With all the benefits that telecommuting provides—both for employers and employees—it is hardly surprising that enabling technologies in the form of desktop virtualization solutions are becoming both more robust and more widely adopted. Such solutions not only make telecommuting possible, but have created a whole new institution: the virtual call center.

 

A virtual call center is a system in which agents place or take calls from home, rather than working out of a centralized office. Virtual call centers can, when deployed intelligently, make call centers more flexible and efficient. Virtual call centers are made possible by desktop virtualization solutions that give agents secure access, remotely, to all the functions of the corporate system.

 

This example of how desktop virtualization technology can be applied in a specific industry is just one of many. In a recent report, analyst firm The 451 Group examined the growing popularity of desktop virtualization technology at enterprises across all industries. The firm predicted, in fact, that desktop and application virtualization will be the next big thing to permeate the enterprise IT market.

 

The 451 Group said that the next wave of virtualization enhancements will be even better equipped to help enterprise IT administrators overcome the challenges they face in managing desktops and the distribution of applications. All too often, such administrators find themselves running applications on incompatible operating systems, fighting to ensure efficient and secure execution of desktop apps, and managing ‘desktop sprawl.’

 

All of these problems, The 451 Group said in its report, can be solved by adding another layer of ‘indirection’ using virtualization software.

 

“By allowing partitioning, emulation and aggregation at every layer of the software stack, virtualization is transforming enterprise IT from the datacenter server farm to the desktop PC, thin client or remote laptop at the enterprise edge,” explained Rachel Chalmers, analyst at The 451 Group, in a statement.

 

Chalmers went on to identify a problem, though: approaches to desktop and application virtualization differ even though many are complementary; this has created a great deal of confusion in the market regarding which companies/technologies are directly competing and which are adding value to one-another’s solutions.

 

“With a judicious strategy, however, a typical savvy customer should be able to glean substantial cost savings by deploying the software discussed in this report,” Chalmers said.

 

Of course, to develop such a judicious strategy, one must have some understanding of the different types of desktop and application virtualization technologies. The 451 Group identified the following types:

 

With so many different types of technologies out there, and the growing popularity of virtualization solutions, it makes sense that the market should be in a growth and readjustment phase—and this is indeed the case. The 451 Group reported that, during the 24 months period leading up to June, 2007, this relatively new market saw $1.5 billion in mergers and acquisitions activity. The firm predicted more of the same.

 

“A validated emerging market is a venture capitalist's honey pot,” Chalmers said. “The 20 privately held companies profiled in this report have collectively raised at least $200m in venture capital. Investors are pressing into this new market as part of their own urgent need for big wins and high returns.”

 

To learn more about how virtualization technology is being used by the call center industry, please visit the Virtual Call Center channel on TMCnet.com, sponsored by Sentillion vBusiness.

 

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