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The adoption of virtualization in the data center is one of the hotter trends in IT. But virtualization technology is by no means limited to servers and storage systems. Desktop virtualization is expected to become increasingly common as organizations look for ways to increase IT efficiency.

“With desktop virtualization, the desktop operating environment is hosted on servers, so that users interact with their desktop remotely, usually by means of thin client devices,” says Tony Iams, vice president and senior analyst, system software research, at Ideas International Inc. “This allows administrators [to] manage desktop resources with superior economies of scale, while offering benefits related to security and reliability, since the actual state of the desktop environment can be almost entirely controlled in the confines of a data center.”

The concept of hosting desktops remotely is not new, Iams notes. The economic benefits of minimizing the amount of software on desktop clients first gained prominence more than 10 years ago, with the emergence of the network computer, he says.

“However, there has been renewed interest in the remote desktop approach because of the continued growth of available network bandwidth, which is needed to transmit the massive amounts of data needed to fully represent [a] rich desktop environment over the network,” Iams says.

Despite the potential benefits, organizations should not plunge ahead with desktop virtualization initiatives without giving thought to what they hope to achieve and the resources they have available. “The first challenge is to determine the best approach for virtualizing the desktop experience, considering several criteria, including cost, application mix, user preference, bandwidth availability and so on,” Iams says.

There’s a broad range of products available for implementing virtual desktops. Here’s a sampling:

VMware provides desktop virtualization products, including VMware Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI), software that allows companies to replace traditional desktop PCs with virtual machines that can be managed from a data center. VDI includes VMware Virtual Desktop Manager, a desktop management server that securely links users to virtual desktops and provides a Web-based interface to manage the desktop environment.

IBM offers Virtual Client Solutions, which provide secure access to remote desktops from virtually any client device. Virtual Client Solutions run desktop functions on an IBM BladeCenter or System x server in a data center, providing users with remote access to their desktop PCs. Software from developer Leostream called Hosted Desktop Connection Broker connects the appropriate target virtual machine with the necessary operating system image and software application on the server.

Microsoft’s Virtual PC 2007 enables users to create separate virtual machines on a Windows desktop, each of which virtualizes the hardware of a complete physical computer. Virtual machines can run multiple operating systems at once on a single physical computer and switch between them as needed.

Citrix offers XenDesktop, a desktop virtualization product that enables organizations to centralize Windows applications in the data center and deliver those applications to end users via a network. XenDesktop is part of the Citrix Delivery Center family of products.

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