At the very kind invitation of my former IBM rep (I mean former as in two companies and 13 years ago, when I was an IT buyer spending multiple tens of millions of dollars on mainframe computers and storage each year and her youngest son wasn’t yet riding a bicycle, much less driving a car), I went to a seminar today hosted by Mainline.  I’ve been told Mainline is IBM’s largest value-added reseller.  I think it was someone at Mainline who told me that.  Anyway, the topic was VMWare’s Virtual Desktop. 

If I were starting a company today (which I did earlier this year), and I had time to think these things through, I would deploy a virtual desktop solution.  OK, so maybe it doesn’t make sense for my 3-person office (four if I count the office manager’s sister who comes in once a week to do tax reporting for the leasing company).  But if your company’s going to have more than 20 employees and you think you’re going to be around for more than 3 years, and you are even remotely thinking about outfitting your employees with PCs, do yourself a favor and at least have someone check Virtual Desktop, and whatever competitors to VMWare are out there.  Even with our small office, I’ve spent hours messing around with PCs and software upgrades, and Guy, our friendly computer technician, has been to visit at least a half dozen times.  I haven’t gone into an exhaustive total-cost-of-ownership analysis, but there are plenty of analysts who have, and Tom Pisello has done a good job laying it out.

VMWare wasn’t the first to think of a virtual desktop.  Sun’s been shipping the Sun Ray for years.  Sun Ray, in my opinion was “directionally correct,” but perhaps before its time, if only from the perspective of the network (especially the almost non-existent wireless connections and the painfully-slow-at-the-time hotel room dial-up connections).  Not as “before its time” as the Apple Newton, another directionally correct invention, that was shipped before its time.  Sun’s still out there shipping Sun Rays, and they deserve a look, if for no other reason than they were right, the virtual desktop is better than managing PCs. 

So, I got to thinking about some business opportunities,  while I was in the seminar.  Since these virtual desktops can be remotely managed, why not offer a remotely-managed virtual desktop service for small businesses (like my 3-person office)?  Why not offer virtual desktops as a service to an entire office building as part of a green (meaning environmentally friendly) office building initiative?  Actually, someone did this in a new office building in Long Island about five years ago.  The developers were directionally correct, but before their time. But now Mainline has deployed virtual desktops in every room of a business hotel in Florida. They get a new guest, they re-image the desktop with a clean image.  And, they could do it remotely as a service for the hotel.  No nasty viruses left behind.  Notice, I said re-image, not reboot.  The clients “re-image” in about the time it takes to warm up my old television. Personally, I’d like to contact my neighborhood association and get someone in the development to host the one or two servers it would take to replace the 200+ PCs that are in our neighborhood with thin clients.

Does this stuff work?  It sure seems so. There were a couple of guys from a very conservative bank in the audience.  They had already deployed Virtual Desktop and were nodding in agreement for the better part of three hours.  For the record, they weren’t paid to nod.