This weeks article is submitted by Bryan Cozart (Sales Manager New Horizons CLC Connecticut)

As I'm reading through numerous trade mags (CIO, Eweek, Business Week, Etc Etc) one reoccurring article is featured in each, Virtualization. In our last post we covered what virtualization was and a few of the players in the market. Since that post a few major occurances have taken place. Microsoft has put some umpf behind HyperV, Citrix bought a company XENServer and announced it as their new flagship launch into the VM marketplace and of course VMware is doing it's best to fend off stiff competition from these new major players.

So i caught myself thinking today, how does a company decide whether or not to deploy Virtual anything and which solution is the right one? Even more, is this just another IT philosophy shift that will cost companies large amounts of money only to be abandoned in the coming years? So I, being only a Sales Manager and not even in the IT department went to my best internal source, Rich T. our CIO.

I first approached Rich with this: "Quick Question. I get how VM Technology works and the reasons you might want to deploy it (add link to reason to why go virtual here) but I'm wondering how the 3 major players all stack up? To give the abridged version of the response "VMware is the best in server virtualization and they offer the best management tool (sorry to all the citrix lovers). Citrix is doing the best at this point delivering virtual desktops with their XenDesktop, but VMware is making headway." So finally I had that answer and i felt comfortable with it.

The other question i was looking for was more about the Citrix offering of Xen. I was having a hard time understanding how this virtual desktop was such a "new thing" when Citrix Presentation Server and Terminal Services and so on have been out for so long. I was then taught about the differences. XenDesktop actually gives full desktop control to multiple users whereas TS and Presentation Server were universal desktops that you couldn't really personalize or work within, never mind the fact that TS and PS were only really used for serving up applications (citrix now calls it XenAPP) not full desktop control. And numerous other reason as to how Virtual Desktops are so different from TS and Presentation Server which can be understood by doing some mere google searches.  Rich also suggested the site www.brianmadden.com for some fantastic whitepapers on big virtual deployments and comparisons of virtual products.

So after getting my mind wrapped around XenDesktop, XenServer, XenApp, VMware and Hyper V and how it's beneficial to the organization from a growth and hardware savings standpoint. I asked Rich, "so do you think this virtual way of thinking is here to stay?" 
My answer "Yes i sure do. With what we just talked about from a management standpoint, add in the plan New Horizons has for serving our applications virtually throughout our Northeast locations and the major undertaking of companies going "Green" (stay tuned for our next blog post), i truly believe this is here to stay. It's a technology we are testing and ultimately planning on deploying so I hope it's here to stay."

What does virtualization really boil down to? Flexible, Predictable, Manageable and Semi Affordable (when doing ROI analysis) data center/ desktop computing. If you have legacy machines, a mobile workforce, growing data center power and cooling costs and maybe a technology refresh coming your way, you may really want to take a hard look at virtualization. IT is the one field that the thought... "everyone else is doing it" actually rings true.

Check our search page for our class offerings in all of these Virtual Vendors. New Horizons Connecticut is proud to be one of the first to offer XenServer classes, VMware Classes and coming soon Hyper V classes. Give your account manager a call!

Thanks for Reading & Talk to you soon,
Bryan