Towards the end of the year most analysis firms release their forecasts for the upcoming years.
Unfortunately, most of time the predictions are for the very near term (it’s easy to predict what will happen in Q1 2009) or for the very long term (giving all the time to adjust the communication over time).
This year the Yankee Group takes a hazard and predicts that 2009 will be the year of VDI:
Desktop virtualization will replace PC replacement. Mass workforce consolidations as a result of the economic downturn, especially in the financial services market, will force enterprises to look for ways to provision vast amounts of desktops to absorbed workforces in a fast, cheap and secure manner. These workforce turnover demands—along with improvements in network optimization, VDI protocol efficiency, and the evolution of mobile VDI and offline virtual desktops—mean that 2009 will be the year that enterprises move away from the pilot and evaluation stages and finally take the desktop virtualization plunge. Desktop operating environments will become just another enterprise service, delivered and optimized by the network. This signals a move away from the traditional “fleet maintenance” mentality of desktop/end-user IT support and maintenance, and has the potential to significantly reduce large PC support staffs.
If this is not enough Yankee Group also highlights who will win and who will lose in this segment during 2009:
- Winners: Citrix, Quest/Provision Networks, VMware
- Losers: Dell, HP, McAfee, Microsoft, Symantec
While the list of winners is pretty obvious, the list of losers is puzzling: since when Dell, McAfee and Symantec offer a VDI solution?
The only two that may be really lose in this space are HP and Microsoft. The former because it actually offers a VDI solution that may not compete with the others, the latter because it will not offer a VDI solution until 2010.
But yet: HP is OEM’ing the Provision Networks technology, and Microsoft is partnering with both Citrix and Provision Networks in this space.
If Citrix and Quest/Provision Networks are winner how Microsoft and HP that rely on them can be losers?
Last but not least: what about the other competitors in this space, like Ericom, Pano Logic, VDIworks, Virtual Computer, and all the other well-known players and startups?
The virtualization.info Virtualization Industry Predictions has been updated accordingly.