The smart car photos from our Get Smart About Desktop Virtualization program are pouring in. You can see a sample of them to the left or on our Flickr page. Here’s a great collage put together for us by Gary Newman (thanks, Gary!) of the smart car and a few other smart car-sized vehicles at VMworld:

(And, yes, that photo in the bottom center is us being asked to move the smart car!)

Hope everyone’s enjoying the show — if you haven’t stopped by for a NxTop demo yet, you can find us at booth #1940.

With less than a week to go until VMworld, life has been pretty exciting around the Virtual Computer offices as we put the final polish on our latest NxTop product functionality demos.  Today, the excitement level reached a fever pitch, as we announced our new “Get Smart About Desktop Virtualization” program that will formally kick off at VMworld.  The “Get Smart” program will highlight how a PC management approach that leverages client-side virtualization provides significant cost-saving benefits versus both server-centric virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) models and traditional agent-based PC management approaches.  The best part is that when the dust settles, one lucky IT professional will walk away with a cool new car that is….well, smart!

The “Get Smart” program will feature a number of activities at VMworld where attendees can learn about NxTop’s unique PC life cycle configuration management capabilities, as well as interact with some of our key partners who help bring it all together.  The more you interact with us and our partners, the more chances you will have to win the car.  Keep reading the blog and come by and see us at Booth #1940 next week to get all of the details, including some “extra credit” opportunities for all of you star pupils out there.

Travel budget blues keeping you away from VMworld this year?  There are still plenty of opportunities to get involved.  In conjunction with the “Get Smart” program, we have launched a new online community site that includes a very nifty total cost of ownership (TCO) calculator.  The tool is highly configurable, so if you don’t like our cost assumptions, simply plug in your own.  Think our overall methodology is flawed?  Stop by the forums and say what’s on your mind.  While you are at it, sign up for one of our upcoming webinars on “The New Economics of PC Management,” which will provide another chance to see NxTop in action, along with an in-depth review of our TCO methodology.  Online forum contributions and webinar attendance will earn VMworld attendees additional chances to win the car and provide those playing along at home with a chance to win.

Stay tuned more more contest details as VMworld gets under way.  See you in San Francisco!

Greetings from Chicago, where I am attending Brian Madden’s seventh annual BriForum event.  The event got off to a great start yesterday.  It is a smaller event as conferences go, but you won’t find a larger concentration of the brightest minds in desktop virtualization anywhere.  BriForum provides a great opportunity to see and touch some of the best virtualization technology available today, but I have been particularly drawn to some of the sessions focused on where this is all headed.  Chetan Venkatesh from Atlantis Computing did a really interesting session yesterday morning called “Envisioning the Desktop of 2015: A Tale of Three Clouds and Liquid Desktop Computing,” and Brian Madden and Martin Ingram of AppSense revisited their past predictions for the evolution of desktop computing in “Looking Towards the New Desktop.”  In both cases, the brand of client-side desktop virtualization we practice at Virtual Computer factored heavily into the presenters’ view of the future.

Walking around BriForum, one really gets the sense that there is a perfect storm of industry events brewing that is really going to cause desktop virtualization to take off in the next 12 months.  For example, all signs are that Microsoft “got it right” with Windows 7, and that its release will be a catalyst for many organizations to look for new and innovative ways to deploy and manage their desktops.  We think we have one for them.  If you happen to be a BriForum and would like to connect to see a live demo of NxTop, feel free to grab me by the shirt, ping me on Twitter (@dlane), or use the form we have available on our web site.

Fortunately for me, my time spent contemplating the future of desktop virtualization with really sharp people will not end with my departure from BriForum on Thursday.  I am excited to be teaming up with Rachel Chalmers of The 451 Group next week on the webinar, “Five Ways Virtualization Is Changing Your PC.”  It will be held next Wednesday (July 29) at  11:30 a.m. ET.  We will explore a number of the ways in which client-side desktop virtualization will transform the PC for both IT admins and end-users, including:

• The ability to run multiple operating systems on a single device and easily move from a personal to a corporate environment
• Easy migration from Windows XP to Windows Vista or soon Windows 7
• Enhanced data protection, backup and security
• Improved PC management for mobile and remote workers
• Remote desktop access to your documents, settings and self-installed applications

Visit our registration page to learn more or to register.

Since our company’s inception, we have been singularly focused on making PCs more reliable, more manageable, and more secure through the application of client-side virtualization technology. As IT folks try NxTop, they tend to have the “ah-ha moment” pretty quickly about how deploying and managing virtual desktops on a one-to-many basis will reduce their PC managements costs and improve their security. However, in the current economic climate buying decisions need to be made based on fact and not gut feel. As a result, we have spent a significant amount of time analyzing the key contributors to PC total cost of ownership (TCO) and exploring how the NxTop model stacks up against both traditional PC life cycle management tools and newer approaches like server-hosted virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI).

We look forward to opening up a more extensive public dialogue about our TCO findings in the coming weeks. As a first step, we are co-hosting a free webinar with IDC next week that will explore the TCO dynamics of desktop management in both traditional and virtualized PC environments. IDC analyst Michael Rose will review today’s desktop computing models and the TCO implications of each, and I’ll provide a brief demonstration of NxTop with a focus on the aspects of the product that have the biggest impact on TCO. I’ll also preview some of the early findings of our NxTop TCO analysis efforts.

The webinar will be held Tuesday, June 23, from 11:00 AM – 12:00 PM EDT. You can register to attend at:
https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/284181498

I hope to see you on the webinar!

Update: We recorded this webinar and it can be viewed here: Realizing the TCO of PC Lifecycle Management through Client-Side Virtualization (registration required).

If you haven’t already, I encourage you to check out the report (PDF) that IDC’s Michael Rose did on Virtual Computer’s Series B funding and strategic relationship with Citrix Systems.  Michael is one of a small number of analysts who have been predicting the emergence of client hypervisor technology for quite some time, so when Alex and I showed up at the IDC offices last summer (complete with laser-printed stealth mode business cards in hand), I recall Michael saying something along the lines of, “It’s about time somebody actually did this.”  He didn’t just take our word for it though.  He quizzed us on the finer details of our product for a good two hours during that initial meeting and later followed it up with a visit to our office to see the NxTop in action for himself.

Here’s an excerpt of what Michael had to say in his recent brief:

Although Virtual Computer’s product strategy is based upon the use of a client-oriented version of the Xen hypervisor, it considers itself a desktop management vendor, not a virtualization company. Although this difference may seem like semantics, IDC believes it represents a main point of differentiation between the server and desktop virtualization market. IDC believes that compared to server virtualization, desktop virtualization will be far less disruptive, and that hypervisors will permeate desktop hardware far more quickly and extensively than servers, only a minority of which are virtualized according to our most recent data.

There is also a bit about the potential for a “XenSource-esque” acquisition in the future that gave us all chuckle.  We haven’t had nearly enough fun yet to start looking for the exit, but surely we are worth at least triple that price.  Server virtualization is the easy stuff!  

Download the full IDC report (PDF).

Dan McCall, our CEO, contributed a guest post that appeared on David Marshall’s VMblog today.  In it, he explores some of the key questions that IT managers should consider when evaluating desktop virtualization approaches:

1. What are the real business drivers for desktop virtualization?
2. Do virtual desktops need to run on a server?
3. What about PC-hosted desktop solutions that already exist?
4. What will a mainstream desktop virtualization solution look like?
5. Will the end-users be happy with the solution?

Full post is here. It is an interesting read if you would like to understand more about what drives us here at Virtual Computer.

On the heels of Alex’s “Why Bare is Better” post last week, Yi-Jian Ngo of Microsoft is highlighting how “bare metal” client virtualization technology may be the key to driving mass adoption of desktop virtualization. Yi-Jian is the guy who takes startups like us by the hand and helps them navigate the waters at Microsoft, and it was great to finally meet him in person last week at VMworld. Yi Jian is discussing what he calls Desktop Virtualization 2.0 on his Core Infrastructure blog. In the post he discusses the two current definitions of desktop virtualization.

The first is what he calls “the model of virtual machines running in the bowels of the datacenter/cloud and projected out to users” – this is traditional desktop virtualization, or VDI. The second is where Virtual Computer’s NxTop is: running virtual desktops on the bare metal of a PC. Three use cases are mentioned:

The use cases for bare metal client virtualization are still emerging, though there are at least three that come to mind. One is the ability to deploy a locked-down workspace for corporate use side-by-side with a second workspace that end-users can modify but is walled off from certain resources, simultaneously maintaining ease of management while allowing some degree of end-user flexibility. Second is the quick deployment of policy-compliant workspaces to clients used by temporary or guest workers. And third is the offloading of certain utilities, particularly desktop security software, onto a separate virtual machine – possibly portending the arrival of desktop virtual appliances.

Absolutely right. We’ve been talking with hundreds of IT administrators responsible for PC management and find these to be among the top use cases for NxTop. It boils down to this: NxTop needs to make overall laptop and desktop management easier, more secure and quick to deploy. For the end-user, it needs to offer everything they’ve come to expect from a desktop experience.

My presentation from VMworld is up for anybody who wasn’t able to make it out to Vegas:

Let me know if you have any questions.

Another busy day at VMworld – once again, thanks to everyone who stopped by our booth to watch a demo and talk to us. We know there’s a lot going on at the show and appreciate everyone taking the time (and if you haven’t stopped by, we’re in booth #562 and would love to show you a live NxTop demo)!

Some coverage from the show:

SearchVMware.com / TechTarget stopped by and wrote some kind words about us:

VMware not the first

VMware, however, is the Christopher Columbus of the hypervisor-based virtual desktop approach. Just as Columbus wasn’t really the first to discover America, VMware wasn’t actually the first to come out with this particular idea. I met with a smaller company, Virtual Computer, on the VMworld floor today. Virtual Computer had also announced its product the day prior. NxTop — which is almost identical to vClient — stands out for one big reason: It’s here, at VMworld, and you can see it in action today. VMware has yet to  demo vClient.

Dan Kusnetzky, as part of an overall blog entry on desktop virtualization, said:

Virtual Computer was demonstrating their own approach to a highly managed, highly secure VDI-based solution. Their technology was interesting in that it allowed each of the layers of technology making up a desktop solution (application, data, personalization and underlying operating system) to be managed from a common repository.

Gotta run – more later if I have time.

Peter Rawlinson at Virtual Strategy Magazine thinks something is missing from virtualized desktop solutions: the human element.  

Something is missing here.  Something that was not only present, but always intimately entwined in the PC.  Something that was essential to user acceptance of the PC.  We are talking here of the user, the human being, what can be referred to in technological terms as the ‘user personality’.  This is all the personal preferences that each user has that make their working environment their own.  Desktop wallpaper, resolution settings, keyboard, language and mouse settings, spell-checker, desktop icon location, personal applications etc. are all optional changes that a user can, and is fully expecting to, be able to make to the baseline configuration of their desktop.

I talked about this the other day and agree. The end user is an important element.