Arnett figures if he can successfully automate the provisioning process for the first 10 users, then a hundred can easily follow.
Initially, he built a desktop for 10 IT staffers, tested it for a few weeks, and then tore it down, saving the golden image. Then he built one for 10 technical support workers, tested it, and tore it down, likewise saving the core image. He's gone through the same process with manufacturing as well as shipping and receiving, but he's not yet ready to roll out virtual desktops to the company as a whole.
Arnett has limited the test groups to 10 so he doesn't get flooded with 50 users needing information and connections at the same time. So far, the tests have been "controlled and methodical, and the desktops have worked well," he says.
Arnett is still figuring out exactly which end users and how many of them will make the switch permanently. "Quite a few departments would be perfect candidates," he says of the 1,400-employee company.THIN-CLIENT FLEXIBILITY
At Cincinnati Bell, Jeff Harvey also turned to thin clients as he equips the first 800 of what he expects will eventually be about 3,300 virtual desktop users at the telecommunications provider. Over the next two quarters, he's giving most of the initial group--750 call center employees--Sun Ray thin clients from Sun.
Those users are switching from PCs running Windows 2000; the company needs to migrate them to a new platform as Windows 2000 approaches the end of Microsoft support. "We had no choice," Harvey says. Rather than buy everyone a big new PC, Cincinnati Bell opted for virtualized desktops generated by VMware's Virtual Infrastructure 3 and tapped Sun's Virtual Desktop Infrastructure to convert the Microsoft Terminal Services protocol into the thin-client presentation.
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