Typical risks for virtual desktop solutions

Hi, as part of my engagements i always try to assess the risks of my proposed solutions or technologies and share it with the organization. Its a qualitative type of risk assessment and aims to point the weak areas in the proposed solution(environmental, culture, people, technology etc) . Since virtualization has gained quite a momentum, i would like to point out some of the risks of deploying virtual desktops in a typical enterprise

  • High dependence on underlying infrastructure and bandwidth. some of the organizations have unrelaible network connectivity which may cause undesired results
  • User experience for certain scenarios is not rich. Virtual desktops are not aimed for a typical mobile or knowledge worker
  • Misassumption of cost reduction vs normal rich desktop. virtualization may reduce cost on one end but typically requires an additional investment on the server side. a well managed rich desktop has a similiar TCO to a virtual desktop
  • IT capabilities and learning curve. Virtualization is changing the IT operations model including operational concepts, roles and tasks. IT needs to adapt their culture and skills to this new environment which means cost and change management