There is no question that desktop virtualization is coming to offices and businesses near you, and probably sooner rather than later. It’s the logical next step in the evolution of white-collar information technology that began with the introduction of the telephone, typewriter, and vertical file back in the 1880’s through the proliferation of personal computers in the 1980’s (when the phrase “office automation” was a popular buzzword) and into the networked 21st century. Its triumph is not yet a done deal – there are still enough reservations about the technology that substantial caution is urged, as the following article indicates: Reliability Edge. (n.d.). Is enterprise-wide, web-based Software right for you? It depends on the application! Reliasoft. 7(1) Retrieved from http://www.reliasoft.com/newsletter/v7i1/software_right.htm Although virtualization and “the cloud” are both based in the network infrastructure, they are not identical ideas; it’s worth drawing some distinctions to avoid being bowled over completely by either trend: Isobel, K. (2011, October 14). Virtualization vs. cloud computing FAQ. AppNeta | The Path. Retrieved from http://www.appneta.com/2011/10/14/virtualization-vs-cloud-computing-faq/ The following two articles, appearing in the same journal and by the same author, present a reasonably balanced view of the current state of these approaches in the business context. Please review them carefully, since you’ll be applying these ideas (among others) in your paper: Marshall, D. (2011, April 6). Top 5 reasons to consider VDI in 2011. InfoWorld. Retrieved from http://www.infoworld.com/d/virtualization/top-5-reasons-consider-vdi-in-2011-032?page=0,0 Marshall, D. (2011, May 4). Top 5 obstacles to wider VDI adoption. InfoWorld. Retrieved from http://www.infoworld.com/d/virtualization/top-5-obstacles-wider-vdi-adoption-788 The background readings also identify a number of optional sources that you may wish to draw on to help you understand particul
ar issues and/or terminology. Also, there’s no shortage of online information that may also be of help to you in examining these issues. Now here’s the situation you’re going to examine. You’ve undoubtedly been going to school here, or at least at some university, for several terms now, and you’ve encountered quite a range of faculty and faculty behavior. Some of you may even be faculty somewhere, or at least involved in teaching and related stuff. Trident has quite a lot of faculty, and relatively few of them are actually located in the main offices in Cypress CA – most are spread around the country and even across the world. Relatively seldom does this actually matter to you as students, and in fact it doesn’t matter a lot to the faculty most of the time, except when we’re trying to coordinate real-time meetings, usually involving conference calls (old technology, we know, but that’s life.) However, it’s recently been learned that in the near future, Trident University will be rolling out some form of “virtual desktop” for use by all faculty, wherever they are. It’s not clear what this is going to look like, but the first step toward it will be making available to faculty the same SharePoint-based applications and related tools that were recently made available to you students. But to be of real utility to faculty, it will have to go beyond these relatively simple tools and encompass a wide range of other tools. Here’s the point – we don’t know more about it than you do. So we’re asking you to help us think through the implications of these developments, based on your own reading and experiences. So when you’ve had a chance to read these articles, review information from the background readings, and perhaps research other sources on your own, please prepare a 3-5 page paper on the topic: “How desktop virtualization for Trident University faculty will change how faculty work” Try to think about all the kinds of work that you know that faculty