A different customer loaded a remote user’s CVD from a laptop to a Virtual Machine (VM) running in the data center in order to troubleshoot a problem locally. Within two hours, the customer was able to fix the user’s issue and re-assign the corrected CVD to the end user’s laptop. After resolving the issue, the customer commented, “This process usually requires that we send someone onsite, and it can take days to resolve a problem like this for a remote user. Mirage is going to save us a ton of time and money by centralizing many of our support processes.”

Another customer (yep – we have a lot of beta sites) had a desktop corrupted beyond repair; the system was non-responsive, and Office applications were not functioning. Normally, the only (very painful!) way to recover from such state would have been to re-image the desktop with a clean corporate image, then have the user re-install all of her user-installed applications, re-configure her settings, and backup and restore all of her files before and after the re-imaging, respectively. Moreover, for remote users the shipping of the new image over the WAN is a big challenge in its own right, and often requires an image-server infrastructure from which the desktop can PXE-boot.

Using Wanova, the IT administrator simply invoked a “Reinforce Base Image” operation, which applied a clean base image on the endpoint that corrected the system and all corporate applications, while preserving her personalized applications and user-data. The user’s system was up and running with a clean OS and a fully operational Office suite within an hour. Our customer’s initial reaction was “Wow.” Then, after a (we think, stunned and amazed) pause, he said, “It usually takes a week for a user to get back to a full working environment – my users hate this. And the best thing, I can apply this same magic both to my local and remote employees. This is awesome!”

Finally, another customer had a dead laptop. Rather than sending the laptop back and having the user down for several days, IT simply migrated the user’s CVD to a new laptop (different hardware, incidentally) using the correct base image for the new hardware. Further, all user data, personalization and locally installed applications were also installed. Because Wanova first downloads the minimal working set, the user was up and running again in 20 minutes. Any missing data was streamed in the background. After seeing this process, the customer said, “This is a game-changer. We just took a process that is extremely painful and time-consuming – both for us and and for the end-user — and completed it in minutes!”

While using the plane’s in-flight wireless service, I’m synchronizing with my Centralized Virtual Desktop (CVD) in our data center in San Jose. Because Wanova doesn’t require a hypervisor, I’m working as I normally would. The only difference is that I have an icon in my system tray which tells me whether I’m working online, offline, fully protected, etc.. I’ve been in IT for longer than I’d like to admit and I’ve never had this kind of “cool factor”…ever.

Here’s the way Wanova works. I have a client running on my laptop. Our software runs on a physical or virtual server in the data center. Conceptually speaking, we centralize my laptop in the data center in a CVD where IT can centrally manage, protect, and support it. The client on my laptop has a cache, which allows me to work offline. When I re-connect, any changes made by IT are optimally downloaded to my laptop, and (based on IT policy), any changes I make are optimally uploaded to my CVD. Now, the only way this works effectively over the WAN, VPN, or, in this case, at 30k feet is we have technology called “Distributed Desktop Optimization” (DDO). Basically what this means is that we eliminate any redundant data at the network and storage layers. So, we never have to send any redundant data or store any redundant data. And, because we work at the file and block level, most of the changes I would make already exist on the server side so they don’t have to be sent or stored.

For all I know, our IT group in San Jose may be applying a patch or fixing an issue, and I’m working as I normally would – regardless of whether I’m offline or online. So, there’s a huge productivity benefit both for IT and for me as an end-user. And, I can honestly say that my user experience is unaffected. I can’t even tell that our client is running on my laptop. This is really cool stuff!

You see, the challenge that many desktop vendors face (and customers experience first-hand) is they approach the problem from a server or client perspective and they treat the network as an afterthought. That misses the point. With desktop virtualization, the network is the PC bus. And unlike the PC bus running on your laptop or desktop today – which always works – the network introduces all kinds of complexity to the mix, including latency, bandwidth constraints, and even occasional availability issues. When I made this point during our presentation in Montreal, there were a lot of heads nodding around the room. Customers get it. It’s an easy problem to identify but a hard one to solve, and even harder if you treat the network as an afterthought.

Several attendees also mentioned that what was interesting to them was not the hypervisor, but improving PC lifecycle management. People are thinking about how they ease OS migrations given the release of Windows 7. But OS migration is just one aspect of PC lifecycle management that includes desktop provisioning, desktop management, desktop continuity – to name a few.

In retrospect, I’m glad attendees weren’t interested in the hypervisor since Wanova doesn’t require a hypervisor. That would have been a much tougher crowd for us.