Virtual Desktops / VDI Desktop virtualisation features highly in the headlines - but what does it mean in reality?  Where are the real costs and technical issues?  Centralis has unique experience in the management of large-scale desktop and virtualisation environments, plus an in-depth knowledge of different brokers and VDI platforms, making us the strategic partner of choice for both pilot and production systems.

Virtual Desktops - Hype or Holy Grail?

	Selected Centralis Case Studies
	Bracknell Forest Borough Council Flexible working at the council saves over £300,000 pa in direct costs. Moat Housing Group Centralis combine Citrix delivery and Acresso AdminStudio to create a strategic, best practice solution. University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust Delivering secure access to critical diagnostic systems.
	Business Issues
	Secure Remote Access: Giving access to users and business partners without compromising security policies Reducing Operating Costs: Removing the link between applications and PC desktops greatly reduces application deployment and support costs Delivering Flexible Working: Increasing requirements to provide access from home-based and mobile workers can be incorporated into a strategic solution

Virtualisation allows organisations to deploy desktops within the data centre that can be accessed remotely from any client device.  Virtual desktops are ideal for knowledge workers and developers, allowing complex application environments to be replicated within virtual machines, rather than being tied into specific desktop hardware. 

They can also be deployed for task-based workers, where a defined environment can be created which exactly matches the employees work, but can be accessed from any client, including Thin Computing devices.

Combined with a provisioning and application delivery solution, VDI allows an organisation to create virtual desktops on demand - ensuring that users are given a "clean" new desktop and application set every time they log in, but optionally retaining elements of personalisation through products such as AppSense.

The main advantage of VDI is that the virtual desktop is accessible from any standard client device, without the data or configuration leaving the organisation.  This greatly simplifies application provisioning, security and patching / updates.  In this way virtualisation can be an effective part of an outsourcing or offshoring solution, removing the overhead of legacy client devices. 

The second advantage is that the desktops become part of an overall resource "pool".  Whereas fixed desktops are expensive to purchase and deploy, consume large amounts of power and may well remain unused for large parts of the working day, virtual desktops can be created on demand from templates.

VDI delivers the following key benefits:

• Centralised desktop and application management
• Simplified testing, roll out and regression
• Deliver secured, centralised applications onto unmanaged PCs
• Create complex environments for developers - with full control over reboots and local installations
• Deploy Vista without the need for client hardware upgrades or testing
• "Brokers" give access to pools of shared resources on demand

The issues around VDI are costs, licensing issues, storage, peripheral support, management, user personalisation and capacity planning.  Centralis can help organisations overcome all of these issues and ensure a successful deployment.

Find more information contact us or request a copy of our VDI white paper.

Citrix XenDesktop Virtual Desktop Infrastructure

Centralis is one of a small number of companies selected as early adopter "spearhead" partners for the new Citrix XenDesktop, with full access to evaluation software and a proven track record of proof of customer deployments.

Citrix XenDesktop as a VDI solution delivers the following key benefits:

• Only VDI solution to provide "end to end" ICA, providing high quality graphics and peripheral support
• Tightly integrated with XenServer for scalability and performance
• Optional components include user experience monitoring, application streaming and operating system provisioning

Find more information contact us or visit our Citrix solutions page.

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Citrix Provisioning Server

Citrix Provisioning Server delivers "gold build" operating systems on-demand, creating a new model for dynamic, cost-effective deployment. Using Provisioning Server Windows desktops (and servers) can be deployed to virtual machines (or physical ones) in seconds.

Provisioning Server can store a number of operating system builds, e.g. to support various business uses or functions such as Middle Management, Point-of-Care/Sale, Engineering, Marketing, and Accounting.  When a user connects to the VDI infrastructure via the broker, Provisioning Server delivers the assigned operating system and configuration the virtual desktop. The virtual computer starts running the assigned configuration immediately - there is no waiting to download the entire OS.

Provision Server has the following key benefits for VDI environments:

• Greatly reduces costs by minimising the SAN storage needed for VDI
• Simplifies management by reducing the number of desktops to configure and support
• Enables and automates central update of "gold" builds

Find more information contact us

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Wyse Thin Computing

Wyse have more than 20 years experience in delivering cost-effective and easily managed computing.  Combining WYSE appliances with VDI offers customers six key benefits around Security, Manageability, Availability, Reliability, Total Cost of Ownership and Scalability.

Find more information from our partners website.

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