CIOIN

Given the current economic climate, while some organizations are preparing to react with speed to make good this year, most are getting a bit cautious. Organizations are now in need of a determined focus on transformational moves that will deliver rapid benefits in the form of sharply reduced operational costs and sharply increased operational flexibilities - both vital to steering a lower risk, more positive systems course.

A new approach is needed to free individuals and organizations from the constraints of traditional information technology. A higher level of virtualization is part of the answer because virtualization, at both the datacenter and the front-end, is starting to play an increasingly vital role in any organization’s IT roadmap. To discuss ways to tackle the virtualization challenges organizations face and new methods to leverage the complete potential of virtualization, CIO Magazine, in association with Citrix Systems, conducted round table discussions among IT administrators of leading organizations across different verticals.

Cost reduction, scalability, agility and improved performance are some of the most common business priorities. But, as the technology evolves, business needs also keep evolving along with it. Anil Khopkar, VP – MIS, Bajaj Automobiles Ltd / Bajaj Holdings & Investment Ltd, informed about a new business priority that has evolved thus. He said, “Customer connect is becoming increasingly important and technology must now help aid mobility. Sales personnel now require anywhere, anytime connectivity to important data to seal deals.”

The priorities and the need for virtualization also vary according to the organization’s age. Jawed Ahmed, Head-IT (Power Transmission Business), Sterlite Technologies Ltd, highlighted this fact when he said, “Our organization is in the growth phase and agility matters more to us than cost reduction does. We rely on virtualization for agility.”

While virtualization certainly has a positive impact on business, employees’ wish to use their own devices to access critical data is proving to be a double-edged sword. It is benefiting business and creating complications at the same time. Sanjay Marathe, CTO, Zensar Technologies Ltd, echoed the same opinion. He said, “The BYOD trend is beneficial, but gives headache to the IT administrators as well. Better governance and change management are of more importance than mobility.”

The recent years have seen a great increase in the adoption rate of server virtualization, but the same cannot be said of desktop virtualization. Looking at the current trends in the IT landscape, it is becoming evident that organizations have to rethink their desktop virtualization strategy and should take the leap ahead. Bharat Jadhav, Head-IT, Kalyani Hayes Lemmerz Ltd, explained about the relevance of desktop virtualization in today’s scenario. He said, “The IT infrastructure should not be restrictive. It should support all kinds of devices. In today’s scenario, when we look at employee turnover, issues such as data backup and system configuration are adding a lot of pressure on IT administrators. Desktop virtualization can help in dealing with these issues.”

Convincing the management to adopt any new technology is a difficult task almost always. N Chandrashekaran, Special Director-IT, Ashok Leyland Ltd, shared his experience of how he got around this difficulty. “Our organization had servers of different ages. And when SAP had to be rolled out, we required new servers. That’s when virtualization came into play. We told the management that the technology was future-proof. We found it easy to explain the technology to the management without mentioning the terminology even once,” he said.

Irrespective of the organization or vertical, CIOs are united in the opinion that technologies such as VDI and desktop virtualization are highly beneficial for business. However, they are also united in the opinion that security issues must be addressed promptly in order to experience the benefits of virtualization to the fullest.