And now, finally, you can afford to let your VDI administrator go on vacation ….

 

I know I know.. You are already familiar with the fundamentals of Desktop Virtualization. So we are not going to talk about that.  However, if you do not know much about Cisco’s capabilities in the space and you have three minutes and twenty seconds of your busy day to spare, you can watch this short video and get the ‘Bonsai’ rendition.  While tempting, I will not dwell on the strengths of our UCS platform which is at the core of our Cisco Desktop Virtualization Solutions portfolio.

I will focus instead on a question that our services team often gets from our enterprise class customers; “How do I best manage my desktop virtualization environment on a day-to-day basis?”

Let’s face it. Designing and configuring production-ready Desktop Virtualization Infrastructures takes planning and expertise. Frequently, that expertise comes in the form of a Professional Services contract. But the challenges that many of our customers experience is expanding their platform after the implementation team has moved to other projects …

 

For example, a prospect in the financial sector revealed that their Desktop Virtualization Administrator could rarely go on vacation (and no  … I did not make that up) given the limited number of alternative resources skilled in Desktop Virtualization able to manage their environment in its entirety. Desktop Virtualization cuts across the entire IT value chain (Servers, Storage, Network, Virtualization etc.) The problem is compounded if you are dealing with a very large or dynamic Desktop Virtualization environment, perhaps reflective of shifting organizational structures or priorities (e.g., M&A, contractors, consultants etc..).

This is where automation can come to the rescue. The ability to automate – as much as possible – core and often routine IT tasks is a need many of our customers continue to express.  This is a trend that will continue to accelerate in the IT world. When we think about it, during the past several years, the IT industry has been leveraging labor arbitrage. Often, the temptation has been that of outsourcing many IT tasks. How could you go against Comparative Advantage economic theories without being ostracized by the business community? Nevertheless, this phenomenon cannot last forever nor is applicable to all scenarios. Eventually, labor arbitrage opportunities will decline and the world may be flat again.

A different approach is eliminating the manual tasks all together, by introducing automation technologies. This is the paradigm shift that is occurring and will continue to expand across many areas in the IT landscape. Desktop Virtualization will not be an exception.

Here at Cisco, our Advanced Services team has developed a set of workflows to automate many tasks associated with your Desktop Virtualization environment.

Do you want to know more? I have posted a short slide deck on SlideShareto introduce you to the topic. If you have more time, this BrightTalk webinar will provide you with the next level of detail. During the webinar, our senior technical consultants illustrate how orchestrating and automating common and repetitive functions enables highly-skilled staff to focus on more innovative IT projects while letting software take care of the day-to-day configuration and deployment needs.

 

 And .. I forgot to mention, there is a demo too …

 Thanks for your time!