If your credit union is like most others, nearly every employeeworkstation is fitted with a personal computer. These PCs, whileseemingly necessary, are expensive to acquire, maintain andupgrade. And when one considers that the typical smartphone is atleast 1,000 times more powerful than the computer that put Apollo11 on the moon, one must wonder whether credit union employees needa PC's full computing power to type letters, send emails andperform core platform transactions.

But what's the alternative?

Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI), or desktop virtualization,replaces those expensive PCs with low-cost, thin-client terminals.This consists of a monitor, mouse, keyboard — and just enoughsoftware to run those three components. In a VDI environment, allprocessing that would normally be performed on a PC is insteadcarried out on a centralized server. The employee has the same userexperience as on a PC. And thanks to dramatic recent improvementsin internal network bandwidth, VDI is a viable option for creditunions looking to cut costs and streamline operations.