The battle lines are drawn in the war to determine who will control your desktop in the future - and it's not about what operating system (OS) you'll be running - it's about who will pull the virtual strings behind the OS. Up to recently, Windows users had RDP and ICA as the main "enterprise" desktop remote access services along with a protocol soup of new alternatives.
Today, there is a foray of alternate access technologies flying the banner of Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) and a confusing mess of protocols, features and limitations. Most recently, this even includes traditionally security focused Symantec and its "Endpoint Virtualization" product. While this serves to bolster our prediction of a Microsoft/Citrix merger - based on the sheer number of vectors competing for the platform - it also presents a familiar case of "who's approach will win" for end users and adopters.
Brian Madden's blog recently touched on this competition and where the major players - in his opinion - stand to lose and gain. It's worth the read as are the related posts from his blog on the topic.
SOLORI's take: this war's been brewing for some time now, and it's only going to get ugly before things settle down. So far, it's all packaging and management with no new vision towards an "innovative way" of application deployment - just better ways...
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[...] First, the keynote with Carl and the gang was awesome! VMware took a really aggressive attitude towards the competition, including Citrix (virtual desktop) and Microsoft (virtual data center). To sum up the conversation: VMware’s intent on carrying on the Q4/09 momentum through 2011, extending its lead in virtual data center and cloud computing capabilities. But Carl’s not happy with just the traditional server market, and VMware wants to own the virtual desktop space – virtually putting the squeeze on Citrix as the walls close-in around them. [...]
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