DESKTOP VIRTUALISATION to transform manufacturing sector

March 14, 2013 10:41 am

DESKTOP VIRTUALISATION to transform manufacturing sector
Vishal Khare, Director – Corporate Sales (India Subcontinent),Citrix highlights the advantages of desktop virtualisation in manufacturing
Indian manufacturing sectorIndian manufacturing sector has been a backbone for Indian economy since ages. Manufacturing has lot of relevance for any country as it gives employment to millions of people and the option to remain self-sustaining in the competition with outside world. In India, manufacturing sector contributes to about 17 per cent of the GDP.
The pace of change has been blistering. Both the perception and the reality of manufacturing in India have shifted radically. In less than past 2 years, the opinions of most international observers about Indian manufacturing sector has gone up multiple notches.
This growth in form of reality and perception will entail significant challenges and changes. In order to meet these, Indian manufacturing sector must offer high-quality output and best prices to their customers. To achieve this, Indian manufacturing organisations need to increase and optimise R&D spends, increase the process efficiency, productivity and reach, market the products effectively, tackle competition through innovation and reach. Information technology and the emergence of a powerful global information infrastructure enable manufacturing industries to develop partnership across the value chain. Successful collaboration is achieved by sharing information at all phases of the business cycle, across the supply chain as well as national and international boundaries. To deliver such important needs, manufacturing organisations can rely on information technology to a large extent. Desktop virtualisation: an enabler for manufacturing sector In present scenario, manufacturing companies are possibly most advanced in adopting business technology but same can’t be exactly said about information technology. If aligned with best information technology, manufacturing companies stand to gain a lot and desktop virtualisation is one such mainstream technology which can act as an enabler to reach to their goals. Desktop virtualisation is set of technologies which optimise the delivery of desktops, applications and data to users. The operating system, applications and data are decoupled from the underlying PC hardware and moved to data centre where they can be centrally managed, secured and delivered. Instead of juggling with multiple static desktop images, IT can manage and update operating system (OS) and applications (apps) once from central location and deliver desktop and apps that are customised to meet the performance, security and mobility requirements of each user. This solution transforms windows desktops and applications into an on-demand service availability to any user, anywhere, on any device allowing to securely deliver individual windows, web and SaaS applications or full-fledged virtual desktop on any device like PC, Thin Client, Macs, tablets, smartphone or laptops.Adopting desktop virtualisation can give any manufacturing organisation an edge and help them achieve the above mentioned business objectives. Following are the few prominent areas where desktop virtualisation can add value:
Optimise R&D spendsR&D is one of the most important aspects of the business for any manufacturing organisation to remain competitive and ahead of the game. Typically R&D spend is around 7-8 per cent of the profits for any progressive manufacturing organisation. This sum is large and the results of the same are confidential and used to advance the organisations’ planning to come out with better products and compete well in the market. It is very important for manufacturing organisations to ensure that they use this money effectively, collaborate with various teams in a cost-effective, secure way, and deliver the results on time. Desktop virtualisation provides solution to all these problems in one window. With desktop virtualisation, organisations can create an environment where all the tools to do R&D can be provided in a cost-effective way from central location and help people be able to contribute in a secure way from whichever location they are based in and also cut down unnecessary time. This helps organisations save a lot of investments too.
Increased process efficiency or innovationThere are many processes in a manufacturing organisation which can be optimised by an effective use of information technology. Some of them are inventory management, internal supply chain, material planning, training, etc. These processes when optimised can save time, effort and money. Adoption of desktop virtualisation in the organisation for these processes also can be efficient. For example: rolling out inventory management application as part of desktop virtualisation platform enables this application to be available to be accessed from any device at any time on any kind of connection with complete security built-in. This flexibility enables a quick,  better decision making and save last minute rush and additional costs to manage the same.
ProductivityFor a successful manufacturing organisation, efficiency and productivity play an important role in ensuring that they remain competitive in ever-increasing competitive environment. In order to achieve this, manufacturing organisation must provide secure, ubiquitous access of desktops and apps to users. This is increasingly becoming challenging for organisations as there is availability of various systems and devices with OS images, hardware configurations and the network connections. In some cases, users are even expected to work while they are in remote location or while in transit. As nowadays, most of the processes are automated where informational technology plays an important role, using desktop virtualisation can help manufacturing organisations achieve productivity, effectively. Desktop virtualisation will enable a secure yet flexible style of working where users will get empowered to use any kind of devices, through available network at any location. This provides the same experience to the users as they are used to get while they operate in their respective offices. This not only helps improve in office productivity but also the productivity of users outside office, including remote branches. As there is complete security and flexibility built-in, users can continue operating uninterrupted in man-made or natural disaster situations.
Security and compliance To increase the business opportunities, manufacturing organisations are expected to increase their reach and be available near to their prospective customer base. In order to achieve this, manufacturing organisations are facing increasing threats or pressure on information security and data protection at remote locations. By adopting desktop virtualisation, organisations can manage their critical applications, desktops, information, and data. Desktop virtualisation provides a secure-by-design approach that enables IT a simply secured, protect-intellectual property, ensuring data privacy and meeting compliance needs without compromising growth and business productivity. The security operations also become much easier as patch management and antivirus updates are done within the data centre.

Advertising

Your future advertising space? Our media data