IT management firm Quest Software has unveiled a new product that it says can identify the desktops and users within an organisation that are best suited for virtualisation.

Quest VDI Assessment is available free of charge and the firm says it can help organisations to weigh up the benefits of adopting a desktop virtualisation strategy. The software analyses user behaviour and desktop performance over time to build up a complete picture of application usage and resource consumption. IT admins can then run reports to identify the best virtualisation candidates for different virtualisation technologies.

This can include earmarking whether a VDI (hosted virtual desktops) or Terminal Server (Remote Desktop Session Host) or a blend of both would be more suitable.

Companies can use this information to build up a detailed picture of the potential return on investment before embarking on a project by assessing desktop, network, data centre, and storage needs.

Jon Rolls, division vice president of product management for Quest Software’s Desktop Virtualisation Group said he hopes the platform will speed up the adoption of desktop virtualisation.

"By empowering IT departments to perform their own assessments, we expect to see faster adoption of desktop virtualisation in all its forms, and to provide clear guidance on where to find the lowest hanging fruit in terms of which users and desktops to virtualise first," he said.

Quest recently announced version 7.2 of its vWorkspace technology.