VMware CTO Steve Herrod gives his thoughts on the year ahead…
1. Virtualization of the Enterprise Desktop Breaks Out.
The “desktop dilemma” – i.e., the business choice of whether to
provide thick or thin clients for employees – will begin to be solved
in 2009. Thick clients, including fully loaded personal computers (PCs)
and laptops, provide employees with a rich set of applications in their
desktop environment, but can be a management challenge since
applications can be distributed across thousands of PCs that must be
provisioned, updated, patched and secured individually. Thin clients
are cheaper, more secure, and more cost-effective to manage, but
traditionally have not been able to deliver the richness, flexibility,
or compatibility of thick clients. Most businesses provide thin clients
only for employees, such as call center staff, who can be productive in
this more restrictive environment. New virtualization-based approaches
will solve this dilemma by combining the benefits of both approaches –
delivering rich, personalized virtual desktops to any device (whether
thick or thin), while simplifying management and securing endpoints
with virtual desktops hosted in the datacenter. Virtualization is the
essential platform for efficient, manageable desktops in an
increasingly mobile world. In addition, better remote display protocols
and use of the local machine’s compute resources will ensure an even
better user experience, and the combination of online and offline modes
will enable use when employees are traveling or when they do not have
access to a higher-speed network.
