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07 December 2011
A recent article by Brian Madden, for whom I have great respect and am thankful for his contribution to our industry, has me scratching my head vigorously and killing the little hair I have left. He states that "VDI is not a big deal", "not game changing" and "nothing more than a form factor change". While I agree that the terms like "game changing" is unoriginal and well-worn, it's a far reach to say that VDI does not change the landscape of computing.
To make my point, I will purposefully agree and concede to Brian's statement that "VDI is nothing more than a form factor change". I will also agree that the transformation from local host computing to VDI is similar to the transformation from desktops to laptops and therefore is a "form factor change". I agree with these points because it is there that I will attempt to prove that though it could look like a simple change, its effects are still transformational.
Laptops completely changed the way in which we worked. While businesses were tied to clunky desktops, so also was the productivity of the employee. The work-from-anywhere idea can largely be attributed to the proliferation and cost reduction of laptops. One could argue that the internet and virtual private networks (VPN) is what made this possible but those of us with at least two decades under our belt (or above it as evidenced by my "spare tire") can attest to the fact that we could be productive on a mobile PC even when disconnected and could get by with a dial-up [Insert raspy hissing sound here!] when we did need to connect. In 1997, I diagramed an entire Novell NDS design from Sydney, Australia then dialed up to a local Earthlink number to upload it to my manager in Chicago on my laptop.
The work-from-home concept was also made practical by laptop computing. Laptop users can immediately drop a task, put the laptop to sleep then hop in the car so that they can catch their child's piano recital knowing they can continue their effort at home. I would even argue that laptops were so "game changing" that marriages may have even been ended due to more spouses coming to bring work home instead of dedicating it to family time. Let the still-married-workaholics be honest for a moment. How many of us feel productive yet guilty at home because we can and do work as soon as we can squeeze in a few minutes to check a few more emails, read some documents and fill in that spreadsheet on our laptops?
There is another industry that can thank Toshiba, Sony, IBM, Dell and HP for making it possible to succeed - the coffee shop. Go visit a Starbucks or local coffee shop and reminisce about the last 10 years. Recall how many new coffee shops opened in your city in that period of time. As you do, think about how many of them were patronized by caffeine addicts with wide eyes staring at 13.1-inch screens. What was a haven for the writers, students and casual workers have now accepted business meetings and longer working sessions.
Take a look at the chart below of Colombia's economy:
I'm not an economic major but I do wonder how much of Colombia's GDP growth from 2001 to 2007 was due to all the coffee beans purchased by coffee shops. Okay… Okay… That may be a reach but I hope you get the point. Juan Valdez may even be reading this article on his laptop because he created a Google alert for every time his name shows up in a search.
I could go on and have more fun with this article but my wrists are hurting typing on my laptop. Oh wait! I can just transition my VDI session to my home computer so that I could take advantage of my cool keyboard instead of the one on this Dell laptop. Great! As I transition my VDI session to another system, I wonder… How will VDI transform the way I work the next few years? Will it be "game changing" or just a "form factor change"? Hmmm… Maybe it will be both. I just hope I can keep my marriage and deal with my caffeine addiction while coming up with a great business idea that could leverage this new way of computing.
