The prominent goal of VDI (virtual desktop infrastructure) is to slash the desktops TCO. Not just being green, not just being secure but winning hands down when it comes to TCO!
Savings promised by VDI are not about TCA, they are all about TCO!
VDI is surely not cheap, let alone free: implementing VDI costs a lot of money, to swap your PCs (cheap CPU cycles, local storage and RAM) with costly servers and to acquire and setup efficient storage arrays and software.
Sometimes the customer misses one of the most important aspects of VDI: the thin client!
I’ve seen (a lot of) VDI projects failing after the customer spent their bankroll to build up a whole brand new infrastructure and then deploying VDI on their old PCs! They found themselves with doubled problems: they still have to manage the physical PCs as well as the virtual ones. This way TCO keeps on soaring, instead of flying low and under control.
The only feasible way is to deploy VDI along with thin clients, possibly 0 maintenance ones (the list is not very long indeed).