Following my experience, discussions with customers, other partners and CTPs, I've decided to write this blog post reflecting my thoughts about the "Virtual Desktop" buzz and the fact that for almost all vendors this is the place to go regarding the future of Desktop Computers, and moreover this is the place to go NOW.

At first glance, I'd say that the "Virtual" term does not apply really well to what the companies are really expecting from a new way of managing desktop computers, it's a good term for marketing things but not reflecting the reality of desktops, let me explain :

From the Datacenter to the Desktops

For the last years companies have moved to the server virtualisation solutions aiming to optimize their servers management and decrease costs by consolidating their infrastructure while rationalizing their deployments and management processes.

Servers virtualization solutions are now mature, but the thing that we should not forget is that even if we have more and more customers using them, they "only" represent 40.85% of the actual market (Forrester) and are supposed to hit the 60% within two years.

After optimizing their datacenters (servers) costs, IT departments are now looking for new costs centers to optimize them. This move has naturally led them to work on the Desktops side, a side they've "neglected" for years.

Why ? First because of the vendors marketing buzz, amplified by the economic crisis. These new constraints have quite "forced" IT departments to have a look at a question they had like "forgotten" : How much do my desktops cost ?

And that's not an easy question, because for some of my customers the answer is still based on the hardware cost only !

Many IT departments still do not have any figures reflecting the real cost of their distributed computing architecture and even if this is now changing, this will take time (also because these kind of figures may be kept hidden because they could be "bad").

The "Virtual" Desktop term is answering (from a marketing point of view) to all goals IT Department are trying to aim regarding their Desktops in the future, because it seems logic for them to optimize Desktops like they've done on datacenters : "optimize management and decrease costs by consolidating their infrastructure while rationalizing their deployments and management processes" .

However, from a technical point of view, I'd prefer the "Centralized" term to reflect the Desktop reality, instead of the "Virtual" one.

Why ? Because the Desktops world is far away too complex to summarize it to only one solution like Pooled Desktops running within VMs in the datacenter, just like it was (and is) possible for servers.

Actually the Desktop world is really complex and is not the same for each customer. IT engineers and Architects working on XenApp solutions (for example) are used to focus on the "application" side and will know what I mean saying "each customer is different" because they all have their applications, their specific needs, their specific infrastructure etc ...

Can we have only one answer for such a complex World ?

Remote Display protocols with Pooled Virtual Desktops access can be part of the answer, for task workers for example, but not for all populations.

For some populations, virtualizing the Business Applications is better than the whole desktop (and also better from an economic perspective).

Some of them could have specific needs, that implies running on Blade PCs (I'm thinking of designing engineers) because VMs could not deliver the required power.

More and more users are using laptops, which raises the question of offline use for both Desktops and Applications (and the really expected Type I Hypervisors for Laptops / Desktops).

Also, the new multimedia IT world shows that the "Remote Display" view can have its limit and implies (for now) that some applications still need to run locally.

Moreover, unlike the Servers world, which is really "managed" the Desktops world is a field where users can have rights to manage applications, plugins ... according to the population they belong to.

And that's where it hits the most ! In an actual vendor view, users should not have any rights to install applications (because it then implies to run "private" images wich basically means take all desktop management issues and move them to the datacenter and breaks all economic advantages of running few "read-only" images), but in the reality some users do have this right and do need it ! And for the one who do have these rights, IT Departments do not want to have to manage all applications they could have then to install for them !

I like to take this little example : More and more VIPs are now using the iPhone. Does it implies that each iTunes release is packaged by the IT Team responsible for applications deployments ? I don't think so

So What do we Need ?

This is not an easy answer but I'll try to summarize all main needs that comes from my customers and my notes from the field :

A Global, Centralized Applications and Desktops Management providing :

• The fewest number of images to manage and maintain (which could also mean hardware independence)
• The ability to manage centrally all type of devices according all possible scenarios : Laptops (mainly regarding offline use), Blade PCs, Thin Clients, Desktop Computers and VMs for Pooled Desktops.
• The ability to virtualize business applications, in both online and offline modes
• The ability to give users rights to install applications without breaking the whole chain aka without breaking the central image / updates management.
• A human friendly Admin interface gathering all modules with delegated administration, allowing to automate all processes to really "provision" Desktops and Applications on demand
• A great user experience : Centralizing the desktop and its applications should not change the way users are working today but instead improve their experience of the desktop computing (including all multimedia and profiles aspects).
• Improved Security for all Scenarios.

The Final Answer ! (for Now)

Regarding all the previously mentionned points, I really think that the "Virtual" Desktop solutions have to move to a "Centralized" Desktop concept to meet customers expectations and to be able to handle all users cases of the complex Desktops reality.

For example : why should I use a Remote Display Protocol and get restrictions in LAN while I could stream the OSes directly to the Desktop Computers and then have only few images to maintain ?

If you've read this post until this part (and I really thank you for that) then you have probably guessed that for me the actual solutions are not ready for mainstream deployments and may only fit tactical deployments for specific populations.

I really like Citrix's move with XenDesktop 4, making Applications and Desktops parts of the same concept and solution, but some things are still missing.

In my opinion, the layers vision is the only one that can allow to gather all these expectations and constraints and provide the market a global comprehensive solution.

The actual buzz around the Type I hypervisor, for example, is a good thing, but this concept is only a part of the global answer as it manages the hardware independence and offline access cases but it does not address anything regarding the applications side.

For sure it'll take time and such solutions may force IT Departments to review their organisations regarding desktops and applications management (who is responsible for each layer ?) but isn't it a price to pay to be able to optimize the whole chain ?

In my opinion the vendor that'll be the first to address all of the customers expectations like the one described in this post in a global comprehensive solution (no matter what the modules are as soon as there is a central admin friendly management interface) will be the one who will rule the future desktop centralization market.