In fact, VDI represents a minor use case of Desktop Virtualization where desktop images run on servers and fast storage in the data center. VDI works great for use cases that involve non-personalized images, a high speed LAN connection, and thin client terminals. VDI does not take advantage of the native performance and capabilities of a PC, therefore it does not truly represent a solution for the 600M business PCs in the world today.

Client virtualization is the term that most people describe as the form of Desktop Virtualization that takes advantage of the native capabilities of a PC (CPU, GPU, memory).  In nearly all cases, client virtualization involves some sort of client hypervisor, whether a type-1 hypervisor that runs directly on PC hardware or a type-2 hypervisor that runs on another operating system.  A local “work” PC image resides on the hypervisor and is updated by a central “work” PC image.

Hypervisors on desktops require significantly more software development effort than hypervisors on servers because of all of the different peripherals, GPUs, etc., that are associated with the many different PC models from many different manufacturers.  As such, the amount of development effort spent trying to maintain hardware compatibility for desktop hypervisors will often overshadow and consume more development resources than the development effort of the management between the local and central PC images. Even with this sort of extensive development effort on hardware compatibility, most vendors will have a list of PCs that they support. In translation this means that you are out of luck if you do not have a PC from that list, resulting in a solution that will not work.

As part of its forthcoming Windows 8 OS, Microsoft is now including a Hyper-V client hypervisor within. When Windows 8 ships, there should not be any hardware compatibility issues with the Hyper-V hypervisor, even for PCs that are a couple of years old. The Hype-V hypervisor will also be just as secure, if not more secure, than other client hypervisors in the market.

The next natural question is why any customer would purchase a client virtualization solution that has its own client hypervisor, when Microsoft will soon be providing one for free? This is especially the case since client virtualization solutions have over-rotated on the hypervisor development instead of creating a superior image management and recovery solution that will work with the Windows 8 client hypervisor.

This is exactly what we have done at Wanova, except that we can also provide the same image management and recovery to PCs that don’t have a client hypervisor at all. In fact, Wanova Mirage can provide image management and recovery for a combination of PCs that have no hypervisor, a type-1 hypervisor, and a type-2 hypervisor. You can even move the images between any of these PC types.

Mirage centralizes PC images with incredible efficiency by integrating de-duplication technology into the data synchronization so that Mirage stores only one copy of a file, application, or operating system in the data center and does not transfer a file, application, or operating system over the network if another user’s system has already done so.

Once images are centralized, Mirage provides the same benefits for PCs that VDI provides, or eventually will provide, for thin clients including desktop recovery of the entire image, single image desktop management, PC refresh, in-place Windows migration, and centralized image repair.

Some additional benefits include:

• Desktop recovery automatically backs up an exact image of a user’s PC including personal applications, files and personalization. Restoring is as easy as installing a new Wanova client – no need for CDs, DVDs, or other complicated restore alternatives and can be done over any network.
• Single image management enables the patching and updating of a single copy of Windows and a single copy of each application for the entire organization, instead of trying to manage thousands of individual PCs.
• PC refresh transfers an entire user image to a new PC with full personalization, files. and all their previously installed applications.
• In-place Windows migration is fully automated and centrally controlled so a single technician can conduct 100 migrations per day.  IT does not have to touch the PC and the user downtime is typically only 30 minutes.
• Centralized image repair enables IT to fix malware-infected machines, broken applications or registry errors on the centralized images without troubleshooting.

These benefits are the result of a solution focusing on image management and recovery as opposed to focusing on creating and maintaining hardware compatibility with an ever-increasing number of PCs.

While these benefits may not seem related, they in fact should be expected. Desktop Virtualization is just another way of doing desktop management. Desktop Virtualization centralizes images and provides single image management in the data center instead of trying to manage thousands of PCs independently. Once PC images are centralized and managed through image layering, all the above benefits should just come as part of the solution.

This is the real value in deploying Desktop Virtualization and the value that you should expect regardless if you have PCs, thin clients, or both.

This year has already kicked off with those speculating that we have moved to a “post-PC” era, the idea that the future of PCs is in jeopardy. While this viewpoint is shared by those vendors looking to move forward their positioning and lines of business, we feel that the call of a post-PC era is inaccurate at best, as it does not address the hundreds of millions of PCs and thousands of corporate Windows applications that are in use today, along with continuous improvement of the Windows line of operating system. Hence, the post-PC era discussion is short-sighted and leaves too many business professionals in the dark.

We believe the best solution to address the needs of both current and future businesses would be to define this era as “PC-plus.” Coined this way by IDC’s Bob O’Donnell, the PC-plus era highlights the operational scenario where Windows and non-Windows devices are co-existing. This delicate balance will remain as an ongoing opportunity for those enterprises looking to embrace all current and forthcoming devices.

One direction that VDI vendors are pushing for is to eliminate the need for Windows physical devices by serving Windows applications on hosted virtual desktops in the data center and letting the various devices remote into the hosted desktops using remote desktop protocols.

This scenario may work under some circumstances, but does not address the countless scenarios where the end user wants their device to act like their device, and not some 50% version that doesn’t leverage the device’s full resources and rich user-interface, cannot operate offline, and whose performance is affected by network latency for every operation they make.  Furthermore, the user experience of accessing Windows apps using tablets with touch interfaces is very limited and should be used scarcely.

We believe in an alternative model for the PC-plus era, which blends remote and local execution.  In this model, users will have the ability to use their non-Windows devices for native apps, as well as remote to Windows apps over a hosted virtual environment for occasional read-mostly purposes (e.g., when their Windows device is not with them), but will continue to use their laptops for generational day-to-day “read-write” activities – with a constant synchronization between the work spaces of the various devices.

We don’t see this type of scenario happening in the next few hours or days. The PC-plus era is a time for IT to find the best fit for their business that can address end user experience without compromise.

Mirage 2.0 is the result of two years of active customer feedback, crafted into a desktop virtualization solution that is geared for the distributed enterprise. Mirage works on laptops – whether they are online or offline. It works over the WAN. But most importantly it works for IT, and it works for end users.

Mirage combines the manageability of VDI with the flexibility of a laptop. It’s easy to deploy, sensitive to network and storage resources, and now, scalable to meet the needs of the enterprise. We’ve added server clustering, with dynamic storage provisioning. We’ve added the Mirage Branch Reflector — a snazzy way to designate any branch-based PC as a proxy so that LAN-based peers can receive significant software updates (such as a Windows 7 image) without branch servers, and without bringing a network to its knees.  We’ve also extended our Centralized Virtual Desktop (CVD) layering so that administrators have even more control over restoring and repairing PCs.

We think Mirage 2.0 is pretty impressive. But don’t take our word for it – try it yourself, for free. We look forward to hearing what you have to say about it.

Wanova Mirage is not traditional desktop management: it allows full centralization of each desktop so IT gets better control, single image management, and the ability to move this desktop around to support hardware migration, quick replacement of lost laptops, and other use cases.

Nor is Mirage a client-based hypervisor or ‘offline VDI’ solution. Instead, users run a local copy of their desktop without any type of hypervisor, so they get optimal performance, the ability to work online and offline, and the whole system is optimized to work effectively over a WAN.

It seems an appropriate time to reflect on what we’ve achieved in the past 365 days.

• Launched Mirage 1.3 in March, after an extensive (and oversubscribed) beta program. We are grateful for our active, vocal beta testers who helped make our product even better.
• Wanova was voted one of 10 startups to watch in 2010 by Network World.
• Gartner included Wanova as a ‘Cool Company in Client Computing’ for 2010
• Continued successful deployment of Mirage at customer accounts.
• Signed several significant partnerships (stay tuned for more on this!)

In any case, as a marketing person, I’m thrilled to stand behind a product that has been described by our customers as ‘groundbreaking’, ‘game-changing’, and ‘setup is flawless, quick and easy.’

Stay tuned – we have lots of great news to post at VMworld. We’ll be tweeting and blogging all week. Follow us on Twitter @wanova and @mborovac. See you at VMworld!