VMware announced that NEC has rolled out one of the world’s largest implementations of VMware virtual desktops, providing NEC with enterprise-class control, simplified management and secure provisioning of virtual desktops.

NEC, a pioneer and innovator in electronics for over 100 years, is one of Japan’s preeminent companies with annual sales of more than $46 billion. NEC turned to VMware to improve data security, ease the burden of desktop administration, and reduce the cost associated with owning and operating thousands of desktop systems. To date, NEC has deployed VMware virtual desktops to 12,000 employees and expects to reach 20,000 by the end of fiscal year 2008. This virtualized desktop infrastructure is known as the “NEC Virtual PC Center”, and is provided worldwide from NEC. The 12,000 desktops currently in production are managed by three people. NEC has calculated that it expects to reduce desktop costs by approximately 46 percent over three years by moving from traditional desktop computers to a virtualized environment.

“The most significant effect of thin clients on our IT operations is that they have enabled uniform management of all PCs used at NEC,” said Mr. Susumu Shimano, senior manager of Management Information Systems at NEC. “While it once took not only a substantial amount of effort but also two or three months to deploy new software, it is now possible for this to be accomplished in just a few hours from within the datacenter.”

Shimano cited a number of additional benefits to virtual desktops. “With traditional PC environments, it is necessary to arrange for a substitute PC every time a hardware malfunction occurs,” he noted. “Extra PCs are not always available. Even if they are, they may not be configured to a user’s specific requirements. With a thin client such as NEC US100 and US110 and a reliable server such as NEC Express5800 Series and a reliable storage such as NEC Storage D series, the malfunction frequency is exceptionally low. If a malfunction does occur, it’s easy to create a new virtual PC quickly. Thin clients also alleviate the burden of business users having to apply patches and update their software. They no longer have to serve as protectors of their PCs.”

VMware virtual desktops also help strengthen security. By replacing PCs with thin clients, employees will not be taking PCs out of the office. Perhaps more importantly, data cannot be taken via USB drives, CDs or other media. Data is stored and managed centrally, which protects the company from accidental or deliberate data leaks. NEC is also able to prevent the installation of unauthorized software on its thin clients. And, security patches are applied centrally rather than individually to each desktop.

Shimano explained why NEC selected VMware virtual desktops over other offerings, saying, “We felt that VMware’s virtual desktop performance, feature set, HA and manageability were best suited for our requirements. Also, VMware makes it possible to fully replicate existing PC environments in virtualized environments to improve recovery, backup and provisioning. And, VMware gives us the freedom to continue using company standard desktop applications exactly as they have always been used.”

NEC as a company providing a wide range of customers in worldwide with virtual PC thin client systems “Virtual PC Center” utilizing VMware virtual desktops, will be adding more value to the customer from the feedback from this actual experience of operation of the world’s largest scale thin client system. "This extremely large deployment of virtual desktops across our company has already proven to be highly successful," said Marc Hafner, vice president of departmental servers at NEC Corporation of America. "Because virtual desktops are deployed on NEC's high quality SigmaBlade servers and D-storage SANs, we are able to support up to 3,000 virtual PC users per rack, thereby reaping the many benefits of using NEC's servers: lower cost of ownership, energy efficiencies, and great end-user support and manageability."

NEC’s adoption of Virtual PC Center utilizing VMware virtual desktops followed successful datacenter virtualization projects at NEC. Those projects gave NEC firsthand experience with the reliability and robustness of VMware’s virtualization technology.