Application and Desktop Virtualization

Introduction

Many students, faculty and staff are “road warriors”, constantly moving between home, classroom, labs, and primary and satellite campus work locations. This mobility requires people to access their applications and data from any device, anywhere, anytime. Traditionally, especially for administrative employees, they’ve had a managed office desktop that is secured and configured to ask the (sometimes sensitive) data they work with. These same individuals increasingly need this capability while on the go. This is not a new challenge for IT departments at Columbia but one that is screaming for a more consistent, secure and cost-effective solution. The question then is how to provide a scalable solution with optimal cost and increased security. Many Enterprises are using desktop and application virtualization to address the solution for these reasons:

• Simplified Desktop and application provisioning

• Centralized Desktop management

• Streamlined Desktop OS upgrades

• Secure remote access

• Support Legacy environments

Challenges with Desktop Infrastructure

Historically, in a typical desktop execution model, desktop environments are tightly coupled with underlying hardware, operating system, application and data (four layers of technology components). A problem can start from any layer and has potential to cause a chain reaction, which can easily destroy the complete desktop stack. Furthermore, any local desktop failures will leads to loss of configuration data, hence making desktop recovery difficult. The challenges of desktop infrastructure can be summarized as below

• Management complexity: Deployment/Security

• Limited control over PCs: Security/Regulatory compliance

• Operating cost: Desktop maintenance/support cost

• Aging Hardware: Many makes/models

• User Experience: Application performance and bandwidth

StakeHolders

• Alan Crosswell (Enterprise Architecture),

• Gaspare LoDuca (Enterprise Applications),

• Medha Bhalodkar (Enterprise Security),

• Jim Bossio (Enterprise Applications),

• Jose Santiago (Enterprise Client Services)

Artifacts