The desktop ain’t dead

In 1960, “The Andy Griffith Show” first aired on television. A spin-off of the already popular “The Danny Thomas Show,” it went on to become one of the most popular TV series of all time, far eclipsing the show from which it was spawned.

This year could see the beginning of a new IT spin-off-desktop virtualisation – that does what Andy did to Danny. The parent technology, server virtualisation, is already one of the fastest-growing segments of the IT market. Researcher IDC, for instance, estimates that the number of virtual servers deployed will rise 41 percent annually through 2010, resulting in 7.9 million virtual servers implemented on 1.7 million new physical servers.

Impressive as it is, that growth pales when compared to the potential for its spin-off, desktop virtualisation. IDC last year said it expects more than 30 million office workers will be using virtual desktops three years from now.

Customers are ready for the move to virtual desktop PCs, said Terry Aoki, executive vice president of corporate development at Right Systems Inc., a solution provider that works with Citrix Systems Inc., for server virtualisation and thin client computing, and with VMware Inc. for server virtualisation. “We see virtual desktops as a very viable product to take to our customer base,” Aoki said. “We’re having lots of conversations and seeing lots of desire to build the infrastructure. Virtual desktops are secure and remote, and can be provisioned rapidly. You can build desktops from the core without a lot of patching.”

Entisys Solutions Inc., like Right Systems, works with both Citrix and VMware, and is finding growing acceptance for virtual desktops, especially among high-tech, financial, manufacturing, retail and government customers, said Mike Strohl, president of the solution provider. “There’s not a lot of selling involved,” Strohl said. “The message is a good one. Customers want to adopt it. They’re just waiting for the technology to catch up.”

Strohl said that the virtual desktop business is a win-win for everyone from the vendors and software developers to solution providers and their customers. “As customers adopt the technology, they need to look at other facets of their infrastructure such as security and applications,” he said. “That will accelerate the business of software developers. More and more tools mean a more productive organisation.”

The channel has much to gain from this gathering trend, said Tad Bodeman, worldwide director of remote client solutions at Hewlett-Packard Co. “This whole category represents a new greenfield opportunity for VARs,” he said. Bodeman said all VARs, from those serving small businesses to those with enterprise accounts, can take advantage of the growing customer needs in this area. Small business VARs can approach their customers to strengthen their systems for compliance and security. VARs serving midsize and enterprise accounts can use the technology to help their customers deploy more flexible business continuity and disaster recovery solutions. They all can talk to their customers about desktop virtualisation’s ability to help them reduce power consumption.

Desktop virtualisation enables solution providers to differentiate themselves from their competitors, he said, and change the kinds of conversations they’re having with customers. VARs “can talk about how to protect company data and intellectual property and utilise offshore employees, instead of how do I save another nickel on a PC purchase,” Bodeman said.

Many advantages
While a small part of the growth of the virtual desktop PC market will continue from proprietary solutions that require the use of specific data centre hardware, such as desktop PC blades, the vast majority of that growth is a direct spin-off of the runaway popularity of virtual servers. This is because software from a small but quickly growing number of vendors is taking advantage of how virtual servers work.

With server virtualisation, the operating system, applications and I/O related to a server workload are encapsulated in a file called a virtual machine. Server virtualisation software allows multiple virtual machines to run on a single hardware server. Those virtual machines can take the place of nearly any physical computing device, except those required for high-performance tasks such as online transactions. This includes desktop PCs.

With desktop PC virtualisation, a PC workload can be one of multiple virtual machines sitting on a hardware server, either in the customer’s data centre or at a remote site. The user has some type of computing device, such as a small thin client, to which peripherals such as a monitor and a keyboard are attached. This infrastructure, which is commonly referred to as virtual desktop infrastructure, or VDI (despite the fact that VMware actually uses that term as a brand name), allows customers to deploy virtual desktops from the data centre with several advantages over the traditional desktop model.

One advantage is reduced power consumption. While virtual desktops can run at the user side on nearly any type of computing device, customers are likely to look to thin client-type devices such as those from Wyse Technology, Sun Microsystems Inc. and Pano Logic Inc. The Pano Logic devices, for instance, consume only five watts of power, and Sun’s Sun Ray appliances only four watts, compared to 250 watts to 300 watts for traditional desktop PCs.

That is a huge advantage, said Michael Lessing, CEO and principal at ProSync Technology Group, a VMware solution provider that also works with Pano Logic. “So if it’s a Fortune 500 company with tens of thousands of workstations, think of how much they save in power costs,” he said.

The second advantage is increased security. The operating systems for the virtual desktops are contained inside the data centre, making them easier to protect than traditional desktop PCs from malicious attacks. Security patches are handled from that centralised location. And when the desktop hardware is replaced with some type of thin device, it’s possible to prevent the use of removable storage devices such as USB drives, decreasing the ability of users to steal data or introduce computer viruses.

Centralising desktop PCs in the data centre also allows new desktops to be provisioned more quickly than traditional desktops, often by merely deploying a copy of the file encapsulating an existing virtual desktop PC. Patches to virtual PCs also can be quickly done without the need to visit each work area.

While these advantages sound like the promises of traditional thin computing, there is a major difference. Unlike thin-client computing, which changes the way applications are presented to users, the look and feel of virtual desktops should be no different than that of physical desktops for the vast majority of users.

There’s plenty of room in the market for both virtual desktop and thin-client computing, Aoki said. His company is a longtime Citrix partner for thin clients, and is pushing ahead with the VDI offerings of both Citrix and VMware. “We plan to build a practice around both,” he said. “We started partnering with VMware when that company started its big push with ESX Server. And in 2006, we were Citrix Partner of
the Year because we sold millions of dollars of its products.”

Vendor landscape
VDI desktop virtualisation tech vendors can be sorted into three broad categories: hypervisor-based server virtualisation vendors that also offer desktop virtualisation technology; desktop virtualisation software vendors that take advantage of the VDI infrastructures offered by the server
virtualisation vendors; and hardware-based desktop virtualisation vendors. Most of the large server virtualisation software vendors, including VMware, Citrix, Sun and Microsoft Corp. either have a desktop server virtualisation technology or are planning to offer one in the near future.

VMware, which commands about 85 percent of the server virtualisation market, offers a number of desktop virtualisation technologies. These include VDI for building virtual desktops using the company’s server virtualisation applications; VMware Player, a free run-time virtual machine for such purposes as testing new versions of an application; and VMware ACE (Assured Computing Environment), which is used to build portable virtual desktops that can be used outside the office environment.

Citrix, which got into the hypervisor-based server virtualisation market with last year’s $500 million acquisition of XenSource, plans to release its Citrix Xen Desktop technology during the second quarter of this year.

Microsoft, which plans to roll out Hyper-V server virtualisation technology about six months after it releases Windows Server 2008, offers two types of virtual desktop technologies to run on Hyper-V. The first uses a combination of Windows Terminal Services with Windows Fundamentals for Legacy PCs to build virtual desktops for office environments, and a combination of SoftGrid application virtualisation, Windows Vista Enterprise Centralized Desktop and Windows Fundamentals for Legacy PCs for contract and offshore workers. For users working outside the office, Microsoft adds Windows Terminal Services Web Portal.

Sun currently has both its xVM hypervisor-based server virtualisation software and two versions of its virtual desktop software in beta testing, and plans to start shipping the latter next month. The technology bundles its Sun Ray thin-client software with its Secure Global Desktop to build virtual desktop PCs initially using VMware’s ESX Server. Versions supporting xVM are expected to be released soon.

A number of other vendors, including mainly small software developers and startups, are developing software to build virtual desktops using other vendors’ VDI technology. One of those who have been doing this the longest is Ericom Software Inc. which entered the field in 2005 at the same time VMware introduced its ESX Server. It develops software that lets thin-computing devices act as Windows Terminal services or VDI virtual desktops. The company’s software currently supports most major hypervisors, with a total of about 14 expected to be supported by June.

Another is Provision Networks Inc., which was acquired by Quest Software Inc. in November. Provision Networks, which focused exclusively on virtual desktop technology before the acquisition, supports virtual desktops built using Windows Terminal Services, VDI and dedicated PC blades.

Pano Logic produces desktop virtualisation software specifically for VMware’s VDI environment, as well as small, low-powered thin-computing devices that connect the user’s monitor and keyboard to the virtual desktops. The company, which is relatively new to the VDI environment, has about 60 customers doing proof-of-concept testing on its products. The software offers both fixed-location and roaming desktop capabilities.

ClearCube Technology is also new to the VDI environment, but is better known for its proprietary PC blades, which offer high performance but at a higher cost. The company recently made its Sentral software hardware-agnostic and compatible with VMware ESX Server, Microsoft’s Hyper-V and Microsoft Virtual Server, and Citrix XenServer. The software also allows virtual desktops to be run over IP networks.

The term “desktop virtualisation” also includes technology outside of the VDI space, which allows the simultaneous running of multiple operating systems on a single hardware PC. Examples include VMware Workstation for running multiple virtual machines on a desktop PC, VMware Fusion for running Windows or Linux on an Apple PC, Microsoft’s SoftGrid with BitLocker encryption technology, and the VirtualBox from Innotek, which is in the process of being acquired by Sun.

ProSync Technology’s Lessing said that the current desktop virtualisation technology is a fantastic first run, and that the power of virtual desktop PCs is only starting to be tapped.

“I’ve adopted it, and a lot of customers have adopted it,” he said. “You just have to experience it. I really look forward to the day when I can walk to an airport, swipe a card, load up my desktop, use it and walk away,” he said.