Patrick Rouse wrote a good article describing elements of the emerging use of virtualization called Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI), originally launched by VMware:
VDI is VMware’s designation for the hosting and virtualization of a individual Client OS like Windows XP Professional, Windows Vista or Linux on VMware ESX. The intent is to be able to deploy, secure and manage enterprise desktops in the data center.
For those used to managing server based computing environments, consisting of Windows Terminal Servers and Citrix, managing VDI is definitely similar task. The difference is that instead of managing numerous centralized, multi-user server operating systems, one would be managing potentially hundreds, or thousands of centralized, virtualized single user operating systems.
VDI is not one product, but rather a technology consisting of five separate components:..
Read the whole article at source.