On March 9, VMware published a paper, intended mainly for business decision-makers, where tries to explain its vision of VDI future in terms of cost & time savings.
An important step is where the author rationalizes the entire product portfolio that VMware puts on the market (now or in the near future) to complete his vision:
- VMware View: Virtual desktops as a managed service
- VMware ThinApp: Virtual applications as a managed service
- Project AppBlast: HTML5-based delivery of legacy applications via a web browser
- Project Octopus: Secure data share and sync
- Horizon Application Manager: Now, policy-based management of applications (SaaS, web applications, ThinApp virtualized Windows applications, and enterprise applications). Soon, policy-based management of all public and private cloud services (desktops, applications, and data).
- Horizon Mobile: A secure, managed, and policy-driven virtual smartphone for work, isolated and protected inside a personal smartphone
Cloud-based social/collaborative applications, designed for mobility:
- Zimbra: Open-source email and collaboration
- Strides: Social task management
- Socialcast: Enterprise social networking
- SlideRocket: Online presentation software
The paper then covers 7 main points that VMware considers key challenges for future VDI implementations:
- Desktop hardware and software deployment
- User administration
- Image and application management
- Desktop patch management
- Desktop data security
- Desktop disaster recovery and data backup
- Desktop help desk and support
and concludes:
“A VMware View virtual desktop solution resolves many of the economic and user satisfaction issues of a desktop environment. A View deployment saves an average of 7 hours of labor per user desktop per year, out of 12.2 hours labor per user on a physical desktop per year. This is a 57% decrease in labor costs with a VMware View implementation. Multiply the 7 hours by your number of users, and the time available for other projects is a convincing argument for virtual desktops.”