As per IDC virtualized market will grow 13% YoY. It is a global trend that this technology is becoming more and more relevant and prominent. Security can be one reason, green computing is another and work from anywhere can be another. Due to increasing cost of infrastructure, people want their employees work from anywhere. In our country, B- and C- class towns have potential in terms of infrastructure. With 3G, 4G and WLan penetration happening more and more we can enhance office productivity along with virtual computing.

If you look at any large enterprises, they have already implemented server and storage virtualization. Desktop virtualization is next logical step. NIC has been pioneer in adopting thin computing. Now the situation is how SMEs take advantage of 4G or 3G where connectivity can be much better to make Virtual PC a reality. The larger cell phone adoption will change the game of Virtual PC as cell phone can act like a solid-state thin client. Some of the pioneers have realised how to take the computing to D and E – class cities, even to the villages. People have started looking at shared computing where data centre and client computing is taken to the desktop where one can share one desktop among ten people.

What could be the price advantage?

In a typical 25 seat SME situation, it will be a saving of INR1,000,000 in CAPEX only. In terms of OPEX, it will be much higher as there will be less usage of power; manageability and maintenance will come at much lesser cost.

What are the advantages of VDI vis-a-vis the traditional PCs?

Since everything is going into the data centre, the entire computing is happening in the data centre. It becomes a militarized zone. You get higher security, better manageability and higher client lifecycle. Normally, you replace your client device in every three years or five years, now with virtual PC, you can have an extended life span of 10–15 years because everything is happen in the data centre. Thin client is a solid-State Device, which allows to reduce power consumption of 22 watt compared to the normal PC which needs 180 watt power. Since you use less power you need less air-conditioning. If one combines ‘Reducing the power’ and ‘less air condition’, it drives you towards green computing.

From the SME context, if they have multiple small offices then it will be a bigger saving. Secondly, they can work from anywhere by connecting their hand-held device to the data centre using wireless broadband dongles. Today, since SMEs find working from home is a bigger value proposition, virtualized PC is just apt.

Secondly, client devices like smart phones, mobile phones, tabs, etc. can be commercial productive devices. For example an insurance agent going to the client with paper to be filled up for the official use can fill the form using his tab or smart phone as a terminal having connectivity with the server at the back-end. In the live case example, in UID project, people come to take survey of your identity on a big piece of paper. Instead of that if they use a tablet or a smart phone, which is connected through thin computing to a data centre, whatever data will be entered, will get uploaded immediately to the server.

You are talking about two different things - cloud and virtual computing?

If you look at the thin client, thin computing or virtual computing, there are two primary things - server and a data centre. Now the data centre can be in cloud whether it is public, private or hybrid cloud. And cloud is actually misused term it is nothing but a virtualised server and basically the payment gateway comes on top of it. So if you give it as free, the service becomes a public free cloud. If you have a payment gateway on top of it becomes a subscription. So what you are doing is basically taking that data centre onto the cloud and virtualising the whole thing so that it can be accessed from anywhere and you can have a billing after that. End point remain the same, it can be thin client or can be a cell phone, tablet, etc.

What HP is offering in virtualized computing?

We provide entire cloud infrastructure including the end point devices. These thin clients have different operating systems. All these are for enterprise business. Service is being either given by companies like TCS or ourselves as we have entire data centre to host applications for the customer.

Will it affect the consumers?

As a consumer five or ten years back you were putting your photographs on your storage device including a pen-drive or a HDD. Today, you put it on Google or flicker. Look at your communication, you were sending e-mails, today you use Facebook or Twitter. This is nothing but cloud application and these are nothing but consumers’ implementation of cloud computing where your applications are running out of the browser. So as long as I am enabled to run application out of the browser it will make the life of consumers and commercial easier. Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin all these are classy example of commercial utility tools and Google photo, Flicker, etc. are classy example of how cloud computing is changing the world of consumers.

Traditionally people in homes use PC. Today they do not need the PC as they can use smart phones to access Facebook, Linkedin or Twitter and using Google doc they can edit their work and upload the jobs. You don’t need that investmentin terms of buying licences and managing the desktop at home. If you have a tablet then you can work on cloud and finish your work. Basically the world is coming towards unified communication and unification of devices is also happening at the same time.