Applications

Understanding your current applications is a key part of the assessment phase. Not only could this impact end user productivity—after all, it's the apps that keep the users working—it will also impact many other areas when it comes to design, including the number of pools, pool design, application virtualization, and, potentially, whether the desktop that gets assigned to the user can be non-persistent or whether you need to allocate a persistent desktop.

In some environments, you may well have legacy apps still running, and it's important to understand this as these apps may not be able to run in a virtual desktop environment and would, therefore, stall or derail your project completely. Often, when moving to virtual desktops, you would move from an older operating system as part of the project—which again would cause issues with application compatibility.

With the metrics gathered from the assessment, you will be able to fully understand the current situation of your desktop estate. It's not uncommon to find many disparate versions of software, meaning potential security risks, and in other cases, key applications crashing on a regular basis. This information will help you build a business case for change and help you prioritize your rollout to the users with the biggest security holes or the worst user experience.