Calculating the cost of desktop virtualisation

VARs should get their calculations right when selling desktop virtualisation, writes Chris Hammans

Chris Hammans: TCO calculations need serious work when it comes to desktop virtualisation sales

Virtualisation has been the hottest topic of late. Desktop virtualisation is getting very interesting, and is predicted to spread due to its potential for cost reduction, delivery improvement and simplification of application deployment.

But you need to prove the total cost of ownership (TCO) to the end user. TCO at its simplest adds hardware and software costs, operating expenses and long-term expenses such as replacement, upgrade or scalability costs.

With desktop virtualisation, there are many choices of vendor, client, connection and management tool.

The first stage is about acquiring as much information about the customer as possible. You need to understand every aspect of their desktop setup. Ask how they are set up, what mix of workers use desktops and how much are they spending on desktop deployment.

Customise an advanced TCO model to fit the customer’s own data points – the more the customer can tell you about his or her operational expenditure costs, the better. TCO models can often produce the wrong assumptions so minimise the chance of error by using as much real customer data as possible. The key point is to ensure the benchmarks used by the TCO calculator truly represent the customer’s own.

The next phase of virtual desktop deployment may involve a pilot – not only to test the user experience, but to trial a small number of devices to monitor the costs of support, uptime, ease of deployment, energy costs and so on for about a month.

To get the customer deployment right, the VAR really needs to go through the whole experience with them.

TCO should tell you that actual cost savings in a VDI project come from the ease of deployment, reduced complexity and effective management of the end point device.

If you get that first desktop virtualisation experience right, it may open numerous windows of opportunity around virtualisation.

If you know your solutions can deliver on the promise of being easy to deploy, using fewer vendors, lowering complexity and being cost effective, you should be able to go in and prove it.

Chris Hammans is EMEA managing director at Pano Logic