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How does VDI impact the responsibilities of Server/Desktop teams?

I saw another article from Brian Madden site’s (which I saw via Twitter) which asks the question that many VDI adopters forget, which is Who controls the new virtual desktops?  Is it the Server team or the Desktop team?  Traditional IT has been very easy to delineate in terms of responsibility, usually by function or hardware.  VDI (and virtualization in general) really blurs those lines of responsibility.  A Brianmadden.com user quoted in the post sums up the issue pretty well

"Desktop people don't own the server hardware. The one BIG issue in my mind that no one talks about…is that the desktop IT guys have very little control and leverage over the infrastructure that runs their desktops when it comes to VDI. With VDI, the desktop IT team simply owns and controls the content inside the VM - the VM itself and everything under it is locked away from the desktop IT team."

The issue is more complex than just adjusting responsibility of IT groups.  Virtualization is clearly creating new configurations and situations that have to be dealt with.  This issue really isn’t going away, as we integrated storage & networks, desktops & clouds.  I think the most important thing to remember is that we need to leverage virtualization to make IT better.  It’s a key technology but it’s just a technology.  It’s not a business process or model.  We should virtualize to make IT more efficient, not just virtualizing for the sake of virtualizing.

Don’t forget.  Virtualization works for the benefit of IT.  IT doesn’t work for the benefit of Virtualization.

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