| Microsoft announced today some pretty aggressive | | | | and IT administrators want the flexibility provided by |
| moves in the desktop virtualization space. First, they | | | | virtualization, and that virtualization makes it easy to |
| announced their acquisition of Calista Technologies, | | | | run any operating system. Vista adoption has not |
| which optimizes the remote display protocol used in | | | | been going well by any account, and virtualization |
| hosted and other VDI-like solutions. Technology like | | | | support may tip more companies into trying out and |
| Calista’s, along with their alliance with Citrix, | | | | adopting Vista in the enterprise. |
| are important to VDI-like solutions to give end-users | | | | However, by embracing a VDI solution, Microsoft |
| an acceptable user experience, especially with | | | | may be missing the boat. VDI and other remote |
| interactive or multimedia-rich applications. | | | | desktop techniques still have some fundamental |
| Microsoft also loosened Vista virtualization licensing to | | | | technical limitations: they require a server |
| allow Vista Home Basic and Home Premium to be run | | | | infrastructure, the performance is poor over slow or |
| on a virtual machine. This is good news for all | | | | high-latency connections, and users cannot work |
| involved, as users no longer have to spend the extra | | | | offline. These run counter to the recent trends of |
| money on the more expensive Vista Business or | | | | more and more people working from home or on the |
| Ultimate editions just to run them in a virtual machine. | | | | road, or the trend of using individual employee's |
| They also announced official support for Microsoft | | | | computers for work. These and other reasons are |
| Office running as a virtualized application. | | | | why, as part of the NSF-backed Collective computing |
| Both of these are more aggressive moves than is | | | | initiative at Stanford in 2001, we started working on |
| typical of Microsoft. This really shows the importance | | | | the next generation of desktop management, which |
| of desktop virtualization to Microsoft's future | | | | combined the benefits of VDI’s centralized |
| strategy and markets. The licensing change also | | | | management with the benefits of local execution. |
| shows Microsoft is serious about pursuing the vision | | | | This work ultimately culminated in the basis of |
| of virtualization on the desktop and the flexibility that | | | | MokaFive technology. |
| it provides. I also think Microsoft realized that users | | | | |