User Virtualisation and Workspace Management

User Virtualisation is a more recent development in the world of virtualisation and refers to the concept of extracting the end user from the desktops and applications that they interact with, in both the physical and virtual desktop worlds.

The premise here is based on the fact that if an end user’s personality is not tied to an application or a desktop then it again makes it easier to present the end user with flexibility. If the end user’s settings are not tied to a particular desktop or application estate they can move between systems, as the virtualisation layer allows them to pick up their settings irrespective of the desktop or the application set they are connecting to.

This solution provides a method whereby the end user’s personality follows them around their access to corporate IT resources.

From an IT perspective, this continues the trends of simplification associated with the general movement towards virtualisation. User Virtualisation allows controlled and vanilla desktop scenarios to be provisioned to end users without the confines of this more basic approach being exposed to the end user community.

In this way User Virtualisation and Workspace Management is again based on combining the best of both worlds for IT and end users alike and extends on our premise of deploying technology with direct and tangible business outcome.

For those organisations that are already working with, or familiar with the world of Desktop Virtualisation, User Virtualisation should be regarded as a more efficient alternative to the use of Roaming Profiles. At Point to Point, as we have been involved in Desktop Virtualisation since the mid 90s, we have seen how organisations have attempted to make the Roaming Profile function. User Virtualisation completely transforms the concept of the profile from a block of data associated to the user to a component level set of characteristics and settings that are applied in an on demand fashion to the end users environment. User Virtualisation actually replaces the needs for profiles in their traditional form and as such improves the performance associated with personalising desktops and apps.

This last point is worth making in our opinion as it is not always clear what problem and challenge User Virtualisation is specifically trying to address in the traditional and physical world of IT.