Consumerization of IT and how it affects User Centric Management.
This May, Bennett Adelson went out on a multi city roadshow across the Microsoft Heartland District (of which we are the 2011 Partner of the Year) speaking about how the trends in consumerization forces the need for IT to shift from managing assets (hardware and software) to managing users and empowering them to make decisions. This shift is from asset-centric management to user-centric management (UCM).
Jason Condo opened the roadshow with a presentation on IT trends with some eye-opening results from recent surveys conducted by industry leaders. This showed how the trending of user savvy in devices, technology and solutions is inevitable and will only grow in the years to come. Using the User Experience Equation, he showed the five areas that IT always must think about when managing assets, users, or data.
Keith Mayer, IT Evangelist from Microsoft, spoke on the benefits of the whole System Center 2012 suite of products and how they can be leveraged to provide UCM and manage the whole enterprise.
David Norling-Christensen provided the first technical session demonstrating how the new application model in System Center Configuration Manager 2012 aids in driving the move towards UCM. Using the application model, the IT Administrator can make different installation types of a software available for the user and allow specific attributes of the users’ experience to dictate how the software is installed or used. He also demonstrated the new self-service model that empowers the user to get what they want or need while freeing up administrators to provide services instead of installing software.
Jason provided the second technical session around Microsoft’s Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) implementation and how it can be leveraged for UCM. By leveraging VDI as a tool, IT can empower the user while freeing themselves of trying to manage unmanaged devices. Using System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012, Jason showed how it can be leveraged to manage VDI implementations and how it can also manage and organizations hypervisors throughout the enterprise, whether they are VMware, Xen, or Hyper-V.
Lastly, David wrapped up our discussion on UCM by showing the previous technologies in action with MDOP’s User Environment Virtualization (UE-V) that allows users’ personalized application settings to be saved and migrated from machine to machine as they need it. David presented on how this works and how to implement it. He then demonstrated it leveraging the System Center Configuration Manager 2012 applications used in his first session along with Personal and Pooled virtual machines from Jason’s session. This was an excellent demo showing a seamless user experience across physical workstations, virtual machines and even Remote Desktop Services (RDS, formerly Terminal Services).
This was a great roadshow and the System Center team is looking forward to the next ones. Please find the PowerPoint decks used in the roadshow available for download from this post.
System Center Roadshow, May 2012 – Introduction – Keith Mayer, Microsoft
System Center Roadshow, May 2012 – 1 – Consumerization of IT and UCM – Jason Condo, BA
System Center Roadshow, May 2012 – 2 – ConfigMgr 2012 UCM – David Norling-Christensen, BA
System Center Roadshow, May 2012 – 3 – VDI and UCM – Jason Condo, BA
System Center Roadshow, May 2012 – 4 – UE-V UCM – David Norling-Christensen, BA
Bennett Adelson Technical Blog 