The Console

VMware's Executive Blog

Tue, 02 May 2006

Posted by Jeff Jennings
Vice President of Systems Engineering

When I joined VMware six years ago, the only product we sold was Workstation. The focus market was already well defined: developers, testing, and Linux enthusiasts. But necessity being the mother of invention, a few customers came up with ideas of their own. One of the more interesting use cases came up shortly after the Workstation 2.0 release. We received a number of inquiries from law enforcement agencies, including the FBI. "What is the best way," they asked, "to convert a physical drive to a virtual machine?" The reason, they explained, was for computer forensics - studying hard drives for incriminating evidence. The officers' existing approach involved making an image, restoring the image on a research computer, and then finally searching for evidence. Because of the limited number of computers, the process was overly complex and slow. What they needed was an automated process for converting a physical drive to a virtual machine. What they needed was the P2V product, which would not come for another two years, but I remember being impressed by these customers' inventiveness and proactiveness in contacting us.

Fast forward to the current day and customers are still showing us new and exciting ways to use our products. I would say the most recent is VDI or Virtual Desktop Infrastructure. You are probably familiar with the big three uses cases of virtualization: server consolidation, development & testing, and business continuity. But there is a new solution on the block, and it is here by customer demand. VDI brings a hosted desktop solution to the VMware portfolio focused on enterprise manageability and security.

The first request I encountered came from a large software development company in California. They had three key goals: support offshore development sites, reduce the number of operating system licenses (they only needed licenses for operating systems loaded in memory for a VDI solution), and support a thin client option in their home offices. Of these, supporting the offshore sites was the critical need. This was back in the ESX Server 1.x days and the customer felt that if they could get 8 desktops per two-way server, they would be happy. We were able to achieve that ratio, which was a challenge because our memory management was not nearly as advanced as it is today, but at the time they choose not to go forward. Shared storage was an integral part of the solution and they were not willing to commit to purchasing another array. The individuals involved, however, recognized that this would fundamentally alter how they managed their desktop environment.

They have proven to be quite prescient. Prudential UK, for example, implemented a VDI customer service center. The desktop servers are located in the UK and the customer service representatives are in India. This allowed them to bring up the customer center in only 4 months. Interestingly, the set of target applications would not work in a traditional terminal services environment. VMware ESX Server allowed them to run out of the box, without rewriting. Prudential UK cites the ability to provide "applications anywhere" as a major benefit of VDI.

This is not lost on our other customers in Europe. Recently I have seen numerous enquiries regarding business continuity. Specifically these customers are looking for a way to provide a complete corporate environment to their employees' homes in the event of a bird-flu pandemic. VDI would give them the ability to continue in business if public health concerns prevented their employees from coming to work. That is certainly a highlight of VDI - the ability to provide a complete enterprise environment anywhere you have a robust network, yet still have centralized management.

And there you have it: from fighting crime to managing a potential pandemic, VMware virtual machines have you covered. What will our customers think of next?

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