Virtualization of the desktop is the way forward

http://www.virtual-strategy.com/article/articleview/2438/1/2/

Virtualization has taken the enterprise by storm. Recent surveys indicate that a majority of CIOs are contemplating virtualization deployments, even looking beyond server virtualization to areas such as VDI (Virtual Desktop Infrastructure). By removing the dependency an operating system has on a physical server or PC, Virtualization presents a huge opportunity for IT groups to more effectively manage their environments, optimize resource loads for the physical machines at their disposal and even get by with less hardware. Virtualization represents a seismic shift to application rollout, OS deployment and capacity expansion methodologies implemented in the x86 world over the last 25 years. It would be a mistake, however, to get too focused on the Virtualization technology itself.

The Hypervisor or VM Monitor technologies, such as those built by VMware, Microsoft and the Open Source Xen project, are becoming increasingly commoditized. In the long term, they deserve as much focus as any other piece of hardware enablement technology, for example the BIOS. In reality, the excitement is not necessarily about the Virtualization enablement software, but the opportunities it brings about. As is always the case in the software industry, it’s the application that delivers the most value, not the plumbing.

I’m genuinely excited about pc virtualization, it can be a great way of reducing you hardware/software support costs, and a great way of reducing the energy consumption of your business, switching to thin clients with a virtual desktop can be more energy efficient if deployed in the right way. It’s something that is certainly going to be more popular in the near future, I wonder what benefits users will see? What group of users do we virtualize first? IT/HR? We’ll see, exciting times ahead.