Given the hype in the press, most SMBs are now starting to be curious about what the “cloud” means for them. They may be surprised to realize they are already partially in the cloud.
Whilst new SMBs may be dabbling with online application suites, the bulk of the established SMB workload, however, is done in desktop applications, typically Office, running in various flavours of Windows with a Windows Server. This is definitely not in the cloud, and there are lots of very good reasons why it won’t be, and less radical solutions are likely to offer more benefit.
Desktops in the cloud are thus not actually very interesting for most established SMBs. However, the SMB is left with a bunch of unmanageable desktops, typically bought on an as-needed basis and thus of different ages from different suppliers with different drivers and different applications and/or application versions, and even different operating systems. There is no standard build and provisioning a new desktop involves a laborious manual process. Machine-by-machine it’s far worse than anything in any corporate environment.
In this mix, some slightly less radical technologies can solve the core problems without putting the desktops into the cloud. Many SMBs are already familiar with Symantec, but may not be familiar with their Endpoint Virtualization suite. Workspace Streaming involves delivering applications on demand to desktops and removes the tedious manual build step. Workplace Virtualization involves isolating applications from the underlying O/S and reduces application conflicts and incompatibilities. Obviously there are other vendors, but Symantec is well placed to sell these technologies as the SMB is often already a customer for their antivirus software.