Kidaro, Microsoft, And Struggling To Define Desktop Virtualization

I spoke with Kidaro CEO Kevin Brown for about 90 seconds yesterday afternoon; the conversation was cut short due to an emergency conflict on my end. Kevin and I hope to reconnect via phone next week while he is in Israel. I suspect he and his will be a bit busy for the foreseeable future, what with that recent Microsoft acquisition... This blog tends to focus on server virtualization. Frankly, server solutions have been the focus of the mainstream industry, press, and installed sites since VMware moved out of testing and Q/A shops. The InformationWeek/NWC.com virtualization lab has been built from the ground up to analyze and review server VMs, tools, appliances and management solutions. While I run a number of desktop virt platforms on the production side of my shop, we don't have a single instance of "virt desktop" technology running in the lab. Our lab goals need a touch-up.

Desktop virtualization has lurked patiently at the periphery, quietly gaining market share in the enterprise and personal markets for more than 10 years. The state of the state is about to change.

Microsoft's Kidaro acquisition is the latest awareness-raiser for strong industry trends. Delivering "virtualized desktops" and/or "app containers" to users is going to be huge; security, flexibility, and reliability drivers will move most enterprise desktops and many personal machines to a virtual model.

Defining server virtualization is fairly straightforward. A server instance is abstracted from the underlying hardware. Period. Vendors, hypervisors, embedded hypervisors, fat-OS solutions, etc., are immaterial to the definition.

Now take a breath.How do we define "virtualization" in the desktop/laptop space?

Take a second to reflect before you jump to answer.

Will embedded hypervisors push all user sessions to run as guest instances? Will Enterprise IT shops (with Symantec, Reflex, McAfee, or other security vendors) push dedicated virtual security appliances monitoring intra-host traffic, even when that host is "just" a dual-core laptop?

Can thin-client computing be dusted off and successfully re-branded as virtualization?

What about the desktop-in-a-browser model? Good, old-fashioned flavors of app presentation, variations on remote desktops or simple screen-sharing?Anyone remember green screen apps? (You know, a central computer offering up hundreds or thousands of user sessions to distributed terminals?)

The last time I checked, Microsoft, Altiris, VMware, Citrix, Novell, Sun, Stoneware, Parallels, and more are using the desktop virtualization tag in marketing.

Are they all examples of desktop virtualization? Don't be shy -- let me know what you think.

I feel a hypervisor-based desktop virtualization model with locked-down "admin" VM, ease of guest deployment, and remote management (including rollback functionality to protect users from themselves) and OS/app deployment flexibility makes too much sense not to succeed.

I'll be asking Kevin Brown of Kidaro what he thinks about real-world security concerns, creative solutions for enterprise desktop management, and his view on the state of the state next week.6618