User experience: The vehicle of choice for your virtualization journey

In my experience most enterprises make the choice to deploy virtual desktops and applications with a single goal in mind: lowering their costs. Indeed this was verified by research that AppSense carried out with Forrester earlier this year, surveying 300 IT professionals internationally, confirmed that the primary driver at the outset of most virtualization deployments is cost savings (33%).

The problem is that this approach fails to take into consideration the most important element of any IT deployment: the user. As a result many projects are delayed or go over budget by trying to rectify user dissatisfaction. It will come as no surprise that the most cited reason for virtualization project failure is lack of user acceptance due to a poor user experience (75%) and that the Forrester report into the findings recommended that getting the user-experience right should be at the heart of any virtualization deployment.

While cost savings matter, organisations tend to find that desktop and application virtualization contribute something far more valuable to their companies: reinventing the way their workers conduct business. Employees are engineering a revolution in work styles: they’re always thinking of new and better ways to work — how to spend less time on things that don’t matter and more time on things that do.

This is perhaps why our research found that cost savings ultimately did not determine the success of the deployment. It showed that virtualizing desktops and applications contributed far more valuable benefits to companies. Virtualization ultimately reinvented the way their employees conducted business by making them better equipped to work in public places; while traveling; when at home; and from personally owned devices.

60% of organisations surveyed reported that the success of their project ultimately relied upon end-user satisfaction and acceptance of the solution. This highlights that the benefits of virtualization can only be truly realised when the solutions are deployed correctly, with the focus being on delivering the best possible user experience. So what are the key component for a successful physical to virtual migration? And how can that all-important positive user experience be achieved?

Make the user experience your prime objective.
As most IT managers eventually realise, the value of virtualization comes from improved workforce enablement, not primarily from a reduction in cost. Those organisations that put user experience first saw productivity increase (51%) and enhanced employee satisfaction (34%). Put employee use cases first when building the plan and don’t cut corners where user-experience may end up being compromised. Trading the productivity of the organization as a whole for small gains in IT efficiency is a false economy.

Put together an overlay team to deploy.
Any physical to virtual project team must have the skillset and expertise to cover the competencies of desktop, server, network, and storage. Hold the core team members accountable for the quality of their work in each phase of the project, alignment with executive and key stakeholder objectives, to meet project milestones and commitments.

Invest in Infrastructure.
With user experience in mind, organisations need to select the tools that will boost application performance, including faster networks, shared graphics processing units and WAN optimization. Fundamentals still matter, so businesses need to allow for ample server density planning and invest in tools that will make managing profiles, privileges, and policies easier. Virtualization can improve multiple areas of a business with respondents reporting faster disaster recovery (41%) and better security (29%) as a result of deploying on the best possible infrastructure. By investing in areas that will accelerate user acceptance, such as application and personality persistence, elevated rights management technology for installing software, and employee self-service, will ultimately end-up helping an organisation achieve their cost saving goals.

Bring in a partner to train and assist.
Training users to use the tools and platform the business has selected, will increase user acceptance and drive flexible work styles throughout the organization. The value of training is underlined by the fact 75% of respondents said that user acceptance was the biggest roadblock to success, with a third of IT managers saying they would have invested in training if they could start their deployment again from scratch. If training isn’t a core competency in the company, bringing in a partner to communicate, teach, and evangelize could be critical to the success of the deployment.

By focusing on user experience and ensuring user acceptance, organizations will find that their virtualization deployments face fewer technical issues, achieve greater user acceptance, and realise cost saving goals – 70% of respondents stated that they were ultimately satisfied with the financial returns once they got the user experience right. The key take-away is this: when organisations make user-experience the vehicle of choice for their physical to virtual migration not only is the journey smoother but they reach their destination far quicker.