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Interview by James Davis

Chris Featherstone is the Chief Technology Officer of V3 Systems. Since graduating from Arizona State University, Chris has entrenched himself in the technology arena. Chris gained a plethora of experience while working for Microsoft from 1999-2008 as an Application Platform Advisor/Senior Systems Engineer. Chris later worked as a Sales Engineer and Technical Marketing Engineer for a Utah-based company, Fusion.io. Chris then joined V3 Systems, also based in Utah, in March of 2011. V3 Systems is a technology company with a focus on Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) devices. V3 Systems is now working on solving the problems with virtual desktops that companies have had for the last decade.

Zaro: After you built Stubtopia up and claimed some fame, you started a new venture. Tell me more about it.

James: Who is V3 Systems and what do you do?

Chris: V3 Systems is a virtualization desktop company here in Salt Lake City and we provide desktop replacement grade virtualization. This means we have virtual desktops that can replace your physical desktop.

James: What has been the biggest problem that you have seen with VDI adoption?

Chris: The biggest problem with VDI is that (we have actually had this problem for the last 10-12 years) it is primarily a function of performance. If I was to ask you, “Would you like this virtual machine to be your primary desktop?” most people would actually have a visceral reaction to that and say, “No I wouldn’t.” This is because of the inflexibility as well as the performance. If I was to give someone a slow computer they would probably not ever use it or not ever want to use it. So that has really been the primary focus of what we have tried to do. To provide virtual desktops that are faster than physical desktops, so when I give you a virtual desktop it feels like an upgrade to what you are currently using. That is one of the problems; the other problem has been cost. It has been very, very intense cost-wise to [increase performance]. Mostly because of the amount of infrastructure and complexity that has been associated with doing things virtualized. If I was to virtualize a thousand desktops, I would have to actually incur a lot of the infrastructure needed for that. Am I going to host that locally or do I want to have someone else host that? With the models of the Cloud and of the manage service providers it has, plus the performance like we add, it has been much more of an acceptable model to utilize for organizations.

James: How does V3 speed up the adoption of VDI?

Chris: V3’s goal to speed up adoption is centered on providing high performance, but also a very simplistic implementation for that high performance. What I want to do is have the ability to provide the performance, the scalability, and the manageability of virtual desktops for organizations. This is so they can very quickly and rapidly plan to put a virtual desktop in their refresh cycles, but do it in a way that is very simple to do. This is to be seamless to the existing infrastructure and ecosystem that they already have. But it also needs to have a very easy, manageable implementation to upgrade all of these physical desktops to personal desktops and then provide one mechanism for the organization.

James: Would you say that any size business can benefit from VDI?

Chris: In terms of the size of business, we focus on mid-market to enterprise. But small- to medium-sized businesses all the way out can definitely benefit from virtual desktops. Let’s say my core business is not technology, but I want to be in the business of managing technology. That is a question that a lot of organizations have to ask themselves. They look at it as, “Well if I have all of these desktops and these physical machines for all my workers, that means I have to hire the staff, training, all of the operating costs associated with that–power, cooling, etc.–for those folks to be able to run the desktops.” You can imagine small to medium corporations would love to have someone host that for them as well. Mid-market to enterprise businesses would love the ability to control more, and then we provide more flexible use and lower costs in terms of the amount of computing resources needed for those workers.

James: What is desktop replacement grade virtualization?

Chris: Desktop replacement grade virtualization is something V3 has come up with. For a long time it has been called Virtual Desktop Infrastructure or VDI. VDI is more of a legacy term for us in terms of what it provides because of the fact that there is so much complexity and so much high cost that goes into providing a VDI. It becomes very prohibitive for people to use VDI as their primary machines. Hence what V3 does, desktop replacement grade virtualization is more of a function of “Hey I am going to provide the performance and the flexibility so I can replace any type of desktop with a virtual desktop.” I have engineering grade, I have call center grade, I have shift worker grade physical hardware and I have the ability with our clients to – that is a virtual desktop of clients – to figure out what kind of desktop you want to replace. Then provide the resources for the desktop and provide an actual desktop that is faster and more flexible than what you can do physically.

James: How will VDI help Utah businesses increase their global reach?

Chris: VDI is one of those things. We have a lot of infrastructure, especially with all the hype of the Cloud, which I can actually have someone else manage and I can utilize as a service. Software is a service, infrastructure is a service, data is a service, and now we are getting to the point where it would be nice if I had the ability to throw computing resources in there for end users. That is exactly what we are doing. In the case of providing value to Utah-based companies, we have a lot of biomedical, healthcare, call centers, and energy companies in our client base. Each and every one of them can benefit from using virtual desktops. Case in point, we actually have Energy Solutions locally that has one of our appliances. Their goal is to make it so that all of their workers are running completely virtually. One, it just gives more control over what they can do and what they can provide and then the data reach that is out there. For instance, if I lost a laptop today, it could be hundreds of thousands of dollars of lost time and lost data. So if I can say “You can actually utilize that or something like a tablet type of device that is very flexible. Or regardless of where you are in the world you can actually tie into your virtual desktop if you have an Internet connection.” Then what that gives me the ability to do is to rest a little bit easier knowing that the data I have, am working on, or creating is still centrally managed and controlled. Then if I have a loss of hardware, I do not have a loss of data. There are a lot of really neat benefits to the control/flexibility aspect as well as just the performance aspect. We can actually offer a lot of these Utah-based companies value as a strategic asset as opposed to a cost asset.

James: Have you run into any problems with security and VDI?

Chris: The nice thing about virtual desktops is that they provide an increase in security. Security is one of those issues. For us, nothing is 100% secure. If it was, then I wouldn’t be able to get access to it. It is more of a function of control and trust. Then what I need to do is put in measures of how much I trust you coming back into the environment. That is one of the things V3 is focused on, virtual desktops that actually have trust associated with them all the way through a complete chain of trust from the end client all the way back into the servers. So absolutely it’s very important today. There are not a lot of security products or trust products out there for virtual desktops. That is one of the key areas that V3 Systems will be investing in and providing as a product and a value.

James: Do you think that Utah businesses will be able to adopt VDI relatively easily or do you think it’s going to take a little bit to come in?

Chris: In terms of adoption, especially for Utah-based companies, I like to think that we are pretty tech savvy here in Utah. We have a lot of people that have come from big technology companies that are still in this ecosystem known as the Utah Corridor. I think there will be a rapid amount of adoption of this type of technology. Hence when we talk historically about virtual desktops, it has been 10 years in the making and there have been wave after wave of the promise of what virtual desktops and VDI could provide. What we solved is one of the things left out of these promises of virtual desktops, performance. I got increased control, I got lower costs and operating expenditures but performance was still left hanging in the balance. If I solve performance and had all those benefits of what I could provide an organization, then it becomes a lot easier. Instead of a pilot-fail type of mentality – which is what they were doing, piloting VDI environments and then failing because it wouldn’t meet the needs of the users in terms of performance and experience – now we are meeting those needs. What we now see is pilot-implementation so we see a lot of Utah companies that are actually looking at us and will want to implement for sure.