Issue link: https://epubs.iltanet.org/i/4636
www.iltanet.org Infrastructure Technologies 17 Those that succeed will be poised very well to capture a part of what Gartner predicts will become a US$66 billion market in the next three to four years. THE BENEFITS OF VDI VDI is growing swiftly because it offers a wide range of benefits which include the management of desktop images and vastly enhanced security, not to mention the "green" benefits of using lower-powered machines and prolonging the life of older PCs, which saves money and keeps them out of the landfill a bit longer. Centralized management and provisioning of images is the most tangible benefit to most of us working in legal IT because of improvements that allow us to be more responsive. Imagine upgrading your entire firm to Windows 7 with just a reboot or upgrading an entire practice group to Office 2010 overnight. Sound crazy? The actual deployment to users can be that quick and easy when you are ready to upgrade. Most of us would never tackle such large undertakings in such a short time due to training and personnel concerns, but the ability to do so is now here with VDI. Let's assume that the DMS/RM upgrade you just did for the billing department resulted in some major issues. You can now revert back to the way things were before the upgrade with a reboot. Finally, let's assume you have a handful of custom or specialized applications that take hours to properly configure. You can utilize the built-in snapshot technology VDI offers to recover desktop images to any point in time and have your users quickly working again without spending hours of valuable IT support time. This same functionality applies to virus outbreaks. Revert your master image and reboot the terminals, and all is working as if the virus never affected you. This can save considerable time, money and aggravation. Security is another big benefit with VDI, helping you protect both data and access to that data. Because VDI keeps everything on a server, none of your valuable data would be at risk should a terminal or laptop be stolen. Replacing that lost or stolen equipment is also easier because you can buy new terminals and have them up and running much faster than traditional PCs. With VDI, you can also offer more secure remote access to your consultants and vendors, which can help to mitigate risk. You could easily provide a secure desktop to your cost recovery vendor which only allows them access to their software without having to compromise security or reconfigure your existing Citrix or other remote access solutions. These days, everyone is more focused on protecting the environment and doing less with more, and VDI can help with these efforts. Thin clients, as a rule, use much less power than traditional PCs, while the offerings from a company such as Pano Logic offer even greater power savings. What if you have no budget for PCs this year but want to upgrade to Windows Vista or Windows 7? You may now be able to reuse those older computers that might not meet the hardware requirements and extend their useful life. With VDI, you can also allow your users to use Mac or Linux desktops and still run the core firm applications within a virtual Windows world. THINGS TO CONSIDER BEFORE IMPLEMENTING VDI While VDI offers a plethora of benefits and advantages, there are hidden costs that you