Lori MacVittie’s posterous

Desktop virtualization. Virtual desktops. Application streaming. Whatever you want to call it makes no nevermind to me because the problem driving the entire concept is gone. Eradicated. Made irrelevant by the cloud. Made irrelevant by cloudware, SaaS (Software as a Service), and the ubiquitous browser.

I cannot count the number of times I've heard complaints about some form of desktop virtualization/application streaming in the past. It's slow. The server died in the middle of my exam. It's slow. There are no more licenses left. It's slow today (why do you add "today", it's slow every day!). Sensing a theme?

With virtualization in general all the rage right now, it's easy to get people excited over the concept of virtualizing their desktop. The question is, why would someone want to do such a thing to their desktop and to themselves? Are they some kind of masochist? Do they hate themselves? Do they want to be less productive? Do they need an excuse to take a coffee break while Microsoft Word loads from the network, obfuscated by layers of virtualization and licensing, slowed to a crawl by unnecessary technology?

Virtualization in the data center makes sense. It's about consolidation and efficiency. But there's nothing efficient about desktop virtualization or application streaming and in an age where browser-based applications are as rich and robust as their fat desktop-residing predecessors it just doesn't make any sense to clutter up the data center with an extra layer of application infrastructure that needs to be licensed, managed, maintained, patched, and upgraded.

Desktop virtualization never really made much sense to me, but now it really doesn't make any sense. The number of cloudware alternatives to traditional fat desktop applications is constantly growing and provide more than adequate functionality for the majority of business folks. For the privacy and security sensitive, locally hosted web-based alternatives to other constant companions like Outlook (Outlook Web Access, anyone?) have long been available to address the issue of desktop maintenance and management, and its rare to find an enterprise application today that isn't web-based, or at least web-enabled.

We're willing to run our entire businesses from a mobile device like an iPhone or a BlackBerry but for some reason we're still clinging to the notion that we need fat desktop apps when we're in the office. Balderdash, I say. Poppycock.

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Lori MacVittie  |  Technical Marketing Manager, Application Services
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