9th row

'Overview

extended periods of time away from the office. Survey - A questionnaire can be created and distributed to each business manager to identify user and application requirements within their departments. Questionnaires are far less time consuming for the project team than the manual approach because the focus is upon the department managers to identify the applications necessary for their employees to complete their jobs. However, it is unlikely that every manager within the organization will complete the questionnaire and a completion ratio of 70% should be considered normal. The results from a questionnaire are typically less accurate than the manual or automated approach. Although less time consuming than the manual approach, considerable effort is still required to extrapolate, analyze and document the results from the returned questionnaires. Automated - There are a variety of automated inventory tools available that allow for a wide range of information to be collected, including applications installed, access frequency, and performance requirements. This data is uploaded to a central database so that reports can be generated across the entire user and desktop estate. To help reduce the cost and complexity of desktop virtualization projects, Citrix has partnered with Lakeside Software to provide Citrix Project Accelerator users with a free 60-day license of Lakeside FastTrack. FastTrack is a sophisticated inventory tool that has been developed based on Citrix methodologies, terminology and best practices. An example LakeSide FastTrack report is available from the LakeSide website. An automated inventory tool is a great solution for medium and large-sized organizations; however the centralized infrastructure and agent deployment effort is unlikely to be appropriate for very small organizations due to the time required when compared to the manual method. In addition, some organizations may not allow inventory agents to be installed across the desktop estate or may not have rights to install the agent on user-owned desktops. The advantages and disadvantages of each approach are

summarized in the following table:

Comparison of Data Capture Strategies
Approach Manual Survey Automated Data for all Characteristics No Yes No Results Returned ~80% ~70% ~100%

Admin Time Per Desktop Long Medium Short

User Involvement Likely Yes No

Although the automated method is accurate, fast and does not inconvenience employees, there are a number of business characteristics that automated tools cannot identify, for example, what is the criticality of the user, will the user need to work offline and should access to the application be restricted due to security or licensing restrictions? Therefore, the recommended approach is to use the automated method to identify technical characteristics and a questionnaire to identify the business characteristics. The User Segmentation and Link Apps to Users sections provide detailed information on the user and application characteristics that you will need to collect. Key results from the user data gathering exercise should be documented in the assess spreadsheet.

Design

Assess

Citrix Consulting Tips for Success

Appendix

Representative users ­ If you don''t have enough time, resources, or licenses to inventory every desktop in your organization, make sure that you pick a representative subset of users. For example, deploying an agent on every desktop in the HR department but missing out the sales and finance departments will impact your results. Take time to ensure that you select a representative subset of users from every department and role within the organization. And remember, not all users within a single department will have the same requirements. Check the data ­ When using an automated inventory tool, regularly 9

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