Standardize desktop hardware : Do it

• The solution itself
• Software
• Data
• Users
• Special requirements

While you may have some idea about what kind of solution you plan to create, the more details you can supply, the easier it will be for you to choose the right desktop hardware. For example, if you must support accounting professionals in the finance department, do they plan to run Excel spreadsheets and Great Plains general ledger software, or to make use of Web-enabled services to perform the same tasks? Because the former activities actually run large, powerful programs on the desktop itself, they require more processing power, memory, and disk space than accessing Web-enabled services (where background servers offload much of the processing and number-crunching work involved).

Above and beyond determining how your desktops will be used when they're first deployed, you must consider carefully any changes or enhancements you plan to make for your users in the near term. Set your time horizon between a few months and next year. If you're planning to introduce new end-user applications or software, or to upgrade existing programs or capabilities, it's vital to "buy ahead" to support those plans. Then, you can implement those planned upgrades or changes without having to revise your desktop standards to accommodate increased desktop processing or data handling needs.

• All staff require access to base-level applications: standard Outlook e-mail, Internet access using Internet Explorer, and Web-based access to standard reporting and request forms using Internet Explorer on the company intranet. The standard desktop OS is Windows XP Professional, which requires a minimum 233 MHz processor (300-plus MHz recommended), 128 MB of RAM (higher recommended), 1.5 GB available disk space, super VGA (800x600) resolution or better, a CD-ROM or DVD drive, and a keyboard and Microsoft Mouse compatible pointing device. Combined with base MS Office and basic local storage requirements for documents and e-mail, overall disk space requirements are at least 8 GB.
  
• Clerical and administrative staff must work with Microsoft Word and Excel for data entry, using macro- and template-based data entry forms. Beyond this, only base-level capabilities are necessary.
  
• Help Desk staff must be able to operate remote control and monitoring software; Windows Terminal Services are adequate for such needs. They must also operate a help desk database client and basic report generator. Other than adding 2 GB to base storage requirements, this adds nothing to desktop requirements.
  
• Finance and purchasing professionals require access to Great Plains accounting software, including general ledger, accounts payable, and accounts receivable. They must also be also to run large, macro-driven Excel spreadsheets and access several SQL databases for financial data, trend reports, and information on parts, order tracking, and inventory. Additional processing capability will improve productivity (most base-level systems start at 1.5 GHz or better nowadays); industry reports show that for large spreadsheets and data sets, 256 MB of RAM works better than the 128 MB Windows XP Professional requires. A minimum of 12 GB of local storage (total) is needed for these users.
  
• Software developers require access to all MS Office components, to Microsoft Visual Studio and various developer framework components, and to automated test and source code management environments as well. Because the developers must compile and process code on their local machines, vendor recommendations suggest a 1 GHz processor, 512 MB of RAM, and 40 GB of disk space for these users.
  
• Managers and executives require access to all MS Office components, and to basic Great Plains and Web-based reporting tools, trend analyses, financial databases, and various newsfeeds. Requirements are similar enough to those for finance and purchasing professionals to impose no additional requirements.

If you plan to run a particular set of software packages or to access various network or Web-based services on a desktop, such as Web server or database software, you must assemble all pertinent details about your software before you set desktop requirements. In the preceding section, we've tried to specify the basic kinds of information you'll have to determine in advance based on user job functions. Here, you must translate this into specific implementations. Most packages or services state specific requirements for the kinds of systems they can run on, and will typically mention minimum and recommended processor speeds, RAM size, and hard disk space needs.

When the documentation for packages or services includes requirements information, you might also consider asking the software vendor for advice on what kind of system to purchase. Vendors want to sell you their software, so they'll be happy to share the benefits of their usually considerable experience in implementing their software on your desktops.

How much data your users must currently handle locally, and how that data grows over the useful life of your desktop deployment, will determine how much storage space your users will need. Sometimes, a bit of inspired guessing is required to quantify how much space you need right now, and how much more you'll need in the future. But there are ways to use past history to approximate storage requirements going forward.

For example, if your purchasing and finance staff members need desktop storage for lots of numerical and record-oriented data, you can add up the amount of space these needs require and look at how user requirements have grown over the past year or so. If local data requirements were 1.0 GB last March, and 1.6 GB this March, data storage has increased by about 50MB per month over the last 12 months. This helps you to calculate how much additional storage they'll need over the 24- to 36-month period that's typical for a desktop life cycle (for 24 months, this is 1.2 GB; for 36 months, 1.8 GB).

For other job roles that may not be part of our desktop model for MidSize Corp -- such as a documentation specialist or graphics artist (both of whom tend to work with lots of enormous files on the job) -- storage requirements may be even more demanding. Be sure you plan to store anything important on a server, so it can be backed up and managed by your IT staff more easily. For desktops, you need only concern yourself with the size of data and application files that are stored locally while users are doing their day-to-day jobs.

There's a deliberate red herring in the specifications for MidSize Corp. It's a well-known truism that software developers tend to need far more local storage and computing power than other users. Thus, it's not unusual to find that standard desktops come in two forms in many organizations: a standard "regular user" desktop and a standard "developer" desktop.

Even in software development companies, developers seldom constitute more than 25% of the total employee population (and that ratio is far smaller in most companies not in the software business). Therefore, it doesn't make sense to let developer needs set the standard for everyone in an entire organization. In most cases, this would indeed lead to overbuying for a significant portion of the user population.

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