support staff do not have, so they will need to be trained to deliver it effectively. This model is rigidly centralised, and in most organisations users have political and emotional objections to this approach. One historical disadvantage, now overcome, was that not all users required the same applications, and creating, publishing and managing multiple desktops was time consuming. This is now resolved by using application virtualisation to deploy applications into the thin client servers and stream them to users. Historically, thin client solutions have also had problems in supporting peripherals such as PDAs and USB attached devices, but again this is resolved in more recent versions. Another historic issue is performance, where one user runs a performance hungry process which consumes system resources, impacting other users. 64 bit hardware, more power CPUs and the reduced cost of server memory have resolved this one. Printing is also a common issue as all printing runs via the central servers, giving users very little control over where their output is printed. Today most of these issues can be easily solved. In Fordway s view, 60 to 80% of users in most organisations, including senior managers, could happily use thin client for their day-to-day work, with no impact on their productivity and no requirement for them to change what they currently do. Hosted virtual desktops This is what is usually marketed as VDI (Virtual Desktop Infrastructure), providing a dedicated, full desktop, including the client OS, streamed from a datacentre. This is the area where most developments are currently taking place and where marketing hype is loudest. Hosted virtual desktops and thin client are both ways of virtualising a desktop because they separate the applications from the device they run on. They enable the user to log in from any device at home, at the office, or on a third party computer and obtain the same desktop. Both are streamed out of the data centre, but with thin client multiple users share a common desktop image, whereas with VDI everyone is given their own, potentially customised, desktop image. Hosted virtual desktops effectively deconstruct the elements of the standard corporate desktop i.e. operating system (OS), utilities and individual applications, install each of them on demand into a dedicated virtual machine for each desktop (basically a mini virtual server), and then stream them from the datacentre using normal thin client protocols. A unique desktop is assembled from individual components for each user when they log on, depending on what their profile allows them to have and the capabilities of the device they are logging on from. These desktops are either stateful, whereby the user s changes are saved after each session and they are given back the same virtual desktop when they log on; or stateless, often called pooled, whereby a new, clean desktop is provisioned from the images but no personalisation other than that stored in the user s profile is applied. Stateless desktops are considerably more resource efficient than stateful. While this flexibility is extremely useful for information workers, it makes VDI more complicated to set up and configure than the alternative thin client option. The key benefit over full, local PCs is that, if set up correctly, centrally controlling every element reduces the ongoing support and management overhead to close to thin client levels whilst retaining the user flexibility and device independence of a fat client solution.

10 Hosted virtual desktops are more expensive to implement and manage than the thin client model, but offer more flexibility for both the user community and the IT team, which can be both a benefit and constraint. They require considerably more server processing capability than thin client and for resilience and flexibility the actual desktop virtual machines need to be hosted on a SAN or other shared storage. This is offset by the ongoing cost savings from better licence management, easier and simpler support, ability to provide dedicated resources according to need, reduced recovery time from failure, lower support requirements and speed of provisioning, all of which will be welcomed by finance directors. Fordway estimates that this is needed by 10-20% of users in most organisations. Personal hosted physical desktop This option, often called Blade PCs, puts a dedicated PC into the datacentre and provides each user with a dedicated device, using IP to provide remote KVM (keyboard, video, mouse) events. The major advantages over hosted virtual desktops are the ability to provide high resolution graphics and the full resources of the PC to the individual. Being normally rack based they are more power efficient than standard desktop PCs. They are effective on LANs but not as good on WANs. Desktop as a service Using the above technologies, many companies, including Fordway, are starting to provide customised desktops for organisations delivered from hosted infrastructure via the cloud. The organisation is responsible for managing the desktop image and applications, but is able to offload the cost and burden of the virtualised infrastructure to the third party service provider. Fordway s research has shown that cloud-hosted desktops can deliver savings of more than 30% over average desktop PC costs. Further information can be found in our paper Why Choose Desktop as a Service: a TCO Study. Challenging established thinking to ensure our clients achieve the best from their IT infrastructure

11 PLACES TO FIND IMMEDIATE COST SAVINGS Most organisations we have worked with on desktop strategy have made immediate cost savings in these and other areas. Licensing contrary to common perception, most organisations we have surveyed are over licensed for many of their key applications. One 5,000 user organisation had purchased over 9,000 copies of MS Office in the previous six years and had nearly twice as many licences for a key business application than they actually needed. Another organisation was still paying software maintenance for business applications they had replaced three years previously. A question we often pose to our clients is: do you believe that working out the optimal licensing for your organisation is best achieved by talking with the relevant vendor salesperson, who is measured by his employer on how successful he is at selling more licences? User concurrency across organisations we have surveyed, average desk occupancy during working hours is 53%, and user logon concurrency is 65%. Most organisations provide 80 to 100% (or greater) desks, hardware and software licences for their user community. Whilst some vendors do not recognise concurrency under their licensing, many do, and Microsoft offers the choice of per user or per device licensing. Understanding and using this to your advantage, or working with a vendor independent partner who does, can provide considerable savings. Software maintenance in our view this is not optional for key applications. Most vendors price software maintenance and upgrade protection for 3-4 years at less than the cost of upgrading to or purchasing the latest version. Whilst your finance director may be asking for cost savings and this is an easy target, in almost all cases we have looked at the cost of maintaining key applications is less than the cost of upgrading them, so it is an artificial saving. Service levels in our experience most organisations first define their technical architecture and then work out what service levels they can provide. This either leads to over-engineering, increasing cost, or user requirements not being met. We believe a better and more effective strategy is to work out what service levels your organisation requires or is happy to pay for, ideally in conjunction with user community representatives, and work back from there. In this way, you are aiming at a known requirement and also have the opportunity to set expectations in advance. Helpdesk complexity and differentiation are the inhibitors to your helpdesk providing effective service. In an unmanaged, diverse desktop environment, one helpdesk analyst can support 75 to 100 users. In a tightly managed, standardised environment, the same helpdesk analyst can support 300 to 400 users. The road to hell is usually paved with the best of intentions and for helpdesks this is generally due to poor change control and release management, allowing non-standard applications to be installed, which then require support. An under-resourced helpdesk which provides poor service leads to user frustration, which then increases user self-support or leads to local super-users helping other staff, which destroys the productivity of these staff. Standardise all elements this will create an initial Capex cost but will result in 3-5 years of significant Opex savings. It also massively simplifies the roll-out for new equipment. In organisations where we have implemented this strategy, the organisation has seen payback within 18 months. Repurpose what you already have - Windows Fundamentals or third party products will turn a Windows XP desktop into a secure, dedicated thin client device that can be imaged and managed using GPO or SCCM. Replace PCs with thin clients the power consumption is 40W per desktop, including the screen, compared with 200W for a PC. That s a saving per year per desktop in power and cooling cost. However, Microsoft will require a MED-V licence for VDI users.

12 Hardware selection most modern PCs, notebooks or thin client devices are good enough, cost a similar amount and consume the same amount of resources. The key is to pick the same one for every user, with the only exception being specialist users in particular circumstances. Saving 10 each on the purchase cost of different PCs will not cover the additional cost of developing and supporting different images. We have seen organisations spend a vast amount of time and management effort running procurement exercises to choose between PC or screen vendors, but commit to their choice of systems management or deployment tool based on the opinion of one of their staff or a 30 minute meeting with a salesperson. User self service analysis of Service Desk statistics shows that up to 35% of calls are for lost passwords, and a large proportion of the rest are file restores. Most users today use online web services and are very comfortable with techniques such as password resets. The cost of such tools is minimal and they are straightforward to implement. AVOIDING ORGANISATIONAL ISSUES For distributed organisations, any form of centralising desktops into datacentres brings operational issues and often crosses team boundaries in larger organisations, leading to potential conflicts of responsibilities. Thin client and hosted desktops create a dependency on the performance and resilience of network links. Without suitable network connectivity the users cannot connect, so as part of the initial planning, expertise in network design and analysis is needed to ensure your network is fit for purpose. These skills generally do not reside within the desktop team. Once implemented it is also key to have suitable network monitoring in place as well as server performance monitoring to address these issues as network issues will impact the user experience and thus the success of the strategy. The second common organisational issue is that your organisation s desktop team will have to work closely with your server team if they are currently separate. A common issue is who is responsible for the resources. However, none of these issues are insurmountable, and strong Service Delivery Management is key. Fordway has helped many organisations address these issues, and the potential flexibility benefits and cost savings make it worth expending time and effort solving them. Challenging established thinking to ensure our clients achieve the best from their IT infrastructure

13 FORDWAY S RECOMMENDATIONS In our view the keys to a successful desktop strategy is to follow the seven golden rules offered earlier in this paper. A successfully implemented desktop strategy with the correct controls and processes in place makes the IT team s life considerably easier and saves your organisation substantial operational expenditure. In addition, we strongly recommend that, if doing this internally, you review your staff for suitability to change their working practices and train them in advance of the implementation with professional external assistance. The vast majority of desktop projects that have not met their objectives have normally failed due to lack of understanding of the new technologies being implemented or failure to execute well. Every exception you make brings increased complexity, cost and potential future issues. You must look holistically at the entire user community, define what they require, limit personal choice to a handful of alternatives and aim to standardise as much as possible in all areas. Any desktop strategy must also include an application review that aims to limit or reduce the number of deployed and supported applications and, equally importantly, the number of different versions of applications. A single strategy with limited flexibility can suit all users, and allows flexibility for the elements that are important to individuals. For example, they could be given a choice of the device (or even OS) they use to access corporate applications, as the key cost savings come from rigidly controlling the released and supported version of the applications and the configuration of their corporate desktop. By virtualising the desktop it has been separated from the physical hardware, so the choice of hardware can be considered separately. Fordway s user profiling across a range of public and private sector organisations suggests that operationally 60 to 80% of users in most organisations could happily use a standard thin client delivered desktop for every aspect of their work. Several organisations had poor experiences with thin client deployments some years ago, but today most of the limitations such as application compatibility, printing issues and peripheral support have been addressed. Most other user requirements can be met through hosted virtual desktops. The current exceptions are users who require high resolution, fast refresh rate graphics, typically CAD/CAE and modelling, graphic design and video editing, plus truly mobile workers. In most organisations this is normally 5 to 10% of the user community. In our experience, an effectively implemented and managed desktop strategy using the tools and techniques we have outlined above has resulted in a reduction of between 30 and 50% of the number of staff on the Service Desk and second line user support, who can then be reassigned to other roles within the organisation. Other savings arise from licensing rationalisation, extending the life of existing desktops, reducing replacement device costs and reducing consumption across the estate. Effective implementation and operation can offer organisations between 10 and 25% saving on their current desktop costs against their previous strategy. WHAT NEXT? The first step is to understand the organisational requirements, any current issues and current licensing strategy, user provisioning and support processes in order to define where the potential savings will come from. It is then possible to define the most suitable options and to quantify the potential savings and efficiency gains in order to assess the financial benefits to the organisation. Fordway would be happy to provide you with an initial consultation free of charge to help you to evaluate your options. Please call : or sales@fordway.com