There are a whole lot of different ways by which companies can accomplish their VDI goals, whether these goals are cost reduction, enhanced mobility opportunities, security enhancement, bring your own device initiatives, easier desktop management or some other goal. I’ve been testing a lot of different variations on the VDI concept with my organization’s primary goals being cost reduction and easier desktop management, secondary goals being enhanced mobility opportunities and bring your own device opportunities.
My primary sticking points have been the cost of individual terminals and the overall end user experience. I have yet to see a reasonable terminal that includes multimedia redirection capabilities for less than $350. That on top of the VDI licensing costs brings a total cost well beyond that of a traditional PC. Sure, I can get cheaper terminals or repurpose old PCs as terminals, but the end user experience in those cases is not desirable. For example, hardware-based PCoIP has proven to be very good through the use of $400 terminals, but the software version is simply not there quite yet.
Then, I tried nComputing’s relatively new L300 Ethernet-based terminal. Although not a WAN solution – it can be pretty bandwidth-heavy – for a LAN implementation, it – so far – appears to be winner. Multimedia is fantastic, even high-definition full-screen video. Video and audio stay in perfect sync. From that perspective, the end-user experience is high. The cost of the terminal is around $200 – just right.
If you’re planning to do VDI, give nComputing’s solution a look.