Updated 11/14/2013: Amazon Webs Services announced today a “game changing” cloud-based desktop virtualization offering.
“As of next month, no employees get a new PC, we are going all virtual and B.Y.O.D.” These words, spoken by one of our customers from one of the world’s largest financial institutions, should be disconcerting to anyone in the traditional eDiscovery collection business. With well over 1000 computer forensics and eDiscovery services businesses in the US and Canada alone, ranging from small shops to large firms with hundreds of eDiscovery professionals on staff, the industry faces substantial disruption going forward. This is because most all of these firms thrive on full disk imaging, or otherwise manual collections, from the PCs and laptops issued to corporate employees, either as a substantial source of revenue, or a foundational first step that feeds into their processing and hosting business.
However, enterprises have entered a “post-PC world,” where desktop virtualization, cloud, social media, and mobile devices are supplanting the traditional PC infrastructure and “local” data storage. In fact, desktop virtualization, which will be about a six billion dollar market in 2016 according to industry researcher the 451 Group, is an ideal infrastructure to enable B.Y.O.D. as employees can have access to a virtual PC across a broad range of devices, from traditional PCs and laptops to smartphones and tablets. However, in such a framework, all the employees’ data and applications are stored and managed centrally in a virtual environment.
In addition to enabling B.Y.O.D., a virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) provides IT significant benefits through the ability to centrally manage user desktops, gaining efficiencies in costs and resources. VDI provides for simpler desktop provisioning, lower costs for deploying new applications, improved desktop-image management, and improved data integrity through centralized backup services. In addition to a reduction in both desktop operating costs and call support, there is also a reduction in the number and duration of downtime events.
However, finding content is difficult enough on a traditional desktop, but the issue is compounded with the virtualized variety. There are many compelling benefits to VDI, but the architecture does not facilitate or even enable traditional desktop search solutions or physical disk imaging for forensic examination. X1 Search 8 provides search capabilities across physical, virtual and cloud environments with results returned in a single pane. X1 was specifically architected to uniquely and seamlessly operate in virtual desktop environments, including popular Citrix solutions XenApp and XenDesktop.
To further explore the disruptive challenges and benefits of VDI, X1 is partnering with one of the nations’ top VDI consulting firms, Agile 360 in a November 17 webinar (register here) to outline these challenges and opportunities associated with search and information access in VDI environments. We hope you can attend to learn more about the disruptive changes in store for enterprise search and eDiscovery in the Post-PC enterprise.