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Dear C4L community, One of the VPs on campus asks me from time to time on trends with virtualization in academic settings -- specifically, virtualized desktops. My own response (qualified with "I am not an IT person, but...") has been that I believe, based on what I read, that this highly-promising technology isn't more widespread for several interrelated reasons (that are also applicable to our campus environment: a) ROI is not as clear, especially in smaller environments (startup cost, network, storage); b) university WANs are often not be robust enough to support virtualized desktops (and I'd add, we're on an uphill Sisyphean climb with bandwidth--there will never be enough of it); c) outside of the lab/classroom environment (where I think an argument can be made for virtualization, if other conditions are met, and the campus has the expertise to deploy/manage this environment), the ROI of a virtualized desktop may be mooted by the need for individualized desktops; d) it's a single point of failure. My down-home-country-librarian observation that I always tack on (with plenty of disclaimers) is "If virtualization were the answer, we'd see more of it by now." I realize that's a humble insight, but given how many talks I've been to over the past decade about what virtualization *would* be doing, versus what it *has* done, I think it's not entirely invalid. I also pointed the Veep toward this article: http://www.networkworld.com/news/2009/061809-desktop-virtualization.html So... any thoughts? Resources? POVs? Etc.? (If you want more context for this inquiry, write me off-list.) Thanks, dear old C4L community-- Karen G. Schneider Director for Library Services Holy Names University http://library.hnu.edu [log in to unmask]