User installed applications and desktop layering - they are linked, and they are the future
Posted by Ron Oglesby on Fri, Dec 11, 2009 @ 09:00 AM
Lately I have been reading a lot about user installed applications and layering in desktop environments. Great articles on these topics include Brian Madden’s A technical explanation of why the whole “layering” / shared image thing is so difficult, Gabe Knuth’s What is layering and why does it matter? and Andrew Wood's User Installed Applications – Dream or Nightmare?
Some separate layering and user installed applications into different categories. The first is a solution for many existing issues, and the other is simply a request from the user that causes more problems for IT. I personally think these two concepts are married at the hip and that one is a requirement and the other a potential solution to that requirement.
Part of the problem (as I see it) is that corporate desktop management teams are ignoring one (user installed apps), while starting to think about the other’s benefits (layering). They're focusing on layering concepts as a way to ’manage’ the desktop while allowing some personalization/unique configurations, a problem that has plagued IT since the early days of server-based computing.
But you can't maintain control of the desktops as if it's still 2000, when the idea of mobile users and laptops in every cube was a pipe dream. As I see it, layering is an opportunity to give mobile and in-office users more control of their environment, while still enabling IT to effectively support them, and at the same time solve the profile and patch problems.
Giving the end user “real” control means allowing them to install the dreaded “user installed applications”… but we need to get over it. The idea of installing an application ourselves is normal. We (IT people) do it all the time and think nothing of it. But we still hold users in contempt when they ask that they be granted this godlike ability. Why?
In corporate IT the world over, the ‘why’ is simple: users can break their desktops if they install something. It used to be that users weren’t savvy enough to install apps and often made inadvertent changes to their systems when they did. But users are savvy, often way savvier than we give them credit for. Try to find someone under 35 (a large part of our workforce) who hasn’t used a computer for almost a decade - they probably own at least 1 or 2 at home.
Are these people as good at remediating install problems as IT? No, of course not. But they are constantly running into times when they need to install items to get actual work done (think Webex, gotomeeting.com, ActiveX controls, a file reader for a specific file type, etc).
With the advent of the corporate laptop, they are now encouraged to carry their PCs to every meeting, on the train, to their homes, on airplanes, and even on vacation! And we would expect them to do this without installing iTunes?
So, are user installed applications important in the corporate desktop world? Yes. And not just for recreational purposes.
While this thought is enough to make desktop managers and helpdesk staff wake up screaming in the middle of the night, it’s time to look for the solution and stop ignoring the demands of today’s users. That was the whole starting argument for a lot of VDI admins saying “I need to give users administrator level privileges.” Yet you still see locked down desktops, profile tools, folder redirection… starting to look like early Terminal Server solutions huh?
The idea of user installed applications is not new. But the idea of embracing them in a corporate environment is. Layering the user’s desktop environment into distinct components allows for unique configurations, application deployment, patching and even user installed applications. This is the future. How this layering is done in the end is still up for debate, but it will be accomplished.
So the question is do you want to continue chasing the policies and systems of 2000? Or will you move into 2010 looking for greater user satisfaction, better productivity, more flexibility and, yes, user installed applications.
-Ron Oglesby
Unidesk Chief Solution Architect