EUC Journey, Part 3: How to Plan Your Journey to Better End-User Computing

Here’s how we believe organizations should approach their journey to better end-user computing (EUC). They should plan for three main phases:

1. First, they should use the next wave of investment in EUC to simplify and improve what they have now. For many organizations, this will accompany their migration to Windows 7.  They should exploit the most established virtualization technologies to repackage their current EUC applications and environments, which will make them easier to handle and less dependent on the configurations of the other assets around them. By simultaneously centralizing where they can, they will both simplify the actions of management processes and improve control. When virtualizing, whether applications or full desktops, they should be selective: it’s not necessary to virtualize every application or every desktop to get  access to these benefits. The resulting reductions in integration complexity and operational overhead will yield savings that can be re-invested in better applications.
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2. Second, they should establish a new services platform in the cloud (private, public or hybrid) and embrace this platform with their enterprise policies. This will make the cloud “theirs” and allow them to handle desktop-based resources and cloud-based resources through common management processes and tools: to IT, the desktop and the cloud services platform will look like one logical “place”. They can now deploy new capabilities and move their EUC applications to their cloud without additional overhead.  As they move their EUC applications from the tightly-coupled desktop environment to the loosely coupled cloud services platform, they will expose marginal returns that provide a business case for accelerating the process.
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3. Lastly, they should continue this process iteratively, gradually whittling down the application “payload” in their desktop OS. As the payload gets smaller, the operational savings will continue to grow. Eventually there will be nothing left and they can complete their escape – to their cloud.