The evolution of traditional desktops into personal clouds
As users go virtual in all aspects of their life, the notion of doing all their work on a single traditional desktop in one physical location is rapidly evolving.
Increasingly, people everywhere are embracing a BYO mindset where they can pick up any device, and have full access to all the apps, desktops, data, contacts, and services they need to do their jobs, without having to think about where those resources are actually located, where data was saved, or what platforms each app component was initially designed to run on.
The freedom to work in this way, completely untethered by the limitations of the past, is what personal clouds are all about.
Understanding how to enable personal clouds for end users is important because it helps address the most dramatic shift in IT since the advent of the personal computer itself – the consumerisation of IT.
Consumerization is much more than a trend; it is the new reality for IT. Offering people the flexibility to work from anywhere on any device is no longer a luxury reserved for the select few. It is a fundamental requirement for all businesses and organisations hoping to attract and retain the best and brightest people.
Today, it is no longer a question of if IT will deliver this level of choice and flexibility to their users, the only question is how they will do it.
Personal clouds start with people and the devices they use, including PCs, Macs, smartphones and tablets. So the first component IT needs to address is the ability to support the DEVICE.
The next major consideration is how to securely DELIVER on-demand apps and desktops to anyone, regardless of where those resources originate.
IT must also address the DATA – where and how business documents and files are viewed, edited, stored and secured – data that follows the user to provide easy and seamless access anywhere on any device, and can be secured at all times.
Finally, IT needs a robust set of COLLABORATION capabilities for people to virtually meet and support one another from anywhere.
Mick Hollison, VP, Desktop Marketing, Citrix comments: “The computing landscape is rapidly changing from a distributed model to a people-centric on-demand model. People expect that their “personal” computing and “business” computing environments to merge to be seamless and always available. IT must respond to this new world while still maintain security and control. The new Personal Cloud and supporting technologies enable this blurring of environments to provide users with secure anytime access to all of their applications and data from any device they choose to use.”