Moving a large enterprise from an estate of networked desktop and laptop PCs to an environment of virtualized thin clients running in the Cloud is no easy task, and certainly not one where one solution fits all the requirements of the business. And the bigger the enterprise, the more complex the issues can become, as Fujitsu Services has discovered.
As well as providing thin client solutions for customers, the company is itself working through those transition and transformation processes. This has meant the company applying its own approach to modeling, architecting and implementing a thin client environment. This is its Virtual Client Services (VCS) operation, which in the UK is the primary responsibility of Tina Quenault, the Chief Technology Officer at Fujitsu Services.
With VCS Fujitsu aims to provide all the resources required to put up a virtual client service, either in the Cloud or on premise. To this end it includes all the collateral required to support the consultancy and bid components of the process, as well as all the design materials for every virtual client installation. This includes the approved design document sets, sizing guides the cost models, transformation planning materials, applications assessment studies.
The first stage in the process when moving to a thin client environment, particularly if the customer is planning to move as much into the Cloud as possible, is to look at the current estate of desktop equipment, the roles for which that equipment is used, the roles the people using them have within the business, and the applications used to perform their roles and their place in the wider business function. Quenault says:
Gathering that information creates the data required for the Fujitsu-developed VCS modelling tools, so the first step is a questionnaire with some 100 questions. Some are aimed at CIOs and IT managers, but some are aimed at financial and business management staff. There are two models used, the VCS Sizing Guide and the VCS Cost Model, with the latter in practice being a collection of some 25 separate cost models for specific applications areas, such as Storage Managed Services. These all feed up to a global cost model for the business as an entity. Out of the modelling process comes the information to determine which parts of the business can be effectively transformed into a virtual client environment, based on the type of work undertaken, the locations where the work is undertaken and the roles of the individuals doing the work.
The model is used in two ways, either as part of the bid for new business, or as a consultancy service for companies trying to establish early in the process whether a thin client environment should make up part of their own strategy. Using it in this way can also help businesses evaluate wider issues than just fat versus thin client alternatives. It can, for example, also identify where the greater staff mobility that becomes possible with virtual clients can affect significant areas of corporate expense, such as the costs associated with existing real estate.
Once the modelling is completed the next move would be to identify the quick, obvious wins that the customers can exploit. These will be such areas as the applications that are the most widely used across the business, particularly where rationalisation of the applications portfolio can be used to replace other, often older alternatives that might be in use. This is often the case where different departments have been allowed select applications or business acquisitions have taken place.
It can also identify those business processes where the necessary engineering on virtualising the required applications has been completed. This can be an important area for cost savings, for it means that engineering investment can be re-used many times across the business. This process gives Fujitsu an increasing benefit the more the service is used by customers as it maintains a growing portfolio of virtualised applications that can be exploited by its customers.
Fujitsu used the models on itself and identified a classic hi-tech business. In some areas, such as the customer service desk capabilities provided, it is ideally suited to VCS. This has already been ported to the company’s own cloud-based Infrastructure as a Service operation. The company is also looking at its email services as the next target for VCS using a Mail as a Service approach.
