The Case Against Desktop Virtualization

With Andy Rooney off the air, the world has lost one of its most prolific spouts of curmudgeonry. Hopefully I can make up for that a little.

Over the past two years, one of the biggest buzz-phrases in the IT industry has been “desktop virtualization” or “virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI).” All of the major virtualization vendors have VDI products and have been pushing them heavily (and fairly successfully) since server virtualization got IT departments and business users comfortable with the idea of virtualization in general.

I get a lot of questions about desktop virtualization. Mainly, companies want to know if the technology is a good fit for their infrastructure. My go to response has become “maybe, but probably not.” As with most buzzy things, VDI is surrounded … Read the rest

Nimsoft, Your Sales Process Stinks

By Chris Dodds – 09/07/11

As part of a recent project, I contacted several managed services software vendors to get information about their products. The process worked a little bit like this:

1.) I discussed high-level requirements with the client.

2.) Based on those requirements, I identified vendors I felt might offer a compatible product and contacted them about the project.

3.) I discussed each product with the applicable vendor and added their answers to my comparison matrix along with information available from their websites.

The end goal of this process was to pair down 20+ potential solutions to the five or six I believed to be the best fit. Those would be the solutions I would recommend that the client investigate further by setting … Read the rest

Passwords for Humans

By Chris Dodds – 08/05/11
This XKCD comic is absolutely spot on.

As I’ve gone around to different businesses, consulting on IT and security policy, it has always been interesting to see the lengths that some companies will go to in the name of security. Although many business I’ve visited have absolutely no security policy, others have had policies so draconian it seemed like they didn’t even want their employees to be able to use their computers.

One of the most insane I’ve seen was a password policy that required 12 characters of 4 different types with resets every 15 days. It was for food services company that apparently thought they were the Department of Defense. Half of their employees must have been working the … Read the rest