by Mitchell Ashley

You May Be Buying Your Next Business Computer, Not Your Employer

Analysis

Feb 13, 20093 mins

Simon Crosby, CTO Virtualization at Citrix, joined me on my podcast this week to talk about a new initiative Citrix has initiated called Project Independence. (See the press release for more info.) From my view, this is what I expected Citrix to do after acquiring XenSource and the open source Xen virtualization technology – migrate Citrix’s product into a streamed virtualized desktop model. One of the premises (predictions) behind Project Independence is that businesses won’t buy end users’ computers, the employees will, possibly with a stipend to offset some or all of the costs. Then the end user supports their own hardware, not IT, but IT delivers a secure, virtualized desktop for corporate apps, emails, data, etc. This isn’t far off from what contractors and consultants do today (frequently providing their own hardware), what’s new is the streamed virtualized desktop.

Lets look at some more of the predictions Citrix proclaims as part of Project Independence.

Prediction #1 – Your company will no longer own your laptop (go ahead, buy that cool new computer)

Prediction #2 – Your company will spend more on coffee and office supplies than it does on desktop management

Prediction #3 – You will access your corporate desktop from whatever device is most convenient at the time (just like you do with email today)

Prediction #4 – You will switch back and forth between work and personal desktops on the same device, without thinking twice

Prediction #5 – You will never complain about your PC being too slow again

I don’t want to steal too much thunder from the podcast, so you’ll want to listen to the podcast to learn how Simon expects to deliver a virtualized desktop and what Citrix plans to do when devices are not connected to the corporate network (i.e. the desktop isn’t being streamed because it’s offline from the network.) There’s a lot more we cover in the podcast, including a recent joint announcement between Intel and Citrix.

Like this? Here are some of Mitchell’s recent posts.
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Mitchell’s Book Recommendations:
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