HVD Deployment To Accelerate In India, China In 2010

While the economic downturn is curtailing budgets for hosted virtual desktop (HVD) deployments in mature Asia Pacific markets such as Australia, interest in HVD deployments continues to grow in the emerging markets of China and India, according to a recent survey by Gartner Inc.

According to the survey results, Gartner said that although HVDs have high priority in large and mid-size companies in Australia, few big deployments are expected in the next 12 months. While large enterprises in China and India give HVD a lower priority, they currently offer better opportunities for HVD deployments.

“The market for hosted virtual networks will accelerate rapidly through 2013, reaching 49 million units worldwide,” said Lillian Tay, principal research analyst at Gartner. “However, HVD vendors, especially in Asia Pacific, need to approach emerging and mature markets with different go-to-market strategies based on a multitude of different local factors.”

Survey outcome

Tay said that among the three markets surveyed, it was not surprising that the priority for HVDs is currently highest in Australia where, among large enterprises, having an HVD strategy is the second priority after software as a service (SaaS).

However, while Gartner fully believes that HVDs have an opportunity to move to a larger scale in Australia, companies are currently hindered by restricted budgets, with many organisations postponing or cancelling deployments planned for 2009 due to the economic situation.

The India perspective

Companies in India gave HVDs a low priority in the survey. This could be because the uneven maturity of IT infrastructure makes it difficult for further HVD deployments in India, without more-substantial IT infrastructure, which is currently not a priority.

HVD implementation in large enterprises is low in India, with only 16 percent saying they have implemented HVDs. However, 25 percent of large enterprises said that they had budgets put aside for HVDs compared with 11 percent of mid-size businesses.

“Given the relative lack of awareness and priority of HVDs in companies in China and India, we advise HVD vendors to develop pilot-ready packages and target them at large enterprises in these markets for the next two years,” said report co-author Eileen He, research analyst at Gartner in China. “Also, given the varied IT infrastructure maturity in these countries, it is advisable to target the major cities, where vendors should approach vertical industries that have the most interest in the technology.”