We recently completed a roll-out of a large TeleVantage system for a financial services call center and had a chance to see some of their future plans for their technology infrastructure.  Their IT staff has really bought into the concept of virtualization and presently uses VMware to maintain a series of virtual servers on their network.

The most interesting thing they showed me, though, was their plan for taking that concept of virtual machines to the desktop level.  They had a test set up with a JackPC made by ChipPC.  This device is a small Windows CE-based block, probably two inches square and an inch and a half deep, designed to fit inside a standard wall jack.  The network connection is at the rear, and the only connections visible are USB, sound, and video connections.  There are a variety of models available supporting multiple displays.

The Windows CE OS ran an RDP client that would connect to a Terminal Server, but also supports VDI, a VMware protocol that allows virtual desktop images to be hosted by a single server, providing insulated OS environments for the individual desktops.  This allows you to avoid the conflicts of a shared platform like Terminal Server. 

The possibility of utilizing a purely thin-client environment has definite impacts on the WAN design.  Companies looking to roll out an enterprise network can achieve centralized management and avoid resource issues at the desktop, but a smart WAN setup is a must.  Particularly if the enterprise design includes centrally-hosted VOIP (as it will for this particular customer), an advanced transport technology like MPLS is almost a requirement.

Overall, the design could be constructed so as not to consume inordinate amounts of bandwidth, and indeed should result in a sizeable increase in efficiency in all areas of the business.  The whole idea behind virtualization is the efficient utilization of server resources, and that same economies of scale apply to the network as well.  In a previous article the cost-per-MB of various data connections was discussed, and this type of centralization could allow an enterprise to leverage that efficiency by consolidating Internet access and relying on relatively lightweight connections to the satellites.

Efficiency aside, some enterprises love this idea for the control it allows.  Centralizing the processing allows a consolidated IT staff to manage security, support users, and control network performance.