One size rarely fits all when it comes to IT, and many businesses are finding they can reduce costs and improve flexibility by adopting desktop virtualisation to bring computing power to their employees.

One size rarely fits all when it comes to IT, and many businesses are finding they can reduce costs and improve flexibility by adopting desktop virtualisation to bring computing power to their employees.

Instead of a fully functioning machine, the user has on their desktop only a keyboard, mouse and monitor, and a device to connect to a remote server.

This is what is known as ‘thin-client’ computing. Effectively, it means that the computing power is located centrally rather than on the end-user device (the idea has been around since the dawn of computing).

What has changed recently, though, is the development of so-called ‘virtualisation’ technology. This allows a single server to support many different instances of an operating system, so one piece of hardware can support multiple ‘virtual’ desktop PCs.

At the UK payments agency VocaLink, desktop virtualisation has been used to significantly reduce the effort and complexity involved in supporting 700 PC users who use a large number of complex applications.

According to Irene Blaston, VocaLink’s head of desktop and web infrastructure, virtualisation allows it to quickly provision new users, give existing users access to applications as and when they need them, and to save money on unneeded software licences by keeping closer tabs on what is being used.

Virtualisation greatly reduces the cost of providing desktop PCs, while centralisation reduces the expense of managing them. Furthermore, remotely deploying desktop PCs allows information security to be more tightly controlled.

It’s increasingly popular among IT-savvy entrepreneurs. According to market analyst Gartner, the number of virtualised PCs worldwide is expected to grow from less than five million in 2007 to 660 million by 2011.