2010 Prediction: Doug Dooley, RingCube
2010: The Year of the Virtual Desktop on USB
How and Why USB Drives and Workspace Virtualization Will Unite
For years, I’ve been a “mobile worker” living the old desktop computing paradigm or, in my case, laptop mobile computing paradigm. My life before virtualization included a heavy laptop bag, down time whenever my laptop had problems and a lot of frustration when my PC had hardware issues. My life after virtualization can best be described by the word freedom. I have the freedom to access my desktop on a PC, streamed over the network or by using my portable USB drive. If my laptop breaks, I can run a recently synchronized copy of my desktop over the network or download it to a USB drive to work at home for the day or even on another laptop.
There’s certainly nothing new about running a desktop on a PC and you may already be familiar with accessing a desktop or applications over the network, but the portable USB drive option is probably new to most with the exception of the virtualization gurus out there. A new type of virtualization called “workspace virtualization” is making it possible to deliver a full desktop experience with a user’s personal applications, data and settings on a portable USB drive to any PC without a second/bootable copy of the Windows operating system.
The low cost, portability, speed, integrated security and ubiquity of USB 2.0 drives and ports makes delivering desktops on portable drives an attractive, economical and secure alternative for pandemic planning, mobile professionals, and unmanaged workers. According to Gartner, the total cost of ownership to deliver a locked-down and well-managed corporate desktop for a travelling worker on a laptop is $7,030 , $3,413 for a desktop and $3,286 for a hosted virtual desktop (VDI). In the case of a consultant or temporary worker, why spend that much money if they already have access to perfectly good PC? Why give an employee who works for a few hours at home on nights and weekends a slower and more costly laptop that costs $3,617 more? Why spend $3,286 to create a hosted virtual desktop (e.g. VDI) for pandemic planning just to have it go unused?
Instead, employees can be given a portable USB drive with a full desktop at a fraction of the cost that can run on any PC during their consulting project, when a pandemic hits or to just work from home. A company’s CFO will undoubtedly be grateful for the savings, users will be grateful to be able to eliminate a laptop from their bag and IT colleagues will have technology envy at the sight of the encrypted USB drive the size of pack of gum dangling from a key chain that runs a virtual desktop, boots up quickly, runs at +90 percent of native performance and includes all your applications, data, and settings.
This Sounds Familiar: Don’t Virtual Machines run off USB drives? App virtualization? U3/Portable Apps? What’s the difference?
Before workspace virtualization, there have been several other technologies that have attempted to run something that looks like a Windows desktop off a USB drive. Most solutions have failed to be adopted as a way to deliver enterprise virtual desktops because they were either to slow, too big, didn’t support enough enterprise-class applications or didn’t provide a full Windows desktop experience.
Factors Making Virtual Desktops on USB Devices a Reality in 2010
Virtual Workspace Running on a USB Drive
Workspace Virtualization
