Tranxition talks about VDI and desktop personalities

Tranxition has just announced the release and availability of LiveManage for Virtual Migrations 7.0, software that enables automated, intelligent abstraction of all essential user customizations from traditional desktops and migration to new virtual images, transporting what is needed and nothing more.  

[ Read about how one company updated its datacenter on a tight budget with desktop virtualization | Listen to the podcast about pass-through video making the case for desktop virtualization‘s impending popularity ] 

The latest version of the software builds on the company’s existing ability to preserve, protect, and transport desktop personality, adding new capabilities, documented processes, and licensing specifically for virtual desktop implementations. 

LiveManage decreases the cost of managing desktops by securely extracting and transferring the desktop personality which includes application customizations, metadata, templates, connectivity data, custom dictionaries, data files, and customizations beyond those saved in Windows Profiles.

To find out more about Tranxition and their role in the VDI market, I spoke with Amy Hodler, director of product management at Tranxition.

InfoWorld: Can you explain why enterprises should manage both user environments and desktop personalization?

Tranxition: Users have the innate need to customize their surroundings to make them more familiar, which results in higher efficiency and productivity.  However, management complexity and costs drastically rise as soon as users begin to personalize the baseline operating system and installed applications of their desktops.  Companies that can recognize and manage this apparent contradiction will be able to reduce desktop management costs without sacrificing end-user productivity.  This means organizations can more freely implement and reap the benefit of standardization initiatives if they actively manage the user environment, including all essential end-user customizations and the data that comprise a desktop personality.  Managing the desktop personality by abstracting it from the operating system and applications enables IT to then manage desktops with more efficiency which results in a positive impact on user productivity and business enablement.InfoWorld: Is desktop personalization any different for VDI environments?

Tranxition: As more organizations begin desktop virtualization projects, they will be forced to confront and balance two competing imperatives: standardization for IT’s benefit; and, providing a rich, productive environment for the benefit of those performing business tasks.  Companies need to achieve at least some of the cost benefits of VDI without imposing major disruption and lost productivity on their user base.  Further complicating this task is the end-user’s resistance to accept a VDI environment which will reduce the ROI considerably.  If users are forced to move from highly-customized, rich personal environments to generic, “greenfield” desktops devoid of their personal customizations, virtualization endeavors will fail.  For users to accept VDI as a reasonable facsimile of their traditional desktop, they should not be able to tell whether their environment is based on a traditional desktop or on some form of virtualized desktop.  If this happens, then virtualization has succeeded in being an acceptable replacement for the traditional desktop environment, and can be called an intelligent VDI environment.

InfoWorld: Can you talk about some of the challenges that enterprises should be aware of when moving from a physical desktop to a virtual desktop infrastructure?

Tranxition: Early adopters of VDI and other hosted virtual desktops have found several obstacles to achieving the expected level of cost and management benefits: a lack of a mature ecosystem and migration tools; higher than expected switch costs; implementation projects that take too long; low user acceptance; long-term storage and management requirements; and, lower user efficiency.  These issues arise from, or are impacted by, the entanglement of the end-user environment and desktop personality with the operating system and applications.  To realize the management and cost benefits of desktop virtualization, a VDI implementation project requires careful planning with a diverse team, and a solid personality migration process to maintain user efficiency and acceptance of the new environment.

InfoWorld: Are there any best practices for migrating users to VDI that readers should be aware of?

Tranxition: Planning for VDI involves many areas and many early adopters forget to look at how new virtual desktops will be managed within the total corporate desktop environment.  We recommend that implementers leverage flexible tools and processes that can span both physical and virtual desktops.  Since user acceptance and productivity depend on a familiar environment, companies should plan carefully for end-user migrations and use a tool that provides comprehensive scanning and discovery of all essential user settings and data.  The migration process should be automated and integrated with your current management framework to ensure the virtual desktop implementation is efficient for both IT staff and users; this is especially critical in large scale projects.  When possible, implement tools and processes that will support various virtual desktop technologies and scenarios for greater long-term usability.  For even greater ROI, select migration tools that can be used beyond the physical to virtual migration process.  For example, some personality migration tools can also be used to translate user settings between software versions so you can migrate to a standard version of OS and applications without losing user customizations.

InfoWorld: What is Tranxition doing to help companies migrate from physical to virtual desktops? 

Tranxition: Tranxition’s desktop personality solutions ensure efficient management of end-user customizations, templates, metadata, connections to shared devices and services, as well as data files and structures that define how users interact with their computer.  Tranxition today announced general availability of LiveManage for Virtual Migrations 7.0.  The new, seventh generation product builds on LiveManage’s existing ability to preserve, protect and transport desktop personality, adding new capabilities, documented processes, and licensing specifically for virtual desktop implementations — regardless of virtual infrastructure.  LiveManage for Virtual Migrations enables automated, intelligent abstraction of all essential user customizations from traditional desktops and migration to new virtual images, transporting what is needed and nothing more.  Tranxition software can be obtained from, and is integrated with, HP Software’s Client Automation Suite, BMC OS Manager, Scalable Software’s Desktop Availability Suite, and Client Suite by FrontRange Solutions to name a few.

InfoWorld: Any closing thoughts on VDI that you’d like to add?

Tranxition: Moving from a physical desktop environment to a virtual environment will not occur instantly, so it is critical to maintain an infrastructure that will support a mix of VDI and traditional physical desktop environments.  Large scale projects will be ongoing and the conversion from physical desktop to VDI will be a gradual progression.  As a result, the cost benefit of converting from a physical environment to VDI will not be realized until a large percentage of the environment has progressed to VDI.  This only adds to the importance of creating an efficient process to transition from physical to virtual environments.  The longer it takes to complete the project the less it benefits the ROI and could potentially cost more than simply maintaining the traditional desktop environment as you are now supporting a completely mixed environment with two very different infrastructures.

Once again, I’d like to thank Amy Hodler, director of product management at Tranxition, for taking the time to speak with me.