Virtual Computer recently conducted an independent, vendor-neutral survey of a broad list of IT professionals. The survey identified several key IT trends.
Security was selected as the most critical initiative for 2012, with 74% of respondents rating it a four or five on a five point scale, with five being most important. Mobility also rated highly, with 62% of respondents selecting a four or five rating. These findings complement data published by major analyst firms that indicates the growth rate of laptops is now over 5x that of desktop PCs. As mobility drives the need for devices such as laptops and tablets, these mobile end-points are in turn driving the need for increased security.
Although tablet usage is growing, organizations are predominantly using tablets to complement PCs. Nearly 73% of respondents said that they plan to use tablets to complement PCs, while only 4% of organizations said they would use tablets as replacements for PCs. Moreover 23% of organizations said that they are not supporting tablets at all in 2012.
“There’s been great interest in desktop virtualization for addressing security and mobility goals, but 58% of respondents were concerned with high infrastructure costs and 57% with end-user performance,” said Sham Sao, CMO of Virtual Computer. “This is where intelligent desktop virtualization has a huge growth opportunity. It addresses these specific issues by delivering fast local end user performance while cutting infrastructure requirements by over 95%, compared to the server-hosted Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) approaches espoused by companies like VMware.”
