so this question comes from Martin L and it's interesting because it's one of those types of technology that has been around for well over a decade um and hasn't really gotten to the place that most of us thought it would get to by now uh so a question for the show vdi virtual desktop infrastructure is becoming more popular and getting some traction currently the two major players are Citrix and VMware both these Solutions are geared pretty much to the Enterprise except for Citrix which had Small Business Solution with it which they just announced will be discontinued given that you still need to buy physical Thin Client workstations as well as vdi licensing does vdi make sense for the small to Med medium business Market or is it something similar to server virtualization where we need to give it more time to be accepted in large Enterprise environment and then trickle down to the smaller guys as cost becomes more affordable due to volume um so yeah the big thing so virtual desktop infrastructure so the idea here as you guys all know virtualization at this point and when you think about virtualization normally you think about virtual virtualizing servers right so you you create a cluster of active directory servers that are all virtualized and they do whatever the hell they do in the server rack right you know use VMware use Citrix you use whatever you do and there you go well basically virt virtual desktop infrastructure what you do is the same idea as you virtualize the instances of the operating system but this time you're using uh you're doing desktop operating systems and then what happens is essentially for most most of these windows-based ones is you connect to those virtualized uh desktops using remote desktop uh from your local your local system and there you go so so basically what you're doing is is you're remotely accessing the virtual desktop computer um this is good for a lot of reasons because at this point uh it allows you to have uh redundancy and reliability and all that kind of stuff so basically in the Enterprise World virtual desktop infrastructure can be really really good you know because if you've got a thousand computers out there uh you can control them all within one single cluster of servers it just makes life a lot easier in a lot of ways but the question then becomes is what about the small business market so will will virtual desktop infrastructure then come into the small business market and I would say um not no but probably never so with a lot of Technologies that's one of the things you have to think about is you know there's a lot of technologies that are out there and they're just so expensive they're so complicated uh you know they go from the academic world to the Enterprise world and then from the Enterprise World they trickle down to everybody else and then there's some technologies out there that basically they're only good for they're only really good for one environment and I would argue like with virtual desktop infrastructure it's really only good for the Enterprise environment and it's for a couple of reasons now the first reason is is because then clients are actually pretty damn expensive um if you go look at U uh what are they called oh the big manufacturers of thin clients things are foolishly expensive to be honest with you I mean you're paying anywhere a lot of the industrial grade or the the the the real thin clients that you would be using um are anywhere between $3 to $600 so essentially you're spending as much on a little Thin Client uh the like the physical hardware for the Thin Client as you would be on a full-fledged computer so the issue is is the first part is you don't get rid of the cost of the computer itself then beyond that you then have the cost of building out the infrastructure so I would argue for small businesses you're actually adding to the cost now why virtual desktop infrastructure is valuable in the Enterprise world is because in the Enterprise world they're spending a lot of money on labor so it you know Tech professionals people going out and actually repairing computers people going out and actually fixing things right so if you've got a thousand or 10,000 computers hard drives fail fans fail all these different components within the computer fail and you've actually got you've got to pay somebody to fix that the whole desktop Support Division right so if you condense everything down to these little little thin clients that are basically disposable that saves you a lot of money because you don't have people running out fixing hard drives fixing video cards fixing all this kind of stuff uh so in the Enterprise World it makes sense you go down to the uh the the small business world and they're not paying that much uh for labor for it professionals right I mean they they pay you your little $500 $1,000 month maintenance contract and that's that's it there there's not a lot of cost savings for labor so you don't get any cost savings from the hardware the equipment you don't get any real cost savings from the labor so basically all you're doing is you're creating a more complicated system and the problem is with any of these more complicated systems you got a lot of weird issues that might go on so uh so if you're going to be doing virtual desktop infrastructure uh now everything is going to be running on your little cluster of servers for the virtual desktop infrastructure and all your users are going to be connecting to those servers now at that point you have to make sure that the servers can actually handle the load that you're going to be putting through them not only that but now you have to make sure that the network can support it so all the switches that you have and the routers you have and even the cabling right there's a difference between sending FTP and SMTP and actually doing a remote desktop connection especially doing a load of remote desktop connections um so can all that equipment handle it so one of the things you may run into is you go from a pretty pretty solid system where everybody has their own little laptop or desktop computers everything is working fine you then go to this virtual desktop infrastructure which isn't really saving them any money in the first place and then you find that the network itself can't handle it so then you're going in to repair the network and then you get issues right uh as far as virtual desktop infrastructure is concerned I mean I could sit down and have a beer and argue with you about it but I mean I would spitball it probably probably 500 users again you know like I said this is kind of one of those spitball things it depends on your environment and all that kind of stuff but I would think about 500 systems 500 And1 systems and above I would probably be looking at virtual desktop infrastructure 500 and below I probably wouldn't because I don't think I don't think you can afford the network reliability and redundancy because again now what you have to think about is is if if you have let's say you have an office of a hundred computers right if any one of those computers like if any One widget on that Network any one device on that Network fails you still keep a large amount of functionality so if your router fails everybody can still type and they can still do basic file transfer and all that kind of stuff if any switch fails even the computers are connected to that particular switch they can still go into Outlook and respond to emails they can still go to their contacts and get people's uh addresses and that kind of thing um they still have some functionality once you go to a virtual desktop infrastructure if all of your network connections go to one switch and then that one switch fails that means every computer that connects that switch is Now offline so you I mean you know what I'm saying like so what you have to do then is you have to then create redundancy so then you have multiple routes you have multiple switches you have all this stuff which is fine which is technically very doable but then you start talking about more money and so I mean hands down if you've got a less than a 100 100 computers on the network it's going to cost you more money to do virtual desktop infrastructure like hands down it will be less expensive for everybody just to have their own systems and then like I say somewhere between 100 to 500 that the line gets grayer and grayer above 500 and and and you have what you have so uh so yeah yeah virtual desktop infrastructure the problem with virtual desktop infrastructure so you guys understand why why virtual desktop infrastructure hasn't become mainstream in the way we all thought it would become mainstream is frankly because computers have dropped in price uh so substantially and frankly thin clients haven't uh so back when I started looking at virtual Des desktop infrastructure which was about 2,000 like the first Thin Client I ever owned uh was in about 2,000 like was an actual Thin Client West whatever the hell they're called uh one of those um and at that time the Thin Client cost like $400 or $500 well the thing was is at that time A Thin Client cost $400 or $500 and a computer was probably going to cost you somewhere between $1,000 to $1,500 so especially if you're looking at a hundred computers so even even for a small environment if I can buy this thing for $400 basically if I can save $600 per device you know 600 time um times 100 what is that 6,000 I don't know uh what is that 600 times 100 so that's like $60,000 in savings makes sense right so back when they were first trying to deploy this vdi uh even a small environment 100 computers that's $60,000 in savings uh you know then they have to bu out the infrastructure say let's say the infrastructure costs more money but it ends up you get $20,000 in savings or $30,000 in savings right because computers are so expensive thin clients are inexpensive I don't know why the price of thin clients has basically stayed about the same uh even as tablets have come even as every other damn computer device in the world has come down thin clients are about the same so the issue is is you now have thin clients for $300 to $400 so I mean the real thin clients that you're going to be buying for business environment are going to be $3 to $400 and you have full fledged computers that cost $400 or $500 and then you think about it and then you think about points of failure and then you think about extra cost for building out the virtual desktop infrastructure you think about all these things and it doesn't make as much sense so the issue was before is when the price made sense the technology wasn't mature enough uh to be deployed really widely and so by the time the technology became mature enough to really start use really start deploying it um the the the costs changed and now it just doesn't make any sense again there is no way in hell I would do vdi on under 100 I mean it's not even like what this is one of those points where if a client came to me and said we want to pay you for vdi for under 100 they better have a damn good excuse they better have a really damn good excuse because I would literally refuse that job be like I know you want to pay me that much money I'm not going to take it this is just no no no no no no no no no no um yeah so that is my thought on vdi so yeah stay the hell away from it for small small and mediumsized businesses no way now honestly like I say five 500 is the Mark I would put and honestly I would probably go higher than that like 700 or a th000 um but five 500 would be the minimum again we could have a beer and argue about it but that's somewhere around the minimum for the amount of computers uh before I'd even think about vdi because vdi I mean yeah yeah
