NY hospital cuts power bill with thin-client virtualization

And since all Saint Vincent's locations are within a confined geographic region, and tied together via gigabit Ethernet point-to-point connections, the network latency is minimal, Hansen said.

In a survey done last year with 2,000 IT managers, Forrester Research found that one-third of them were either deploying are planning to deploy desktop virtualization on thin-client hardware or other terminals. And roughly another third, or 31 percent, were interested in the possibility of such deployments.

Factors such as improved security, easier management and disaster recovery, as well as the improved flexibility of Windows 7 and other OSes all contributed to the warmer reception toward client virtualization, according to Forrester.

"Beginning in 2010 but flourishing over the long term, the 'corporate desktop' will no longer be a physical machine but a virtual image that users will access from whatever device is most convenient at that time in that particular location," a summary of the survey reports.