Break it to make it

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22 September 2017

While at VMWorld Europe 2017 in Barcelona a couple of weeks ago, I met a man with an interesting job. I admit that it isn’t often you see the words ‘VMworld’ and ‘interesting job’ in the same sentence. His job was product manager at Login VSI. Again, I accept that the words ‘product manager’ don’t usually signify ‘interesting job’ (and everything is relative) but still, it sounded interesting.

Basically, his job is to go into a company and test its VDI environment using virtual users. That sounds boring but the entertaining part (albeit in a slightly mischievous way) is he knows that, despite the confident assertions of those who have invested blood, sweat and tears in designing and implementing the VDI environment, it will fail. The only issue is when.

I admit there’s something a little bit mean about going in and trying to break something, but that’s also part of what makes it interesting. And it’s not as if Login VSI isn’t providing a useful service. After all, it’s better to find out the issues and limitations of a VDI implementation with virtual users than real ones. And it gives companies time to fix them before they take on real users.

Still, it can’t be much fun to see someone from Login VSI coming in the door knowing they’ve come to do their best to take your VDI environment down.

The other major part of Login VSI’s business is to provide performance and scalability testing which it does for a large number of hardware and software technology vendors, to the point where it has become something of a de facto standard. The results of those tests are often published by vendors in white papers.

The good news from a Login VSI perspective is that if a vendor posts strong test results, the onus is on others to try and match or beat it. From the outside, it looks like the company has created something very close to an eternal circle where vendors continually test their products to try and outmatch each other. It sounds like it probably sells itself.

It should be mentioned that there’s a positive aspect from a customer point of view too because it means the vendors will have put their products, solutions and upgrades through a rigorous testing regime before they start selling them to people. This provides a level of assurance to customers that the solutions have been put through their paces before they are actually let out into the wild.

I’m sure Login VSI is not the only company that has a business model that relies on it being recruited to test something, whether it be VDI, security or the network, to the point where it collapses. After all, it’s a useful service, but you can’t deny there’s a kind of perverse attraction to it. It’s a bit like being the kid who gets to kick the sand castle to bits after it’s just been finished. Now, there’s a job!

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