Understanding the end users of a target environment is the first major step in a successful virtual desktop design. Who are the users? What do they use? How do they use it? A successful desktop solution must meet the needs of the users and be useful. It does no good to design a solution that goes unused or does not fit the needs of the target audience.

When understanding users, it is best to start with basic classifications. In most organizations, this is done by worker-type or department members. In the graph presented in the following diagram, you can see that our fictional organization has six different classifications of users: Customer Support, Case Managers, Finance, Legal, IT, and HR. Using a simple pie chart to represent our user populations helps us see that Customer Support and Case Managers make up the vast majority of our user population. When designing our environment, they will be the most likely candidates to target for analysis and design. Remember...