Patrick Kuiper, information technology and digital director at Smith&Smith, talks about taking a SaaS first approach, the nuances of vendor management and experimenting with emerging technologies in the era of rapid change.
If two technology trends were ever made for each other, at least in vendor marketing materials and generically simple diagrams of IT infrastructure, they are the consumerisation of IT and desktop virtualisation.
Analysts who study desktop virtualisation say many of its use cases fit neatly into problem areas that their client companies face, such as the consumerisation of IT. End users who insist on using non-standard or unapproved computing devices, such as tablets and iOS or Android smartphones, make demands on the IT department, the remote-access infrastructure and the IT budget, according to Ian Song, research analyst at IDC. When the same user wants to use two, three or four computing devices for different reasons, the situation can quickly get out of hand.
The thin client market for the Asia Pacific excluding Japan (APEJ) region continues to grow significantly, pointing to a solid future for this form of 'lean and mean' computing for large enterprises.
The APEJ thin client market is expected to grow strongly over the next five years, with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 21.4 per cent. This growth will be driven primarily by India and the PRC, with good support from Singapore, Indonesia and Thailand.
Australia and New Zealand Bank will decide whether to keep its branches running on conventional desktop PCs or switch to power-thrifty thin clients in the next few months.
"We are continuing to evaluate and pilot thin client and virtual desktop technology in a number of areas of the bank," a spokeswoman said.
Blenheim-based Marlborough Boys College has beefed up its security, improved network reliability and is poised to establish an electronic link with an affiliate school in China, thanks to a hardware upgrade coupled with a Citrix implementation.
Information manager Peter Oliver says the school decided to upgrade its network infrastructure, as it was becoming increasingly concerned about network reliability.