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The VAR business case for virtual desktop hosting

Retired Expert - Harley Stagner EXPERT RESPONSE FROM: Retired Expert - Harley Stagner

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QUESTION POSED ON: 26 February 2007
What is the best way for a VAR to create a reoccurring revenue stream from virtualization clients? What justification is there to have the service be managed instead of kept in house?


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In my opinion the most interesting prospect for virtual machine hosting could be virtual desktops. This is where the clients desktops are hosted as virtual machines. The VAR could charge a monthly or yearly fee to keep those desktops managed, updated, and backed-up. Maintaining desktops can be very expensive for a company. This is especially true for a company who does not have a dedicated IT staff to take care of desktops (security patches, deployments, etc.). That is the justification for a hosted solution. With new caching technologies such as the solution provided by Moka5's LivePC, which I talked about in a previous article series, hosted virtual desktops could become a lucrative business for a VAR who wants to get into the hosting business. Of course, there will always be the need to host applications and server infrastructure. However, this area is becoming crowded. That is why I believe hosted virtual desktops might be a good path for a VAR to take.




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