Desktop Virtualisation

I love the concept of desktop virtualisation. What kills it for me is the cost of Microsoft licencing. I recently bought a load of HP desktops for under £300 each. They’re really nice small form factor ones. For the licencing, they include Windows 7 licence and I bought Office 2010 PKCs (product key cards – basically OEM versions). Each desktop took me less than 30 minutes to unbox, configure, install the Office product key and join the domain. In the majority of cases, our users only need Office Home & Business (ie they don’t use Access or Publisher) and I paid just £135 each for these.

So £435 for a desktop, a Windows licence and an Office licence. If I went for virtual desktops, I’d be looking at least £280 just for the Office licence, as there is no Home & Business open licence, Standard is the minimum version. Then I’d have to buy a Windows licence, which isn’t cheap, and a thin-client, unless I was able to re-use existing kit.

People tell me desktops are costly to maintain. I’ve never found that. HP desktops very rarely break and providing you’ve got things like group policy, user security, antivirus and Windows updates configured correctly, the software rarely breaks too.

As long as Microsoft charge a premium for using Open Licences, the figures will never add up for considering desktop virtualisation. I know there are other benefits, such as reduced power consumption, better security etc etc, but these things aren’t a priority for us right now.

It comes down to the technology being right, but the licencing being wrong, which is kind of frustrating as its a decision made with my beancounter’s hat on rather than my engineer’s hat.