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10 End-User Computing For Dummies, Nutanix Special Edition These materials are © 2020 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Any dissemination, distribution, or unauthorized use is strictly prohibited. computers. If an unencrypted laptop is lost or stolen, this can spell bad news for the company. The rise of local encryption for desktop and laptop computers has reduced the risk, but, even today, not every organization actively enables such functionality. Of course, local encryption applies only to data at rest. Additional security concerns come into play as users connect to the local cof- fee shop's open Wi-Fi network to connect to your customer data- base and do their work. If they don't use a VPN, every keystroke is potentially available for interception. Beyond the security concerns is the administrative overhead associated with desktops and laptops. It starts as soon as a device is ordered. You have to either manually install all of the tools that your company uses or implement some kind of imaging system to automate it. Every time something changes, you need to make sure to update all of your devices, including the ones being used by, for example, your remote salesforce. Administratively — that is, on the business side — physical sys- tems have to be included in some kind of ongoing replacement strategy. Typically, organizations turn over their desktop and laptop fleets every three to five years, meaning that the constant purchase → image → deploy → manage cycle never ends. Between management cost and complexity, the desire for users to be able to work from anywhere they want and to use their own devices (see the sidebar "The Rise of BYOD"), and the constant replacement cycle, the traditional desktop/laptop computing model began to face serious challenges. A number of new solu- tions were born. Application virtualization For organizations that deploy applications right to the desk- top, application compatibility can become a problem. Differ- ent versions of Windows or even different operating systems altogether — Linux, macOS, and so on — are all problems that administrators encounter and are exacerbated by things like BYOD. As consistent as administrators strive to make the desk- top environment, achieving perfect uniformity is difficult, if not impossible.