Virtual Engineering Workstations Have Arrived

Dear DE Reader:

The paper from today’s Check It Out link has a lot going on, so let’s get cracking.

“Making the Case for Virtual Workstations,” produced by DE editors and sponsored by NVIDIA and Dell, argues that the era of virtual workstations for intense engineering use has arrived and that it’s time for IT managers, business types and engineers to move into the future. It builds its argument with facts, myth busting and straight talk. It takes on turf-war anxieties over the idea of virtualized engineering environments directly. It’s quite refreshing, actually.

Now, many engineering outfits and manufacturers deploy virtualization technologies in their business, marketing and similar departments already. The benefits are legion—long-term IT savings, simpler IT administration, reliable data synchronization, tighter security for mobile workforces, more productive staffs and so on.

For engineering use, however, virtualization adoption has lagged. Graphics capable of handling 3D CAD, simulation and rendering were not ready. For small and mid-sized engineering companies with limited IT resources, the complexity of implementing virtualization technology simply made it seem a non-starter. Security—well, you know.

Culturally, there’s skeptical engineers guarding their workstations like the last Dr. Pepper in the fridge, suits fretting over ROI and engineering IT managers too harried keeping local workstations humming to think about technology transformation.

This paper demolishes objections like these. For example, engineers can use their workstation in a virtual environment. Virtualized workstations need less IT TLC than local workstations, can be centrally managed and are more secure since they’re essentially virus immune. Modern virtualized graphics processing, compression technologies and security schema enable compute-intensive engineering jobs to happen in a virtual environment without performance compromise. Turnkey solutions provide the necessary hardware and quick start tools to streamline deployment.

One noteworthy discussion offers a five-point reality check for engineers and IT while another tackles head-on concerns about ROI. It’s intriguing how the paper addresses the business benefits of virtualization. It acknowledges that virtualization can be seen as a quick cost-cutting move, but it stresses that its value lies in accrued benefits such as greater IT efficiencies, using your resources more productively, tighter data security and a nimbler engineering workforce.

If there’s a whit of nuance in “Making the Case for Virtual Workstations,” it’s hard to find. It’s all straight talk. It’s compelling and convincing. Hit today’s Check It Out link, get your copy and draw your own conclusions.

Thanks, Pal. – Lockwood

Anthony J. Lockwood

Editor at Large, DE