Brian Madden wrote a blog post today revisiting his prediction of two years ago that VDI would be ready for wholesale deployment by now, and was contingent on solving four key problem areas.

1. Single disk image for many users
2. Remote display protocols that are indistinguishable from local
3. Local / offline VDI
4. Broader compatibility for app virtualization

I (of course) was pleased to see that he mentioned Wanova in several of these categories, but I thought it was important to clarify a few points. With the emergence of XenClient and other proposed ‘offline VDI’ technologies, I find people assume Wanova is addressing the problem in the same way, using a hypervisor with some sort of ‘check-in/check-out’. This couldn’t be further from reality.

When we built Wanova Mirage, we started with the idea of how best to address real customer pain: helping IT better manage, support and protect desktops, especially for remote and mobile workers, without compromising user experience. We were not trying to force fit a technology that made perfect sense for servers to fit a mobile desktop model. That gave us a lot of flexibility.

Instead, we engineered a software solution that works within Windows. Hypervisors of any sort, while supported, are not required. Wanova Mirage centralizes the full contents of the desktop in the datacenter for management and protection, but distributes execution to the endpoint for optimal user experience (added benefit: no need for a massive server farm to run each desktop). Mirage’s virtual layers allow IT to create a single image and apply it to hundreds of users, easily addressing Brian’s first point. Because users are accessing a local cache of the centrally stored desktop, we can stay out of the ‘protocol’ war. Point 2 – Check.

And while connected, Mirage continuously and bi-directionally synchronizes the endpoint cache with the centralized desktop: IT changes to the managed image layer propagate down to endpoint caches, and user updates to the personal layer propagate up to the central desktop instance.  Further, Mirage employs in-data-path and sophisticated network optimization technologies that enable extremely efficient data transfer.  The bottom line is that with Mirage, the desktop is “always checked-in” and resides at the data-center. It just leverages the available CPU cycles of the endpoint cache to execute desktop workloads. This architecture makes it possible for users to easily work online as well as offline, with full performance and complete access to their entire desktop. Point 3 – Check.

Finally, in the Mirage layered model, IT can define core applications that can be managed and distributed as part of the Base Image (typically, Office, antivirus, etc.). But in the second layer reserved for user-installed applications, Mirage is agnostic to how these are provisioned. They can be installed by the user, or provisioned centrally through SCCM/Altiris, or virtualized. Whatever works best for your organization. Point 4 – Check.

In my view, easier is better. Why create a whole infrastructure with connection brokers, server farms, high-performance storage, new clients, synchronizers, hypervisors, and the list goes on…to virtualize everything, when you can just as easily manage what you have today?