Can Desktop Virtualization Save Business from Snowmageddon?

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Did your IT customers experience any of the side effects of last weekend’s and this week’s Snowmageddon? Interstates were closed, schools were shuttered, public transit systems were shut down. How about your customers? Were many of their offices shut down due to the impact of the Snowpocolypse? Did they lose productivity? Business? Customers?

Lost productivity from major snowstorms, fires or other disasters is a concern of more than just the IT department. It extends higher, to the top decision-makers of a company. Time is money, after all. And business interruptions cost.

Companies can minimize some of the effects of such disasters through technology. For example, one of the benefits often discussed by desktop virtualization advocates is the capability to deliver the worker’s desktop environment to any client–from the thin client at the office to that worker’s personal PC at home.

What if, when a snow day was called, the worker could simply boot up the home PC and access everything he or she needed to continue with the work at hand? Files, documents, applications, network connections. It’s all there, just as if he or she were still at the desk at the office.