by Courtney Burry, Group Product Manager, VMware Enterprise Desktop BU
One of the biggest IT challenges today is the fundamental shift in the way employees work. They’re no longer tethered to an IT-provided PC—now they want to bring in their own devices, including iPads, Android devices, iPhones and laptops. To stay relevant, the IT department has to accommodate—even embrace—this trend. And that means rethinking how to deliver end-user services.
On the way to finding a solution, there are questions that must be addressed. How do we protect sensitive information against a wide range of threats, both internal and external? What does it take to provide secure access across locations as diverse as airports, coffee shops and home offices? How can we ensure a consistently good user experience and support high levels of productivity in such a complex world? And how will we manage it?
Many IT departments are turning to desktop virtualization as the answer. Virtualizing the desktop opens the door to a completely new way to work. Imagine a typical workday: Start working on your smartphone at breakfast, shift to a desktop computer at the office, take notes at an offsite meeting on your laptop, and edit those notes on a tablet while watching TV—while having access to the same applications and data everywhere. It sounds like a dream, but it’s becoming more real every day.
VMware and EMC Team Up
From the organization’s point of view, the business case for the virtual desktop[1] is compelling. The question is how to get there—or how to even get started.
VMware can help you move forward. We’re partnering with EMC to deliver end-user computing (EUC) solutions tailored to the specific requirements of organizations in industries such as healthcare, government and financial services. The value of the partnership starts with EUC technologies—virtualization and storage—areas where each company is the acknowledged market leader. We’re leveraging that expertise to create products specifically designed for EUC, for example:
- VMware View 5 is an end-to-end desktop virtualization solution that allows customers to streamline IT management, drive down operational expenditures and provide secure, anytime, anywhere access to end users across a wide range of devices including Macs, iPAD and Android tablets and Windows PCs
- EMC’s VNX family of unified storage—multiprotocol, scalable and virtualization-optimized—is the ideal storage solution for EUC
Another value-add lies in how EMC and VMware jointly architect and deliver EUC solutions. One example is the VSPEX proven infrastructure—announced in April 2012[2]—a reference architecture that combines EMC storage technology with VMware View[3] and other VMware technologies.
EMC Services Deliver the Goods
EMC Global Services is also a big part of the story. EMC has extensive expertise and experience in virtual desktops, security, systems management, and storage—key components of all EUC deployments. EMC consultants help organizations meet both the technology challenges and the cultural issues that can slow down or even derail EUC initiatives. EMC Global Services offers services from assessment and proof of concept to turn-key deployment and user migration—everything you need to make a successful transition to this new way of working.
Watch this blog for updates on the VMware-EMC alliance as well as notices of upcoming webcasts and other events related to our End-User Computing solutions. And be sure to tell us your current thinking about the desktop, where it is and where it’s going.
