Virtual Desktops

Now here’s a great story about a firm leveraging technology to gain efficiencies. Rory Clements, chief tech systems architect for CB Richards Ellis, a Los Angeles based global real estate company, has undertaken converting CBRE’s 40,000 traditional PCs into virtual desktops. “His guinea pigs: 2,000 London-based executives, surveyors, appraisers and agents. In exchange for giving up their company-issued Windows XP desktops and laptops, Clements is giving each employee access to a virtual copy of a new, more powerful Windows 7 desktop residing in CBRE's private data center.

Using the latest virtualization technology from VMware, Clements can push out a Windows 7 desktop to any PC the employee happens to have handy. It could be an old office XP machine, a personally owned netbook or a computer in an Internet cafe in Kuala Lumpur, for that matter. The employee gets full access to company e-mail, databases and business applications.

Some top CBRE executives will even be able to access their company-issued Windows 7 virtual desktops on their smartphones and tablet PCs.”

While the upfront costs of doing this are huge, the company anticipates huge savings over time. CBRE not only stands to gain cost efficiencies, employees should also become more efficient, thereby increasing productivity.