Delivery: Overview
Point to Point believes that the role of IT is to connect the two most important assets of any organisation, namely information and people. Commentators and analysts have long argued over which is the more important of the two, but for our purposes, as IT professionals, the issue is how do we enable the end-users to make effective use of the information that is available within their business. Today, the typical manner to present information is through applications. The information presents the raw data, but this only becomes usable to an end-user when it is presented through an application so that it can be viewed, manipulated and presented in context.
Closely associated with ‘Delivery’ is the area of ‘Access’, which really focuses on how to ensure that an end-user can reach the applications (the ‘pull’ to Delivery’s ‘push’). At Point to Point delivery is really focused on the area of how to best deliver applications to end-users. The current trends in business are working somewhat at odds with one another with information becoming increasingly centralised, whilst end-users are more frequently dispersed. Point to Point feels the issue of delivery should ensure that applications are presented to end-users in a secure and managed fashion, ensuring that performance is maintained at all times. However, whilst the sources of information have largely remained the same the sheer range of delivery options has significantly expanded over the last few years.
To simplify matters, at Point to Point we breakdown the area of delivery into three key areas:
• Desktops
• Applications
• Application workloads
Desktops The actual desktop is in some respects the first level into delivery as it represents the platform for the presentation of applications to the end-user, be they native windows or web-based applications. The area of desktop delivery has expanded considerably in recent years, largely due to the impact that virtualisation has had on this area. Desktops can now be delivered, physically or virtually, with the area of desktop virtualisation including a wide range of options which vary in terms of the way in which the operating system is treated. There are even hybrid options available that look to virtualise certain elements of desktop delivery, but still make use of local PC hardware. Desktop delivery is increasing in priority for many organisations as they begin to consider initiatives such as PC refresh, Windows Vista, roll outs, Green Computing etc, and at Point to Point we have helped many organisations understand the best delivery method for their environment.
Applications Whilst the desktop acts as the platform for applications it does not present any real information in its own right, so the real issue remains how can applications best be delivered? With the growing trend behind centralisation a whole range of options exist around how applications can best be delivered from a datacentre type environment out to a largely dispersed workforce. These include traditional ‘thin client’ delivery systems such as Citrix and Terminal Services, as well as ‘application virtualisation’ solutions which look to address the issue of application management at a much more fundamental level through simplifying the installation, testing and update process. The advent of web-based applications has introduced further considerations around how applications are managed and optimised.
Application Workloads Many applications involve server components in their architectures and organisations have for a number of years now been looking to embrace and adopt virtualisation technology to simplify management and ultimately reduce cost in this area. Most recently the delivery of application type workloads has seen a wider range of choice in virtualisation platforms as well as increasing options surrounding the delivery of physical server workloads, and looking to emulate the success of the virtual world in this area.
Find out more about Delivery products.