Over the next five years, IT departments will increasingly support a highly heterogeneous computing environment.

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It is worth starting with a history lesson on desktop computing, because the situation today is analogous to IT a quarter of a century ago. In the 1990s, from an IT audit, security and compliance perspective, desktop computing was out of control.

The desktop freed users from the controls IT placed on data and application access and people installed what they wanted, when they wanted it.

But then experts worked out that the total cost of ownership of these PCs that the IT department was not managing was more than £5,000 per device per year.

Arguably, the consumerisation of IT has recreated 1990s-style user-led computing, with PCs now replaced by smartphones and tablets as the device of choice.

Back then, to save costs, IT locked down the desktop, rolled out standard desktop software images across the organisation and offered the business a common Windows desktop environment. Users could belong to groups that gave them authorisation to use certain applications and data. In some organisations, desktop IT became so commoditised that it could be outsourced. But then Apple came along.

The future of the IT helpdesk According to Gartner, the implementation of new support models that resemble those in the consumer world is part of a broader transition. Gartner analyst Terrence Cosgrove notes in his report Mobility Is having a major impact on IT support: “The IT support organisation must evolve beyond the traditional service provider model toward a partnership with the end-user community. When users have more control over their devices and applications, the support models must adapt to this paradigm change.” Among Gartner’s recommendations for supporting the multitude of devices in enterprise IT is self-support documentation and short 20- to 30-second videos demonstrating how to fix common support problems. Peer-to-peer (P2P) support is also becoming more common, says Cosgrove. “About 53% of the respondents to our 2014 survey reported that they use P2P support,” the paper reports. “We believe this number is higher than the overall industry level, and it suggests an increase in the use of P2P support.” Gartner has also been seeing interest in Apple’s Genius Bar-style walk-in support, where staff bring their device to the IT department for one-on-one support enquiries. An internal walk-up service gives IT an opportunity to influence device choice, says Cosgrove.

New ways to work Desktop IT is no longer about Windows and supporting Windows applications. Tablets, smartphones, cloud computing and applications delivered as software as a service offer compelling new ways to work. The shift from Windows-only to a user computing environment where Windows is just one element will not happen overnight. But by 2016, Gartner expects tablet sales to overtake sales of desktop PCs. The analyst’s Mobility is having a major impact on IT support paper by Terrence Cosgrove, published in February 2015, notes that by 2018, 40% of contact with the IT service desk will relate to smartphones and tablet devices – a leap from less than 20% today. This will put a heavy burden on desktop IT support, unless it works in a different way. Limiting device choice is not the answer. IT can no longer deny users choice by enforcing standardisation. The bring-your-own-device (BYOD) genie is out of the bottle and the heads of IT that Computer Weekly has spoken to are sympathetic to the changes in user computing. One example is Peterborough Council, which is changing its IT to a department that commissions services rather than buying on-premise. The council is undergoing a transformation that is running alongside its IT strategy. It plans to deploy Chromebooks or tablet devices to 50% of its staff. Richard Godfrey, assistant director of Digital:Peterborough, says it needs a “more dynamic IT department” and a “move to tools that fit together”. Godfrey wants to avoid situations in which the council is stuck on certain versions of Microsoft Office or Windows. “This takes away from the day-to-day fire-fighting task, allowing us to work more closely with the council departments,” he says. In fact, modern cloud-based applications are designed to work well together. “In the old days, we worked on integration, but a lot of products are now designed to work together, such as Box with Salesforce.com,” says Godfrey. He points out that some of the newer tools are also simpler to use, which means users can customise them. “We use Form Assembly,” he says. “Anyone in the council can build their own form, rather than wait a week for a quote from IT.”

Simplifying a multi-device strategy Dale Vile, research director at Freeform Dynamics, recommends IT heads look at segmenting users into task workers and information workers. “It’s easy to run away with the idea that everyone is using multiple devices,” he says. “Meanwhile, PCs are used as the endpoint for the network, and provide access to hardcore routine, process-centric, back-end and administration systems.” These tend to be used by task workers. From an IT management and infrastructure perspective, it is clearly beneficial to be consistent, which, says Vile, is why IT departments virtualise desktops to stream desktop applications onto thin-client access devices. Clearly, a thin-client computing environment will fulfil the requirements of a certain proportion of users going forward, and this is a style of desktop computing that the IT department has fine-tuned since the late 1990s. But Vile says information workers are “more client-server in the way they work”. In other words, they may work on a central IT system some of the time, but then require the flexibility to perform computing tasks locally. They typically use cloud-type applications, accessed from a web browser on a desktop computer, or an app front end via a tablet or smartphone. Medway Council has taken a desktop virtualisation approach to centralising its desktop computing on a Citrix server farm to support flexible working. Moira Bragg, head of ICT at the council, admits that user computing is more complex than it was a few years ago, when everyone ran Windows. “People can have more devices,” she says. “People want to do more with these devices, and we need to support them.” This is achieved through user segmentation, she says. “We identify every worker as a mobile or a desk worker. If they have a laptop, they don’t get a desktop.” More articles on desktop IT strategies BlackBerry 10.3.1 review: IT managers are concerned they are losing control of the Saas budget Windows is at a crossroad. Microsoft needs to convince businesses and third-party app developers to adopt Windows 10 Device proliferation and loss of control over at least some end-user equipment drives a need to centralise key aspects of IT