NEWS
Excessive industry hype has left CIOs reluctant to embrace desktop virtualisation.
According to a new survey, half of private sector CIOs believe the technology is promising more than it can deliver.
It's a view most strongly held by companies with between 1,000 and 3,000 desktops, with 60 per cent of the CIOs at such businesses agreeing desktop virtualisation won't meet expectations. In contrast, IT chiefs at organisations with a larger PC estate (3,000 or more) were more optimistic, with only 38 per cent saying desktop virtualisation is over-hyped.
With desktop virtualisation, the PC's operating system is run from within a central location such as a datacentre rather than on the local machine. Much akin to server virtualisation, desktop virtualisation can offer savings on hardware and energy consumption.
While various forms of desktop virtualisation have been touted by vendors over the last decade - from server-based computing to thin client and blade PCs - most have remained niche options. However, industry experts predict that next year could be a breakthrough year for desktop virtualisation.
CIOs in the financial services sector are among the early adopters for the technology, with nearly half of the industry's CIOs surveyed by Fujitsu saying they had a roadmap in place.
For most CIOs, however, the picture is a more cautious one: three-quarters of the heads of IT surveyed said they had no strategy for realising the benefits of desktop virtualisation, or described it as a work-in-progress.
