Planning how to equip your workers for end-user computing (EUC) used to be so much easier: everyone got a PC, some of the PCs could be moved around. The main decisions to make regarded the choice of model and supplier, but once those had been answered, deployments could usually continue near-automatically for many months. Now it’s become significantly harder.
The last few years have brought a rapid expansion in the range of technology decisions organizations need to make about their EUC approach. Smartphones and tablets have moved into the mainstream, challenging the “everyone gets a PC” assumption. Many users now require or expect to work with multiple devices. Globalization and connectivity have lead to far more dispersed workforces and advances in mobile technology have brought new ways for them to connect and work together.
Developments in virtualization have yielded a range of new options for packaging and delivering applications and capabilities to workers. Software loads can be customized with far greater ease, making it easier to give each user only the applications they really need. Platforms and applications can be distributed or centralized, often with no visible difference to the user. And then there’s this thing called the cloud – we know it’s important for EUC, we just don’t know quite how yet.
The result of this is an explosion in choice – a wonderful asset, provided you know what you want to do with it. Many organizations are confused as they dea with these choices and this is exposing all sorts of fundamental questions for IT to answer. Users are more sophisticated now, so how much and what kind of support do they really need? Can and should they work with their own devices or applications? What would this mean for sensitive data – where would the data be and what new business risks would that bring? In fact, how much control should IT really assert in making these technology choices for users?
End-user computing is no longer a linear process of upgrade and replacement. It has become journey, with multiple paths ahead. Often these appear complex and diverging, so every organization needs to decide which directions it wants to follow (and when) for each group of workers. That is only possible if you know where it is that you want to go.
Over the next few weeks, we will describe how VMware sees this journey unfolding through the years ahead and how each organization should plan to make the EUC journey it needs to make on its own terms. Every organization now needs a plan that can guide those critical decisions about how and when to invest in the tools and capabilities it gives to its user to work. End-user computing isn’t about technology – its about how users work through technology. The wrong decisions could hold back your organizations’ productivity and ability to grow for many years to come.
