IBM Launches Service for Virtual Windows Desktop Management

Published: November 1, 2006

by Alex Woodie

IBM yesterday announced the latest members of its growing portfolio of its technical services "products." Under the new Virtual Infrastructure Access offerings, IBM experts design and deploy virtual desktop management solutions whereby desktop apps are hosted on a server and "tunneled" down to thin clients, and then train customers how to manage the virtual infrastructure. The new offering will rely heavily on third-party virtualization products, and will compete with the new Desktop Optimization Bundle from Microsoft.

There are two forces coming together to change the way we use and think about desktop applications, according to Patricia Bolton, the CTO of IBM Global Technical Service's new end user services business unit. The first force is the success of virtualization technology that enables users to significantly boost computer utilization rates. In particular, Bolton points out the success that virtualization industry leader VMware has enjoyed over the last couple of years.

The second force has to do with labor trends. "There's a lot of pressure on labor prices to support end-user desktops," Bolton says. "We're reaching a point where we've squeezed all the labor out of it you can, and the next wave of improvement is going to come from automation."

IBM's response to these market forces is the new Virtual Infrastructure Access service, which will provide customers with consultation, assessment, planning, design, and implementation of a virtual infrastructure to cut the cost and boost the security of Windows desktop environments.

Bolton describes Virtual Infrastructure Access as "a new framework for delivering existing technology in a way that we believe will help clients, especially in enterprises, realize the savings of server-based end-user computing, and realize the need for hosting full [desktop operating system] images on host machines."

In addition to the Virtual Infrastructure Access offering, IBM launched two related service offerings, including the Software Platform Management Services and Platform Integration and Deployment Services.

Under the Software Platform Management Services offering, IBM will do the work of implementing a virtualized environment, including operating systems, network protocols, hardware drivers, core applications, and an operating system patch management tool. IBM will provide a broader range of activities under the Platform Integration and Deployment Services offering, including procurement of PCs, kiosks, ATMs, and mobile and wireless devices; overseeing the staging and testing of equipment; site surveys; equipment installation; and on-site training.

Customers have a choice of the virtual client model and the shared services model when purchasing Virtual Infrastructure Access services. Under the virtual client model, virtualization technology such as VMware or Xen is used to turn all Windows desktop images into virtual images, which are then hosted on a System x server or BladeCenter server. These images, which contain all the applications needed by the users, are then "tunneled" down to the thin client device via HTTPS.

The shared services model incorporates more of a fat client architecture, and makes use of Citrix and Microsoft Terminal Services emulation products, as well as 3270, Java, or Web-based applications.

Both forms of desktop virtualization offer similar benefits. Administrators who previously relied on manual processes to provision, patch, and update large numbers of Windows PCs are the main beneficiaries of the offerings, because all of these activities can be performed automatically from a central server under the virtual desktop method. Organizations can expect to cut PC management-related costs by 40 percent by moving to a virtual infrastructure, according to IBM.

Organizations also benefit from increased security using the virtual model, because all the data is centrally managed in a storage array using the virtual infrastructure, instead of living in the disk drives in the physical desktop world.

IBM is trying its best to remain open to any tool that will do the job. "We're able to work with clients with a variety of tools," Bolton says. "A hallmark [of the new services offering] is openness." Just the same, IBM seems to have an special affinity for the VMware and Xen offerings, its own WebSphere Portal software, Tivoli Provisioning Manager, and will not offer Microsoft Virtual Server, according to Bolton.

IBM has considerable experience managing desktops and other devices. "We manage 3 million end points globally, and 350,000 to 400,000 internal users, so certainly the way we can manage this to achieve savings is important to us. It's provided an outstanding learning lab to help us build skills to automate and implement and pass these savings" to customers.

IBM is also employing virtualization in its own organization, and currently has between 30,000 and 50,000 virtual desktops, accessing applications ranging from Lotus Notes and Microsoft Office to "a huge Visual Basic" application. "This field is rapidly evolving so we're using our experience to craft instantiations of this implementation that we know work, and work together, and implementing that model," Bolton says.

The offering could also lead to sales in IBM's System Group and Software Group. According to Bolton, a single dual-core blade can house 12 to 18 Windows images. With 14 blades in a fully packed BladeCenter system, an organization could expect to replace 200 desktop PCs with 200 thin clients and a single BladeCenter system. IBM, which got rid of its thin client business a long time ago, is agnostic when it comes to selecting a thin client manufacturer, Bolton says.

Also playing a role in the new technical services offerings is WebSphere Portal, which carries a similar message of allowing users to customize their own environments while maintaining the strong centralized-host model. "It's part of a larger message with enabling clients to create use cases that are representative to users in a portal," Bolton says. "[Administrators] will be able to change the portal, the portlets, without changing the look and feel. Users don have to worry about where the application is."

The new offering was launched by the end user services business unit, one of 10 new units created to remake technical services as "products" that can be replicated over and over. End User Services is part of IBM Global Technology Services, or IGS, one of two main branches of the $40 billion IBM business that used to be called simply IBM Global Services; the other unit is called IBM Global Business Services, or IBS.

Microsoft also is ramping up its virtual infrastructure offerings. Two weeks ago the software giant launched its Desktop Optimization Bundle, which provides, among other things, the capability to "stream" an application from a server down to a desktop. Microsoft purchased this technology earlier this year from Softricity.

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