Monday 21 November 2011

Consumerisation trundles on

A friend just posted a link to "Client4Cloud: Desktop Transformation to Universal Clients" that got me thinking again about the whole consumerisation thing. Quick context: I haven't read the book, although I've just skimmed the sample, so I'm not saying anything about the content or message of the book - simply that it's appearance on my facebook stream of news has prompted this post.

Here's one scenario that has always seemed to me to be a barrier to consumerisation; at least for now. Let's assume we deliver a virtual desktop to our workforce and allow them to bring in their own device (laptop, ipad, whatever). One of the employees comes in today and says his laptop is broken. He's taken it in for repair and it will be a week, so he's a bit stuck and can't do his job. Whose responsibility is it now that he is unproductive?

Of course, there are loads of ways around this. We could have a stock of loaner laptops to dish out in times such as this. However, it just all starts to look rather untidy. We're still managing kit, which consumerisation was supposed to get away from. I'm sure it works better on a small scale with a workforce in the 10's; but scale this up to thousands and I just don't see it.

The flip side is give everyone a laptop that is not locked down, controlled and inflexible. Use virtualisation to deliver the standard set of tools and isolate it from the user-play-area in which enables the employee to make a productive tool for her to do her work.

The world has moved a long way since the early days of machine and then application virtualisation. I haven't really kept a close watch on this area for a few years, but I'm about to do another round. It will be interesting to see what's changed while my eyes have been diverted on other things.

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