Microsoft Moves Further Into Desktop Virtualization
Microsoft is striding forward with its responsibility to desktop virtualization. Microsoft also announced a better licensing arrangement and magnified their relationship with Citrix Systems.
The corporate vice president of Microsoft’s Management and Services Division, Brad Anderson stated the software giant desires to deliver equilibrium between IT departments who need device compliance and security, and the employees who wish for selections of how they work and the location they perform their tasks.
Using the Windows Team Blog, Brad revealed Microsoft’s methodology towards virtualization has a different slant than others embracing the technology. Microsoft’s vision includes “a desktop to data center approach”, a conviction in building a solid platform of centralized, integrated management, yet yielding a flexible technology.
Some of the features and promotions Microsoft will debut includes Rescue for VMware VDI. This promotion allows VMware View customers to trade in as many as five hundred licenses for an equal number of Microsoft VDI Standard Suite subscriptions and Citrix XenDesktop VDI Edition yearly licenses, without any surplus financial outlays.
Starting July of 2010, Microsoft will not require Windows Client Soft Assurance customers to purchase separate licenses in order to obtain legal access to Windows operating within a VDI ecosystem. This will be possible since virtual desktop access rights will arrive as a Software Assurance allowance. As an added bonus, companies desiring to migrate to the professional version of Windows 7 while simultaneously executing XP applications in a virtualized desktop ecosystem, hardware virtualization will no longer remain a requirement for Windows XP mode.
As the market for virtualization and its many manifestations gains steam, other notable innovators will climb on board and push the technology closer to mainstream utilization. Microsoft’s pact with Citrix brings the HDX technology of XenDesktop together with Microsoft’s RemoteFX program. The Citrix HDX RichGraphics strategy increases the overall performance of two and three dimensional software solutions, using the best of software and hardware based interpretation. Microsoft’s forthcoming RemoteFX structure carries the ball further allowing the user to enjoy a rich media environment through a network to a local desktop.
Information Technology Intelligence Corp’s Laura DiDio defined desktop virtualization as a “very hot market,” stating Microsoft and Citrix are seeking a “bare knuckles smackdown” with VMware, and the Rescue for VMware VDI trade as “you can’t get any more aggressive than free.” As Laura commented Microsoft and Citrix are “throwing down the gauntlet by offering simpler and less expensive models,” she also acknowledged Citrix has led desktop virtualization, VMware’s specialty lies in server virtualization, and Microsoft has focused on application virtualization. Laura also noted the small percentage of businesses operating a fully deployed desktop virtualized environment, the actual statistics somewhere in the neighborhood of five to ten percent.
The advantages and benefits of desktop virtualization, mainly the financial savings, could be the main driver that emphasizes migration to the advancing technology. A study conducted by Microsoft exhibited customers of their App-V platform received just under a thirty percent savings in labor and financial savings a little over eighty dollars per personal computer in the area of application life cycle management.
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