Patrick Rouse and Ken Davidson, Senior Sales Engineers at Quest, just published a very interesting (but not necessarily unbiased) features comparison between their own Provision Networks Virtual Access Suite (VAS) connection broker, VMware Virtual Desktop Manager (VDM) and the just released Citrix XenDesktop.
The matrix reveals that the next version of VAS, 5.11, will be released in Q3 2008 and will provide several new features including:
- Support for Parallels Virtuozzo
- Multiple virtual machines boot from a single virtual disk
- User environment customization
- Dynamic image compression
- Media redirection to client codecs (Windows Media and Flash)
- Universal printer driver for network printers
- Universal Printer gateway
- Support for Universal USB and USB scanners
The document also reveals that VSA 6.0 release is planned for Q4 2008, when it will feature at least a new, scriptable MMC-based console and administrative rights delegation.