What the hell is USV? It’s simple; it’s using technologies to unbind user data from the PC. You’re talking about features like roaming profiles, redirected folders and offline files.
Believe it or not, most companies I encounter have not done this. For them, a PC repair is the timely process. A PC upgrade is a potentially nasty piece of work to use USMT to capture a user state and restore it.
That’s why MS has released a Planning and Designing Guide for Windows User State Virtualization (USV). Reading this, you can enjoy the tech that the rest of us have been using since the mid 1990’s. Some of us stated using redirected folders and offline files back with W2003 and XP. Admittedly, I disabled Offline Files when managing XP because it was a royal PITA (not a good thing). Vista/Windows 7 appear to have solved that.
Getting the user state off of the PC is invaluable:
- Windows upgrades are simple and quick.
- PC repair which might take more than 10 minutes can be replaced by PC rebuild.
- User data is centralized and easier to back up.
- Those worried about regulators can do archiving.
Not to mention that a PC should be stateless. If a user logs in to another PC (when his/her workstation is broken, the same desktop and software should be there. It’s all about user productivity in the end…
Stateless end user devices is why I still vote for SBC in many cases.
100% agreed. The PC should be a replacable appliance, not a physical location that the user is bound to.