December Minutes

ITAC MEETING MINUTES
December 15, 2011

Attendees: Vass Johnson, Darryl McGraw, Robert Michaud, Gloria Mittman

Guest: Jeremiah Michno, Coastal Federal Credit Union IT staff member

Absent: Niamh Darcy and Dr. Marc Hoit due to work conflicts; Ubani Asiegbu, Michael Reilly, Daren Baughman

Wake County: Lib Wanner, Debbie Moore, Mike Bass and Johnna Rogers

The meeting began at 9:05 a.m.

Lib Wanner welcomed everyone to the meeting and ensured that all members had received the proper documentation.

Lib then introduced Mike Bass as the IT Manager for Customer Services and, Johnna Rogers as the Deputy County Manager as guests at the meeting. Lib turned the meeting over to Mike to lead the discussion topic: Wake County Desktop & Application Virtualization Proof of Concept Overview.

Mike reviewed the agenda for discussion and then began his presentation.

Mike discussed why the County was interested in investigating desktop and application virtualization options from both the IT perspective and from the user perspective. Mike indicated that from an IT perspective virtualization would be beneficial in that it reduces the labor intensive work associated with managing end devices; simplifies the application of patches and upgrades; improves version control for products such as JAVA, Adobe Flash and the .Net frame work; eases support for operating system and browser dependent applications and extends the life of end devices.

Mike indicated that virtualization would be beneficial from the user perspective in that it results in less down time for the end device, provides flexibility in environments where computers are shared, and can deliver secure applications or the users entire desktop to various devices including smartphones, tablets, and home PC’s.

Mike then reviewed the proof of concept his group is conducting to learn more about how virtualization works. Mike indicated that the County is currently working with Citrix for the proof of concept and will conduct the same investigation with VMWare in January. Mike indicated that both are market leaders. He also indicated that his group is testing the MS Office suite, some web based applications and some client applications that have dependencies to specialized products.

Mike then reviewed the areas where the testing is taking place, the evaluation criteria being used to gather user feedback and the evaluation criteria being used for assessing the ease of administration. Mike asked the ITAC members for feedback on other evaluation criteria that should be considered and no suggestions were made.

Mike then discussed more technical aspects of the proof of concept. Darryl McGraw asked if he had experienced any push back from users regarding using think clients and Mike responded he had not, but that it was early in the testing process. Darryl indicated that at Wake Tech some users felt short changed by not having a full desktop. Robert Michaud asked about specific user feedback and Mike replied that it was still early in the testing process, but so far users seemed happy with what they were seeing. Vass Johnson asked about the licensing costs for a virtualized approach and Lib replied that she didn’t expect to see cost savings, rather cost shifting to servers and other types of licensing. Lib said she expected to see a significant gain in user satisfaction with the ability to access their work from a variety of devices, included their own devices, and a reduction in the support needed from the Customer Services team. Mike concurred.

Mike and Jeremiah Michno then discussed various options for setting up the virtualized environment including the use of group policy, roaming profiles, security settings, etc.

Mike asked the ITAC members how IT support roles changed with the use of virtualization, specifically between desktop and service support groups. Darryl indicated that initially these roles remained separate with their deployment, but are becoming more joined. Darryl indicated that their level 1 calls go to the main help desk staff and level 2 calls go to a higher level network engineer. Jeremiah indicated that their desktop and server teams work together and their desktop supervisor also has responsibility for managing Active Directory.

The discussion then moved to the use of video in a virtualized environment and Jeremiah indicated that it made sense to them to have a separate PC set up to handle the higher bandwidth video needs. He indicated that they used a lot of video for training and that the County should plan for this. Jeremiah also said they encountered some printing issued and he offered to discuss more of the things they learned with Mike in an off-line conversation. Mike expressed his appreciation for this assistance.

Mike then reviewed the next steps with the ITAC members involving the completion of the proof of concept with VMWare and then likely the creation of a Request for Proposals to secure a solution and then a phased in implementation plan. Robert asked what percentage of the organization was planned for the first phase and Mike responded that the County would probably start with the public PC’s in the Job Link Center and Libraries and he wasn’t sure of what percentage that group represented of the total, but it involved about 1200 machines.

In closing Mike asked the group if there were things that the County should be considering that weren’t discussed yet and no suggestions were made. Darryl indicated that the County may need to look at using multiplex gateway to speed processing for users not on the County network as they needed to do this at Wake Tech. Vass asked that the group get a follow up once the County has started its deployment. All agreed that this would be of interest.

Mike asked if any of the members had used consultants to help with the implementation of their deployments and Jeremiah indicated that the Coastal Federal Credit Union used INX and made that selection after looking at two other firms. He indicated that most firms are tied to a certain product so it will probably depend on the product chosen, which consultant to use. Jeremiah said they chose the VMWare product for their deployment.

Lib thanked Mike for the presentation and asked the group if they had any other input. None was given. Lib then indicated that at the January meeting the group would receive a briefing on the FY 13 capital and operating budget requests and would also be asked to elect a new chair and vice chair.

Lib then asked if there was any other business. No one had new business for the group.

The meeting was adjourned at 9:50 a.m.