UC architects should quickly come up to speed on the growing opportunities presented by virtualization in both the data center and the desktop.

Thanks to a slew of recent announcements, and growing end-user interest in leveraging desktop and server virtualization to reduce UC server operational cost and complexity, we've finally reached the tipping point for integration of UC and both server and desktop virtualization.

At the recent VMworld conference, VMware announced partnerships with Avaya, Cisco and Mitel to integrate each respective UC vendor’s desktop software with VMware's View virtual desktop infrastructure. This effort is designed to overcome the primary challenge to supporting UC in a virtualized desktop environment--how to encapsulate and decapsulate voice/video at the end-point to avoid excessive delay and bandwidth resources (as well as server resources) required to bring raw voice/video from the end-point to the data center for processing. By localizing encapsulation, network managers can minimize network impact while guaranteeing acceptable application performance. Citrix, through its HDX offering, also provides a capability to localize voice/video encapsulation over VDI.

At the back-end, support for server virtualization of UC applications is rapidly growing as well. Cisco now supports virtualizing its Unified Communications Manager (UCM) on its Unified Computing System (UCS) virtualization solution. Mitel now supports running its UC applications on VMware running on any VMware-supported hardware. Avaya runs its mid-size Aura solution on a virtualized appliance, while ShoreTel provides support for running management applications on virtual servers. Siemens as well has delivered solutions for running its OpenScape applications on virtualized infrastructure (including short-lived support for running on the Amazon EC2 cloud). Microsoft Lync too supports running all workloads on Hyper-V and other virtualized platforms.

With the majority of companies now virtualizing the servers supporting most of their applications, it's no surprise that vendors would move quickly to deliver virtualized support for both server and desktop applications, or even use virtualization support as a competitive differentiator seeking to leverage the ability of virtualization to reduce both capital and operational costs as means to win customers. But it's not just virtualization in and of itself that’s increasingly attractive to UC buyers; it's the ability to bring UC applications into the same application management, support, and resiliency architecture deployed to support the rest of the enterprise application infrastructure.

In our recent round of benchmark research, involving more than 240 IT leaders, we note that while almost all companies have deployed or are deploying virtualized servers, there still exists a large percentage of applications that reside on dedicated servers, typically because IT architects aren't yet comfortable putting those workloads on hypervisors, or because the application vendors aren’t yet supporting virtualization of their applications. The spate of UC vendor support for virtualization is changing this equation. Sixty-two percent of companies, according to the Nemertes 2011/12 Communications and Computing Benchmark, are deploying, planning to deploy, or are evaluating virtualization of their UC applications at the data center. "We don't deploy anything if it doesn't run on a hypervisor" is an increasing refrain we here in our interviews with senior IT leaders.

Despite the growth in vendor support for virtualization, we still hear concerns related to support limitations. For example, not being able to run UC server applications on any generic hypervisor, or only being able to run some apps (e.g., management and provisioning) but not call control and/or conferencing on virtual servers. We do expect vendors to address these concerns thanks to a combination of user demand for broader virtualization solutions and increasing testing/certification of server applications on multiple hypervisors.

On the desktop side, things are moving much slower; just 7% of companies have plans to deploy or are deploying UC applications via desktop virtualization. Here IT leaders tell us they are largely constrained by the lack of good solutions to virtualize UC. Here again, the growing effort by vendors such as Citrix, VMware, and Cisco, along with their partners, should quickly lead to increasing opportunities to support UC in a virtualized desktop environment.

However, as I've written in the past, the primary challenge in extending UC into virtualized desktops is lack of coordination between planners of virtualization and UC. Throughout the last several years, we’ve compiled a number of case studies of companies who faced the "peanut butter in the chocolate" issue of "you got your VDI in my UC" brought on by lack of integrated planning. One IT leader told us that his company had to abandon desktop virtualization in over 200 machines because the chosen VDI solution couldn’t support their plans for desktop video, while another scrapped their desktop UC plans due to inability to support their UC client software on the VDI platform being rolled out by desktop administrators. This lack of coordination leads to unnecessary expense and confusion, not to mention potential user disruptions.

The bottom line: UC architects should quickly come up to speed on the growing opportunities presented by virtualization in both the data center and the desktop. Plan for a rapid migration of UC applications to hypervisors in the data center, but understand the limitations at the desktop. Work with VDI and UC vendors and internal groups to address VDI challenges and align plans and strategies.