2010 Prediction: Martin Ingram, AppSense

By Martin Ingram
published: Tuesday, December 01 2009

Predicting 2010: Two big themes in desktop virtualization

There will be two big themes in desktop virtualization in 2010. The first is the evolution of hosted desktop virtualization from smaller deployments to becoming more broadly used across the enterprise. For the last few years there have been two different methodologies in hosted desktop virtualization. The early deployments were based on the use of desktop virtualization simply to centralize a PC image in the data center and hence improve supportability for small groups of remote workers. This was fine for its use case but it was never going to be a model that changed client computing for the majority of users. Most users work in larger groups and this simple centralization model simply does not deliver the economic benefit of desktop virtualization.

The other approach was the componentized model of client computing where software components and the user environment would be brought together for the user every time they logged on. This model has a lot going for it because it allows IT to get great economies of scale across the software deployed in the business because configuration drift is eliminated while users still get a familiar and productive PC experience. Over the last year or so the componentized approach has been used in proof of concepts with many organizations and there has been debate on when it would be ready for broad deployment and what the quantifiable benefits would be.

I now see general acceptance that the componentized model is the way to go and have a good understanding of the sorts of benefits we will see. In 2010 the broad deployments currently in implementation will enter production and deliver independent, quantifiable benefits. This is important because, as with any new technology, it is at this stage only that it becomes easy for the majority of organizations to make a decision on future technologies. In the next year we will also see more organizations choosing to use desktop virtualization as their strategy for client computing and the migration to Windows 7.

The second big theme in 2010 will be client virtualization, specifically the virtualization of laptops. Client hypervisors from Citrix and VMware will ship and join those from Neocleus and Virtual Computer. These products support very different management models and the big debate of the year is going to be ‘how do we actually want to manage users on virtualized clients?'

The hypervisor itself is only a small part of the solution and most of the benefits come from changing how organizations manage the platform rather than the introduction of the hypervisor itself. The model that will be ultimately successful will be based on componentization, similar in many ways to the model that is being implemented now in hosted desktop virtualization, but with some modifications. The modifications will be necessary to take account for the basic difference between a mobile device such as a laptop and/or a server in the data center - intermittent network connectivity. A key to success will be to preserve the essential features of componentization such as getting economies of scale across software components and delivering the user environment in this more challenging platform. There are several techniques that are good candidates for this and we will see active debate throughout the year on their pros and cons.

With these two themes plus the likelihood of an improvement in the economic situation, we are poised for an interesting and productive year in 2010.