A few months ago I wrote about how the VDI had crossed the tipping point—thanks to significant performance improvements brought on by the pervasiveness of broadband and exponential improvements of new cloud-based technologies. The new widespread use of tablets and smartphones in the workplace added fuel to the fire. In particular, I mentioned the use of VDI to help solve the BYOD issue. VMware covered these solutions at length at VMworld San Francisco as part of VMware’s Mobile Secure Desktop initiative.
Now, as Trend Micro joins to VMware again in Barcelona, we’re seeing this same kind of VDI solution applied to other use cases: remote and branch offices. Businesses such as those in retail, banking and healthcare whose business model relies heavily on remote offices require similar users to have dependable, secure and optimized access to systems and applications.
During one of the technical sessions discussing VDI, the senior VMware architect talked about the value of agentless security compared with legacy AV which levies a 30% tax on the environment—with agentless AV, 99% of that tax is given back – security storms are avoided, providing higher densities, optimized resources and stronger security.
A customer (Warner Brothers) talked about their evaluation implementation of their VDI solution. Viewed as a very successful rollout, their Director of Architecture and Engineering highlighted key lessons learned, I was especially interested in the importance they placed on involving their information security team at the early stage of their planning. In the end, the security team was one of the biggest supporters of VDI, because of the importance given to security in the architecture.
And so we’re seeing real-world cases where these solutions are being tried and proven, helping us push past the “works nice in theory” phase and into a more mature phase of VDI evolution that looks at exactly what customers need and speaks specifically to that. Trend Micro has once again joined VMware and other key partners in this effort, like IBM, to document the Branch Office Desktop solution, which is now available to customers and partners. (You’ll find links below if interested in more details.)
I look forward to seeing what else we learn at VMworld in Barcelona, where Trend Micro along with VMware will be discussing the Branch Office Desktop and other VDI solutions that will—I am sure—move us further past that tipping point I mentioned back in June.
- Branch Office Desktop: Agentless Security How-To [PDF] Source: VMWare
- Branch Office Desktop: Solution Brief [PDF] Source: TrendMicro
