In Comes Desktop Virtualization
But who has the time to do this today? Most organizations have
just finished moving to a standard desktop running Windows XP and they certainly don't want to start this kind of project again. Distributing desktops, desktop operating systems and applica- tions is a pain. Deployment projects are just massive headaches that never seem to go away. No wonder Windows Vista isn't catching on. No one wants to start another distributed deploy- ment project. But, what if you could centralize all your desktops and control them with just a few clicks? Users would access them from any connected location: LAN, WAN, even from home. All your desktops would be completely locked down and you would no longer have to worry about distributed endpoints since all they need to have is a Remote Desktop Connection
(RDC). Wouldn't that make life easier?
This is the promise of centralized virtual desktops or virtu- al desktop infrastructures (VDI). Desktops are run as virtual machines (VM) on host servers that are located in the data- center and basically never have to leave the office. This makes
The problem has always stemmed from the very name we use for desktops: personal computers (PC). Instead of person- al computer, organizations should make a point of calling their systems professional computers. Using the term PC in its original sense gives every user the impression that the computer is theirs in the first place. Well, that is not the case. The computer, like the desk it sits on, belongs to the organiza- tion, not the individual and because of this, it should be locked down and controlled centrally. The key to such a project is the proper negotiation of who owns what on the PC. Where do the user's rights begin and where do they end? What belongs to the corporation and what belongs to IT? Defining each of these property zones on the PC and making them very clear through massive communications with the user makes a locked-down project work.