Many claims are made to support this so called Bring Your Own PC (BYOPC) approach – although they seem mostly, if not only, to originate from vendors (notably desktop virtualization and application virtualization vendors) that have a vested commercial interest in its success. I disagree with many of these claims (especially the questionable claims of cost reduction), but I do agree that BYOPC can have some benefits.

However, one of the many claims in support of BYOPC is that it will help organizations to attract and retain an important demographic of young, technologically sophisticated employees – the so-called ‘millennials’,  ‘echo boomers’, ‘generation next’, or ‘generation Y’, all loose terms generally used to describe people aged between 18 and 35 years old.

Personally, I find this claim to be absurd.

My main issue with this claim is the implicit assumption that millennials have such a strong choice in their employment options that issues like what type of operating system they use, or what device they work on, can be significant decision factors in whether or not to accept a job offer.

This flies in the face of unemployment statistics that suggest, today more than ever, millennials simply do not have this level of choice. Put plainly, in the near term millennials should be happy to simply get a job offer, let alone one that comes with over $2000 to buy themselves a shiny new MacBook Air.

Specifically, data from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (see chart below) shows that in fourth quarter of 2009, unemployment for 18-35 year olds was on average 17%. For males specifically, this was on average 25%, and as high as 30%  (for males, 18-19 y.o). Compare this to the national average for ages 35 and above – 8% for the general population, and 9% for males – and you can see that this demographic does not exactly have abundant bargaining power on the job market.

Unemployment by age, sex, marital status 2006-2009 (Source: BLS)

Perhaps this will change over time, but as the chart above shows, unemployment for millennials has been trending up, not just since the onset of the recession around the end of 2008, but at least since 2006. It may (and hopefully will) come down dramatically, improving millenials’ bargaining power for employment,  but there is no sign that this is happening, or that it will happen anytime soon. And remember, when we are looking at BYOPC it is not only for technology workers,  but also (perhaps primarily) for knowledge workers across many fields – sales, finance, management, R&D, etc. – so any specific skill shortages in IT that may skew millennials’ bargaining power do not really come into play.

Of course, there are probably nuances here that a behavioural statistician would find and explain much better than I can – granular variations by  age, education, location, industry, and more. For example, unemployment among slightly older millennials aged 25 to 34,  many of whom presumably have college degrees, is much lower than millennials aged 18 to 24. Yet at over 10% unemployment, even this group still has an unemployment rate several percentage points higher than ages 35 and up (just under 8%).

However, I do not see any promoters of BYOPC incorporating such detailed demographic analysis to substantiate their claims for BYOPC; rather, most seem to just be making unsubstantiated claims using baseless assumptions about millennials’ employment ‘needs’ without even considering widely available independent data that substantially undermines their position.

Sure, there are studies that suggest, for example, that millennials consider “state-of-the-art technology is an important consideration in selecting an employer.” However, the most credible of these studies was conducted prior to the global economic downturn, when unemployment among 18-35 year olds was just 9-10% – almost half what it is today. In any case, an organization does not need a BYOPC program simply to provide state-of-the-art technology. If an employer gives a millennial employee a top-of-the-line company-owned Dell, HP, Lenovo, Sony, or Apple laptop, would they turn the job down just because they cannot buy it themselves?

So based on a cursory analysis of recent, credible, and available data, the idea that a young person would turn down a job in this economic climate, simply because they can’t get their preferred laptop or mobile device seems to me quite ridiculous. At best, it may help companies attract the very top tier of millennial graduates who do have multiple job offers to choose from, but I expect this would still be the least of the considerations of 18-35 year olds. Even for the best of them, this likely pales compared to significant concerns about compensation, vacation and holidays, health care, education support, flexible hours, corporate ethics, retirement funding, work-life balance, telecommuting, career opportunities, and more.

This then has significant implications for CIOs and others looking at BYOPC.  Despite the validity (or otherwise) of any other claims in favour of BYOPC, no organization should be looking to BYOPC to attract and retain staff from the echo boom generation. They would be better off looking at a dozen or more other important factors than spending the significant time, effort, and money on implementing a BYOPC program.

Microsoft and Opalis

Today Microsoft Corporation (NASD:MSFT) announced a definitive agreement to acquire Opalis Inc., the leading independent vendor of IT Process Automation (ITPA) software.

IT Process Automation (ITPA) is a Data Center Automation (DCA) discipline that EMA defines as “the ability to automate and integrate the workflow of complex, multi-discipline IT management processes.” This automation can replace many manual, resource-intensive, and error-prone activities that typically cross multiple IT components, disciplines, and/or departments. ITPA delivers exceptional results including freeing up 77% more staff for strategic projects, providing more than 60 additional hours of system availability per year, and saving an average $500,000 more per year on staff costs than other Data Center Automation (DCA) disciplines.

This space has been gaining interest, both expanding and consolidating, for some time, as evidenced by significant development and acquisition activity from Novell (ZENworks, PlateSpin), HP (Opsware, iConclude), BMC Software (RealOps, Atrium), NetIQ (Aegis), Symantec (T-Logic, Altiris), and CA (Optinuity, Spectrum).

I think this is an excellent move by Microsoft. It will certainly make customers of both companies very happy. Microsoft and its customers gain an exceptional solution, in a discipline area that Microsoft was clearly lacking, and one which delivers many proven and exceptional benefits. For Opalis customers, it is probably a mixed bag. It will be a major change, but with Microsoft’s strength and stability, it is likely to be a positive outcome overall for Opalis customers.

This is, however, a huge blow for competitors, especially for the few large management vendors that have not yet acquired or built an ITPA solution or components, or whose own ITPA capabilities are less than stellar. For other large mgmt vendors with credible or better ITPA capabilities, this is both an opportunity and a threat. For mid-sized vendors that compete with Opalis or Microsoft Systems Center, and especially smaller vendors, this is a horrible result. Overall, most vendors will have to hustle to respond, although many will be unable to do so.

Meanwhile, Microsoft, Opalis, and their customers should be ecstatic with this deal. Few acquisitions are so clearly positive for the stakeholders as this.

You should be able to check out what the executives from both companies have to say in their blog posts:

• Blog post from Brad Anderson, Microsoft Corporate Vice President: http://blogs.technet.com/systemcenter/default.aspx
• Blog post from Todd DeLaughter, President & CEO of Opalis Software: http://www.opalis.com/blog.asp?id=1

Meanwhile, I will be expanding on the impact of this acquisition very soon with a full EMA Impact Brief. Keep your eyes out for that one – lots of significant implications for customer and competitors, without doubt!

The survey revealed some very interesting data, with a very well thought out instrument and a quality sample – 300 respondents (100 each from the US, EMEA, and Asia Pacific) with at least 500 employees in the US (250 in the UK, France, Germany, Australia, Singapore and India), and all with a current or planned investment in server virtualization.

A number of data points stand out for me:

• The balance of Test/Dev implementations vs. Production continues to reflect EMA data. While production is still lagging behind test and dev as a use case, virtualization for mission-critical production is only slightly behind test and dev overall – and within the margin of error in most cases. This is good news, as enterprises clearly continue to grow real, production use cases.  It was interesting to see the differences between US and EMEA/APAC on this data point too, something EMA has not broken out in our published reports.
• Microsoft and VMware are neck and neck in enterprises’ plans for server virtualization deployments over the next 18 months. I was called crazy when my 2008 EMA research pointed to a 32% growth rate for Microsoft Hyper-V into 2009, trailing only VMware; yet here we are in 2009, and according to this new study, through 2010/11 that is going up to 49%. So who is crazy now?
• The strong growth for endpoint (desktop, application) virtualization reflects EMA data very well. It also highlights where enterprises and vendors should be heading with management technologies. It is still early days, but there are  a lot of gaps in integrated management for physical and virtual endpoints. So it is clear that this (probably even more than cloud service management) is going to be the next big problem for IT management.
• The percentage of IT services planned to be virtualized over 18 months is growing well. However, just as EMA has predicted, virtualization will remain at only around 50% of service deployments even through 2011, so there will continue to be substantial physical deployments. This reinforces my consistent (and insistent) position that effective management of virtualization must integrate both physical and virtual systems management
• Effective management continues to be elusive. EMA’s research showed this in 2006, 2008, and 2009, and this new data (with some reservations) shows the same. However, while tThe majority (64%) of enterprises rank themselves as extremely or very effective at managing virtualization, and believe they are getting better, I am skeptical. I contend many of those are overestimating their abilities (see my next points).
• Virtualization clearly increases complexity, and is clearly more difficult to manage. I felt like I was tilting at windmills when I published this opinion in 2006 and in 2008, contrary to common perceptions that virtualization made everything easier. I was certainly a lone voice, but as it turned out, a prescient one. It is great to see it being recognized more broadly, finally.
• Human issues continue to be major problems – especially skills and resourcing. EMA has found the same to be true, consistently, for many years. As recently as last week, I spoke with David Marshall of VMBlog and InfoWorld about how this continues to be a problem. This makes management tools even more important – to embed knowledge, define and execute policy, and automate routine work to free up resources.
• These data points all increase my doubt that enterprises are really being better at managing their virtual environments. It seems contradictory to me that this survey shows virtualization is more complex, management is the top inhibitor to ROI, and skills are still lacking, yet most enterprises think they are being very or extremely effective at it. Even though tool usage is more integrated and automated than it has been, this does not make sense. I am instead convinced that enterprises are really overestimating their abilities.

This is just a very small sample of the interesting data in this survey – there are more than 50 pages in the slide deck I reviewed ahead of the webcast. I encourage you to check out the webcast.  If you get in touch with HP, I am sure they will point you in the right direction; or check back here, and I will post the link when it is up.

Andi.

I like the thinking, and agree with a lot of the principles involved. Without doubt, virtualization is not cloud. But I can’t agree with it all. Apart from technical quibbles (like the part about mainframe LPARs not running on a hypervisor), I simply find it unreasonable, if not impossible, to think of implementing cloud computing without virtualization.

My key sticking point in most of these discussions [edit: not necessarily William's post - see comments below] is that they continually assume that ‘virtualization’ is synonymous with ‘hypervisor’, or at best with ’server virtualization’. Neither is true. When EMA first defined virtualization (a definition that has taken hold more or less throughout the industry), we defined it as:

“a technique for abstracting or hiding the physical characteristics of computing resources from the way in which other systems, applications, or end users interact with those resources.”

Even now, Wikipedia defines virtualization as “the abstraction of computer resources” and “hid[ing] the physical characteristics of a computing platform from users.”

No mention of a hypervisor there, and with good reason. Virtualization is much more than a hypervisor, and applies to much more than servers. In fact, EMA’s original definition made this clear by including the following clarifying note:

“This includes making a single physi­cal resource (such as a server, an operating system, an application, or storage device) appear to function as multiple logical resources; or it can include making multiple physical resources (such as storage devices or servers) appear as a single logical resource.”

Indeed, many forms of virtualization (and cloud) are possible without a hypervisor – like OS virtualization, storage virtualization, grid and cluster computing, terminal services, and more. So while it is widely known that Amazon runs its cloud on a classic server virtualization platform (Xen), even a Google-like cloud, which is based (as I understand it) entirely on a fully hardware-based deployment, without any hypervisors, is still using another virtualization technology – grid computing.

So cloud is definitely possible without a hypervisor, but is it possible without virtualization?

Perhaps, but it is far less than ideal.

William cited SoftLayer Technologies  as doing cloud on bare metal; and  Loudcloud as being cloud before it was in vogue. Although I am not sure the latter is true, and Softlayer provide few details about their bare-metal cloud, it seems to be possible to provide cloud computing without virtualization.

Yet with very few exceptions, it is ill-advised at best. In implementation, if not in theory, the many essential characteristics noted in the NIST cloud definition (EMA’s preferred definition) are only barely possible in a purely physical environment.

Sure, you could get rapid elasticity, rapid provisioning, minimal human interaction, dynamic resource assignment, location independence, resource abstraction, etc. with a physical deployment. While they were both substantially unsuccessful with customers, IBM’s On-Demand and HP’s Adaptive Infrastructure both accommodated these elements primarily through automation, and without virtualization (or at least with virtualization as only an optional component). Even without automation, you could imaginably provision and manage physical servers manually to achieve this on-demand, adaptive, cloud infrastructure. In theory, all things are possible.

In practice though, cloud computing without virtualization is barely realistic. It is an edge case at best. Given what virtualization can do – for resource pooling, rapid provisioning, reducing intervention, resource abstraction, workload elasticity, and more – why would you try to implement cloud without it?

And that is just on the server! Given the different types of virtualization – especially network virtualization and storage virtualization – it seems that cloud without virtualization is not just ill-advised, but positively crazy.

For example, would anyone really copy all the data from one DAS drive to another in order to ‘dynamically’ scale a workload onto a bigger machine? Would you uninstall a drive from one server, and put it into another? Would you physically switch or reprovision a network in order to abstract a new server located in a different data center? Even to the biggest skeptic, cloud without any virtualization must seem a ridiculous notion, if not an impossible one.

So yes, William is technically correct (“the best kind of correct!”) – virtualization is not cloud, and it is possible to provide cloud services without virtualization.

But (with apologies to Samuel Johnson) it is like a dog walking on his hind legs – it is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all.

The General Manager had hired a new architect, a ‘virtualization expert’, to handle a new project. The architect designed a solution using server-hosted virtual desktops (in this case using XenDesktop) for the teachers and administrators in a school environment. The physical systems would use PXE boot to load a virtual desktop containing the apps that the teachers and administrators needed (essentially just Office 2007).

The problem was the teachers and administrators all had laptops, and needed to take their work home; meanwhile, the school was running a wireless network.  The laptops would need to establish and secure a wireless network connection before the virtual desktop could be loaded (via PXE). Unfortunately, they cannot establish a wireless connection until after they have already loaded an operating system. Catch 22.

My client – the desktop manager at the company – was called in to fix the problems created by the ‘virtualization expert’. He actually solved the technology issues pretty easily, by designing a new solution using server-based application virtualization (in this case with XenApp) on top of a simple, local, Windows installation. A common Windows installation would be easy to maintain; teachers could access their applications from any LAN or Internet connected location; applications and data would still be centrally stored and secured; they could cache applications on users’ laptops for offline use; and they could even publish a full virtual desktop for each user if they desired.

Despite some tradeoffs, it was clearly a better solution for their requirements.

When he called me, it was ostensibly to help him validate the new solution, but in the end my assignment wasn’t really about the technology; it was to help resolve relationship issues with the client, explain the project change to the client, advise them on license issues, help to get the customer on board with a different technology, liaise with the GM over resourcing and skill levels, etc.

As is typical, the human issues were the sticking point. After all – technology is easy; people are hard. In fact, throughout the project, the real problem had been human issues – a lack of time and people; lack of skills or knowledge; and interdepartmental political issues:

• Lacking the time and people internally for their endpoint virtualization initiatives, the company had hired an ‘expert’ with strong server virtualization knowledge.
• Sadly, that person was himself lacking in skills and knowledge when it came to endpoint virtualization, so he designed a solution that would not work.
• This created the political problems, as they failed to deliver the ‘virtual desktops’ that the customer was expecting.

These issues are in fact very typical, and EMA research (‘Real World Experiences of Endpoint Virtualization‘) shows they are actually the top three challenges most organizations need to overcome when implementing or expanding end-user virtualization deployments.

So what are the key takeaways for endpoint virtualization projects from this experience?

• Devote time and resource to training internal staff – virtualization skills are tough to find, and most companies don’t have enough of them in-house; conversely, IT staff consistently cite training & skills development as a key reason they stay with their employers. Seems like training existing staff should be a no-brainer.
• Use desktop experts for endpoint virtualization projects – EMA research has shown convincingly that the desktop team are the best people to handle endpoint virtualization projects. They are intimately familiar with the unique facets of endpoint environments (like the PXE limitations of WiFi networking), user requirements, mobility, application delivery, etc. Server people don’t deal with these issues every day; desktop people do.
• If you do need new people, get the right ones – and if you train internally first, then you have a much better shot at hiring better new people too. In this case, they might have been able to see that a server virtualization guy was not the right fit for their endpoint virtualization needs.
• Don’t get hung up on specific products or technologies – focus instead on solving problems. Endpoint virtualization is a continuum of technologies, each suited for different users and use cases. Understand that the best solutions may even involve multiple platforms, technologies, and even vendors.

This is a keen lesson on how to approach user-facing IT in general, and for endpoint virtualization in particular. Use your desktop expertise, supplemented with good training, and a deep understanding of your customer requirements, to focus on providing solutions to problems, rather than installing technologies and products.

[edited November 6, 2009 at 11:29:27 am - added link to EMA research]

In the report, I defined ‘Endpoint Virtualization’ as:

a (mostly) new set of technologies aimed at abstracting the end user experience – typically their logical desktop, application, and/or workspace environments – from the physical systems they rely on to provide that experience – typically a physical desktop or laptop PC.

This primary research covered many different technologies, including:

• Application Isolation – where an application is installed locally, but in a ‘bubble’, ‘sandbox’, or ‘layer’ that does not use the standard installation (e.g. VMware ThinApp, Novell ZENworks Application Virtualization)
• Remote Application Virtualization – where end users access a single-user application hosted on a remote/data-center system on the corporate LAN (e.g. Citrix XenApp, Microsoft App-V)
• Application or OS streaming – where an application or desktop OS is delivered incrementally from a remote/data-center system on the corporate LAN (e.g. Symantec Workspace Streaming, Endeavors)
• Remote (server-hosted) desktop virtualization – where a user accesses a full desktop environment from a remote/data-center system on the corporate LAN (e.g. Quest vWorkspace, Citrix XenDesktop)
• Local (client-hosted) OS virtualization – where a user runs multiple independent operating environment(s) locally on top of their standard operating system (e.g. MokaFive, VMware Fusion)
• Client-Side Hypervisor – where a user runs multiple independent operating environment(s) locally directly on the BIOS, without an underlying operating system (e.g. Virtual Computer NxTop, Neocleus)
• Browser-based applications – applications hosted on a corporate Web server, accessed over the LAN via a Web browser, with little or no local code installation (typically custom or in-house)
• Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) – individual applications hosted by a third party, accessed over the Internet via a Web browser, with little or no local code installation (e.g. Salesforce.com, PingConnect)
• Desktop-as-a-Service (DaaS) – entire end-user desktop environments hosted by a third party, accessed over the public Internet, with little or no local code (e.g. Desktone, Doyenz)

What I did not explain, and what a number of people have asked me since, is “Why does EMA use the term ‘Endpoint Virtualization’?”

A number of terms have been used by various analysts, media,  vendors, and users to describe this space. However, I don’t think anyone is looking at or defining the same breadth of the market as EMA and I do. Given the research data that showed these technologies were barely separable in real world use cases, I needed a a single term that covered all of them.

My  first thought (that I used in all the drafts of this report) was ‘end-user-facing virtualization’. While accurate and descriptive, it is too cumbersome to be usable, so I always knew that was going to be replaced.

I also rejected all the other terms I have seen for various reasons:

• Desktop virtualization, application virtualization – both too narrow for the broad space I was researching, with each excluding the other
• Client virtualization – the legacy of ‘client-server’, common usage of ‘client’ to mean ‘customer’, and lack of breadth killed this for me
• Presentation virtualization -  only describes remote delivery, so excludes local virtualization, SaaS, browser apps, etc.
• User virtualization – does not work for me at all, because I think of users as people, not technologies
• Workspace virtualization – too specific to desktop virtualization, plus a ‘workspace’ is anything from a cubicle to a bench with a drill-press

What’s more, the end user experience is more than just desktops and laptops. VMware CTO Stephen Herrod spoke at VM Forum Sydney (my home town) about VMware on Android, and VMware desktop CTO Scott Davis has been talking Android on his blog too. Similarly, Citrix’s CEO Mark Templeton demonstrated Citrix Receiver for iPhone as far back as May 2009**.

So I looked at the term ‘endpoint’, a term used commonly in IT management, and by many different vendors, in phrases such as in ‘endpoint management’, ‘endpoint security’, ‘endpoint encryption’, ‘data endpoint’, ‘endpoint provisioning’, etc. By most definitions, ‘endpoint’ accommodates all the ways the computing experiences can be made available to, and used by, an end user – including PCs, Macs, desktops, laptops, & mobile devices; centralized or Internet-based delivery mechanisms as well as local implementations; full desktop operating systemsor just individual applications; and both online or offline use cases.

Thus, I settled on ‘Endpoint Virtualization’ as EMA’s standard term for these various technologies.

Will it hold up over time? Will an irresistible groundswell form behind some other term that will force me to change? It is hard to tell, and I am certainly interested in your opinions. For now though, I think this is the best possible term, and will continue to use it throughout my writings and presentations with EMA.

Andi.

** Off-topic – what is it with vendor C-level elites targeting edge platforms like Android and iPhone? Seems to me it would be more useful if they targeted the enterprise-friendly mobile platforms that more real business users work on – like Blackberry or Windows Mobile. But that is a rant for another time