Few IT duties are as universal as the care and feeding of the corporate desktop. While other aspects of IT get easier thanks to new technologies like server virtualization, there’s still no magic pill to alleviate the day-to-day drudgery of maintaining and securing hundreds, thousands, or tens of thousands of desktop systems.

The drawbacks of desktops go beyond the burdens of management and maintenance. They involve employee mobility, client hardware refreshes, data security, and, under certain conditions, even power consumption and cooling.