VDI Demand Remains Tepid
A Forrester report released this week found that only 8 percent of IT shops in North America and Europe plan to deploy VDI and/or hosted Windows desktops. This is consistent with a recently fielded study by Redmond magazine.
Though we asked the question in broader terms than Forrester, about 1,130 responding to our online survey indicated that 63 percent will have a hosted desktop or VDI implementation -- though mostly for a small percentage of employees -- over the next 12 months, compared with 54 percent last year.
That would suggest 9 percent of shops will implement VDI this year. The increase, though moderate, suggests slightly more growth than the Forrester sample revealed, which found the same percentage had VDI/desktop hosting plans last year.
But as Redmond's Kurt Mackie reports: about a one-fourth (24 percent) of respondents were interested in VDI, yet had no plans to deploy it, according to the Q4 2012 study. That figure represents a decline from the 33 percent showing interest in VDI in Forrester's Q4 2011 study. It should be noted that Forrester is comparing surveys fielded last year and the previous year -- our conclusions come from a single survey fielded in February.
The Redmond magazine survey, which was fielded to those who subscribe to the magazine, showed 37 percent will have no VDI/hosted desktops this year, compared with 46 percent who say they currently have no such deployments.
Of those who do have VDI/hosted desktops, the largest number of respondents --30 percent -- said they only have rolled them out to 10 percent or less of their employees. That suggests it's being used for specialized applications such as for help desks, employees who may not need to use a PC all day and perhaps contractors. That's not a surprising finding. Interestingly those planning rollouts to 10 percent or less of their employees will decline this year to 28 percent.
Interestingly, a growing number of shops planning rollouts in the next 12 months plan to do so to a larger percentage of their workforces, according to our survey. Whereas only 12 percent planned rollouts for up to 25 percent of their workforces, that number will increase to 17 percent this year. And those who plan even larger deployments of up to 50 percent of their employees will increase from 6 percent in 2012 to 11 percent this year. Very few plan rollouts to larger portions of their users and only 1 percent said they plan to do so to their entire workforce.
Are you planning a VDI/ hosted desktop implementation -- or expanding/upgrading an existing one? If so, what's your infrastructure of choice? If not, why is it unappealing? Drop me a line at [email protected].
Posted by Jeffrey Schwartz on 04/03/2013 at 1:15 PM