By Christian Perry, Processor Magazine

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Even in its relative infancy, virtualization is already proving its worth in enterprises of all shapes, sizes, and directions. From substantial cost savings to more streamlined operational procedures to improved security, this technology can easily transform an IT organization’s architecture for the better.

“When deployed correctly, desktop virtualization enables small and midsized enterprises with affordable and competitive operating models otherwise out of reach with traditional client/server computing platforms,” says Mario Dal Canto, chairman and CEO of XDS, developer of the first “digital dial tone” service (www.simtonevdu.com). “Business integration and outsourcing becomes far more affordable and securely manageable without additional IT investments.”

Despite its obvious and tangible benefits, virtualization’s appeal can get lost in confusing marketing terms and technical babble for enterprises looking to make first-time purchases. With this in mind, it’s recommended that enterprises research precisely what they need in a virtualization product before making a commitment. Prep Before Purchase
The premise is simple: Virtualization allows an enterprise to deploy technologies—such as operating systems—on a single machine while keeping their configuration aspects independent. What’s not as simple is choosing the right technology to fit a business, but Dal Canto explains that enterprises can help themselves by getting their ducks in a row before the purchase.

“It is important to remember that desktop virtualization physically moves computing resources and technologies currently on the desk or in the hands of employees to the data center,” he says. “Therefore, for an SME to move to a virtual desktop infrastructure, [it] requires having planned well the data center and network management aspects of their IT strategy.”

In other words, Dal Canto says, an IT organization cannot simply set up a virtual hosted desktop server and roll with it. Instead, it must give careful consideration to the company’s network assets, its security assets, and the mobility, performance, and usability levels that the planned end-to-end virtual desktop infrastructure needs to deliver to the employees.

When shopping for virtualization products, Dal Canto suggests that buyers remember that virtual desktops need to offer seamless usability from the office and from the Internet, while also offering “absolute security from network, device, and data loss perspectives,” he says. Further, it’s important that the virtual environment that an enterprise ultimately chooses provides five-nines availability that is usable only via the network.

Three aspects should play heavily into the virtualization research process: simplicity, mobility, and security. “These are the three key benchmarks that any enterprise, but in particular SMEs, need to carefully assess when evaluating desktop virtualization products,” Dal Canto says. “Simplicity and mobility don’t go hand-in-hand with security, and building a widely available insecure system can be very costly for any enterprise. . . . To be successful, a virtual desktop solution needs to deliver secure, unfettered access to desktop and applications from anywhere.” Open Or Closed?
A progressively pertinent issue when dealing with virtualization purchases is the concept of closed vs. open-source technology because open-source virtualization products continue to enjoy increasing market share. In addition to effective products from vendors such as VMware (www.Processor.com/VMware) that are well-known even to enterprises not entirely familiar with virtualization, there exist plenty of other options in the virtualization market, including some that employ open technologies.

“Most SMEs that I talk to are very wary of being locked in by yet another proprietary stack,” says Simon Crosby, CTO of XenSource (www.Processor.com/XenSource), a provider of server virtualization products based on the open-source Xen hypervisor. “XenSource believes that customers want two things: a simple, affordable, high-performance package that has everything they need to get the full benefits of server consolidation and the ability to choose complementary add-on components as their needs grow.”

Says Dal Canto: “Open-source products provide valuable cost and vendor-independence benefits mostly affordable to large enterprises until now. Standard, open platforms manageable in a centralized manner thanks to virtualization can be affordable to SMEs, as well.”

But while open-source virtualization products can be attractive from a cost perspective, closed technologies remain highly popular in the SME market. According to VMware, while overall adoption of virtualization products by SMEs trails that of large enterprises, it’s nonetheless gaining ground. As of January, of the 1.2 million copies of VMware Server that have been downloaded, approximately 70% were downloaded by SMEs. For more information on some of the newer virtualization products and companies on the market, refer to “What’s New In Virtualization” in this issue. Selling Security
According to Joe Levy, CTO of SonicWALL (www.Processor.com/SonicWALL), virtualization now offers enterprises immediately recoverable, effectively incorruptible computing environments through application sandboxes, installation rollbacks, operating system snapshots, and entirely nonpersistent images. However, there are security concerns that enterprises need to consider, as well.

“The immediate concerns are controls that have physical dependencies, such as 802.1x—port-based authentication—and some implementations of NAC [network access control], which often have a difficult time with virtualization because it breaks the 1-to-1/host-to-port physical model,” Levy says.

However, there are vendor-specific solutions to these issues now, and standardized solutions, such as the IEEE’s 802.1E (MACsec, or Media Access Control Security), 802.1af (MAC Key Security), and 802.1AR (Secure Device Identity), are in development. Virtual Vitals
When planning a desktop virtualization purchase, enterprises need to be aware of the different forms of virtualization they’ll likely encounter when shopping for products. XDS' (www.simtonevdu.com) Mario Dal Canto provides the following primer.

Application virtualization. Transforms applications into virtual services that can be centrally managed and deployed on desktops, laptops, and terminal servers

Desktop OS virtualization. Enables multiple desktop operating systems and their applications to run concurrently on a single physical machine

Network virtualization. Enables server, device, and endpoint-agnostic access on demand to any desktop server, seamlessly and securely, from anywhere

Device virtualization. Virtual stateless network hardware or software terminal provisioned by the virtual network and usable on demand with any desktop server