Desktop virtualization: Will Windows 7 change the game?

Some customers will bite, but widespread desktop virtualization adoption is still years off

Microsoft is pushing desktop virtualization as a way of making Windows 7 play nicely with old applications, especially those written for Windows XP. So now that the technology has been "blessed" by Microsoft, can the industry brace for a desktop-virtualization boom? Probably not, most experts agree.

That said, though, there will likely be an uptick in the acceptance of desktop virtualization, for a couple of reasons. First, more vendors are offering Virtual Desktop Infrastructures (VDI), which give each end user a private "desktop." VDI uses the same kind of hypervisors that allow many virtual machines to run on a single physical host. But rather than running five- or ten-server VMs on one physical server, VDI can run 50 PC operating systems, each of which serves a single end user.

The other big change is support for peripherals, multimedia and other Web- and PC-focused technologies. These have been inaccessible for users of shared-image terminal-services types of systems -- that is, traditional desktop virtualization -- but nowadays most users won't do without them.

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Microsoft is pushing desktop virtualization as a way of making Windows 7 play nicely with old applications, especially those written for Windows XP. So now that the technology has been "blessed" by Microsoft, can the industry brace for a desktop-virtualization boom? Probably not, most experts agree.

That said, though, there will likely be an uptick in the acceptance of desktop virtualization, for a couple of reasons. First, more vendors are offering Virtual Desktop Infrastructures (VDI), which give each end user a private "desktop." VDI uses the same kind of hypervisors that allow many virtual machines to run on a single physical host. But rather than running five- or ten-server VMs on one physical server, VDI can run 50 PC operating systems, each of which serves a single end user.

The other big change is support for peripherals, multimedia and other Web- and PC-focused technologies. These have been inaccessible for users of shared-image terminal-services types of systems -- that is, traditional desktop virtualization -- but nowadays most users won't do without them.

"Improvements in the user experience are really a big deal in making desktop virtualization more acceptable," says Andi Mann, an analyst with Enterprise Management Associates.

Giving end users all the benefits and all the capabilities they'd have on standalone machines -- including the ability to add or update their own browser plug-ins, media players and other "extraneous" software -- could overcome most of the objections by business units that have kept virtual desktops out of the mainstream user base, Mann says.

Extending the life of an old PC

Another element that may make virtual desktops far more popular is the unwillingness of some companies to upgrade their PC hardware enough to support migrations to Windows 7, according to Chris Wolf, infrastructure analyst at The Burton Group.

Your guide to desktop virtualization

"Desktop virtualization" isn't a specific technology or even a single delivery method. It's a broad description that includes all the ways it's possible to use a desktop, laptop or other device to access data or applications that live somewhere else.

Usually that means a user with a PC interacting with an application that's running on a server in the data center. But there are a lot of ways to make that happen. According to a survey conducted by Enterprise Management Associates, most companies that implement virtual desktops do so using several different delivery methods.

Virtual applications

* Web application -- Browser interface for an application running on a server. Not what you usually think of as "desktop virtualization," Web apps do fit the definition and are tied for the most common method of delivery.

* Remote viewing -- Typically described as "application virtualization," this method allows users to view and control an app from their desktops, though the application itself runs on a back-end server. Most often a user logs into an app that many use at once; less often, a user launches a separate instance of the application for herself.

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