The Pervasive Data Center

Analyst Brian Madden identifies desktop virtualization as a major 2008 virtualization theme:

If you could sum up the year with a single theme, that theme would be "desktop virtualization is here to stay." I don't want to go so far as to say that desktop virtualization is mainstream, but 2008 saw Microsoft, VMware, and Symantec getting serious about it, and Citrix fighting to keep the lead (it'd) established via XenApp over the past decade.

I concur.

"Desktop virtualization" isn't a single thing; it's really a shorthand for a variety of approaches, the common thread of which is that they're not traditional Wintel "fat clients." And it dovetails with other technology approaches--such as rich Internet applications (RIA) and browser-based application access--that are only virtualization in the most conceptual sense.

I started seeing a swelling interest in alternative ways of delivering applications and software services to a variety of clients in 2007. But I agree with Madden that the trend accelerated in 2008, albeit at a measured pace often driven by security and compliance concerns more than return-on-investment arguments.

2008 saw Citrix rationalize its entire virtualization portfolio around the Xen nomenclature--breaking from its successful but narrow Presentation Server roots. And VMware's View announcement in December filled out a client-side portfolio that had been missing some major pieces previously.

Microsoft, meanwhile, rolled out Hyper-V and announced a new version of its application virtualization product. And systems vendors such as Dell, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, NEC, and Sun Microsystems also expanded or updated their offerings on the desktop side.

The desktop, as we've come to know it, has hardly gone away. New devices that depend on applications running in the network and data stored there tend to supplement, rather than replace, more traditional clients.

But some of our applications now usually reside in the network; we tend to regard an unconnected PC as a crippled thing. And that opens up a frame of mind that will move more and more "state" (whether applications, personal data, or other services) off local devices and into either corporate data centers or the cloud.

This post by Michael Dolan at IBM is spot on:

Here's the thing, everyone who hears "Linux desktop" has a knee-jerk reaction and thinks of all the things they do on their own PC, laptop, Mac. The reality is you're probably not the target market for virtual desktops. The market is large desktop environments that have thousands (perhaps tens of thousands) of users and who are not doing consumer-oriented work (or shouldn't be). The cost savings of moving from physical PCs in a 1 user to 1 PC model to a managed model with virtual terminals can be significant. We'll see where the market goes for this model, but I know of a few very large companies that want to make this model very real. The economic situation and the impact on IT budgets may act as an accelerant.

Much of the time when I write about the evolution of Linux or the evolution of the client, I get lots of comments revolving around the lack of popular games for Linux or whether the GIMP can replace Photoshop. And, of course, the partisans for whom it's important whether Linux "wins" or "loses" to Windows or Mac OS X jump in with their various ideological objectives. 

Idealogues and fanboys aside, however, part of the problem is terminology. "Desktop" gets used to refer to at least a couple of different things. One is the traditional, general purpose PC as we've come to know it over the past 20 years or so. The other is a shorthand for any client device with a keyboard and monitor. The former is a "fat client" with all that implies for a broad range of hardware support and available applications. The latter is more specialized. It may run only a limited subset of applications. Or it may run primarily network-based applications through an interface, such as a browser. Whatever the details, it's effectively much thinner--whether or not it's actually a thin client.

I'm not going to argue that Linux can't function as a reasonably general-purpose PC operating system. For example, developers who want a desktop, or more commonly a notebook, that runs Linux have lots of good distributions to choose from that (mostly) install straightforwardly. Ubuntu is a current favorite. But that's not mainstream mass market. And for reasons that I've gone into previously, such as the dynamics of independent software vendor support, I never expect it to be such if we're talking an operating system in today's Windows or OS X mold.

But the way that we access applications is changing. Many clients are predominantly platforms for browsers or they serve a very specific purpose. Virtualization could also change how we run an operating system or systems on our PCs and other devices. In short, there are plenty of roles for Linux on the "desktop," but it's not the desktop as we've historically known it.

About this time last year, I took a look back at some of the macro trends that hit their stride during 2007. I thought it would be interesting to see which of those trends are still noteworthy, which new ones are on the radar, and generally how the landscape has changed.

Server virtualization remains perhaps the hottest trend in IT. It may no longer be pegging the hype meter quite as hard, but that's only because server virtualization has moved into the mainstream. It's ever more clearly one of those fundamental developments that touches and transforms all manner of associated technologies, products, and processes.

To be sure, lots of virtualization customers are still using it for relatively straightforward server consolidation, but more and more are also implementing high availability and other services on top of a virtualization foundation. One notable event during the year was the ouster of Diane Greene from VMware's helm, but so far, neither this nor Microsoft's increasingly aggressive virtualization efforts have had a substantial impact on VMware's position as market leader.

Alternative clients are ways of provisioning applications and delivering software services that differ from the loading up of an operating system and clients on a traditional PC. This includes accessing applications through a browser interface. It also includes a variety of technologies that, collectively, keep desktop applications and/or operating systems in the data center, and push them out to user devices--including, but not limited to, thin clients--in a managed way.

This trend continues to gather pace, albeit in a relatively measured way, with security and compliance often the primary driving force. Most major virtualization players have steadily broadened their portfolios to encompass both client-side and server-side virtualization, taking advantage of one with the other.

Power and cooling, or more broadly, "green," remains at the same relatively nascent level as last year, when I wrote that "power and cooling is increasingly something that IT staffs think about--even if, in most cases, they're not the absolute top-of-mind worry that is sometimes suggested."

Running out of power or space in a facility remains the primary reason that companies take substantive action on major clean-technology projects. Because power bills are usually in someone else's budget, even operational cost savings--never mind generalized environmental concern--don't have a big impact on decisions absent high-level corporate mandates or governmental regulation.

Intel's resurgence continued in 2008, as it ramped its 45-nanometer processors. For its part, Advanced Micro Devices did take steps to repair the damage caused by its delayed "Barcelona" processors. Its 45nm "Shanghai" processor shipped ahead of schedule, lending credence to company claims that its development and manufacturing processes were back on track.

On the financial front, AMD put its Asset Smart plan in motion--essentially spinning off its fabrication plants and people as The Foundry Company, and taking a major investment from Abu Dhabi-based organizations. However, Intel retains a much stronger financial position during an economic period that is likely to be extremely challenging for the semiconductor business.

Open source and open-source licenses certainly didn't go away in 2008. But I don't really view them as a trend at this point any more than programming languages or databases. They're just part of the software landscape--a way to develop and market software.

Open source has, in a sense, won, and one of the consequences is that the license wars are largely over because of an implicit consensus that open source has proven to be a good development model that doesn't need a lot of protection through legalisms.

In particular, very few people are showing much enthusiasm for the Affero GPL, a license whose intent is to extend the GPL's restrictions (enhancements have to be contributed back to the community) to software delivered in the form of a service. Yet that's how an increasing amount of software will be used.

And that's really the trend that emerged in force this year: "cloud computing," a term that I use to refer broadly to using software services or infrastructure over the network.

To be sure, there's more vendor hype (and consumer use in the guise of Web 2.0) than there is enterprise adoption. And I strongly suspect that will remain the case for quite some time. Part of the reason is that deployments will tend to happen with new applications rather than legacy ones.

However, more broadly, enterprises will want to understand and have the tools to manage attributes such as security, compliance, and portability (including the ability to run applications on-premises, off-premises, or a combination of the two).

Is cloud computing a legitimate trend? Yes. And it will be a long-term trend, so just count this as a start.

Earlier this year, I expressed my skepticism that Mobile Internet Devices (MIDs) and Netbooks (essentially scaled-down, low-cost notebooks) would come to pass as mainstream product categories. My reasoning boiled down to an assertion that these things were neither fish nor fowl. As usually envisioned, a MID is a form factor that is neither as portable as a smartphone nor as full-functioned as a notebook. A Netbook is a notebook that is underpowered and otherwise compromised.

I've seen nothing over the past few months to change my mind about MIDs. If anything, Apple's continued march with the iPhone and the work going on around Google Android have me more convinced than ever that the browser-equipped smartphone is the future of truly mobile computing. (There are a lot of interesting dynamics here related to carrier hardware subsidies and the desire of carriers to lock down and restrict use in various ways, but those are topics for another day.)

Netbook sales, on the other hand, have been strong. In fact, they're driving a lot of the worldwide growth in PC sales. So, are we, in fact, seeing the emergence of a new product category--something that doesn't happen very often?

We are seeing a lot of consumer interest in very portable computers that are economy-priced. Economy pricing is really what's new here. Historically, companies have paid big premiums to get the most portable notebooks for their road warriors with the goal being to give up as little function as possible in service of light weight (and, to a lesser degree, small size).

Some things about Netbooks do indeed look like a new category of product. The first is that a lot of the people purchasing these devices are individuals, not businesses. In many cases (especially in the U.S.), they're intended to supplement--rather than replace--another desktop PC or a higher-end notebook. A second thing is that, especially at the entry level, Netbooks tend to have differences of kind, and not just degree. They run Linux and Windows XP, not Vista. They're explicitly intended to access Web-based applications through a browser or to run some basic productivity software locally; they're not general purpose. And they use less power-hungry, but less powerful, processors such as Intel's Atom.

However, I wonder if the apparent bright line distinction from other notebooks isn't a temporary phenomenon that will soften over time. Memory gets denser, processors get faster, LCDs get cheaper. Some of these Moore's Law-fueled advances could indeed continue to push the entry level of the notebook market down in price. Perhaps we'll even have a $100 laptop that only costs $100 some day. But I strongly suspect that a lot of that technical advance will also go into beefing up the capabilities of notebooks in the sort of price band that a lot of consumer electronics sell for--say, sub-$500.

Ultimately, I'm less convinced that we're seeing the emergence of a truly distinct product category than that we're seeing the continued downward movement of not only notebook entry pricing, but entry bulk as well. Besides, however fond IT industry people are at chopping markets into named categories, as a fellow analyst said at a recent meeting: "the average consumer calls everything a laptop anyway."

Ubuntu has been making gains on the server side of things. And that's likely where Canonical, the commercial entity behind Ubuntu, will earn its profits--as it hopes to do someday.

But its initial efforts on the client side arguably are what really helped shift the limelight to Ubuntu in the first place. Ubuntu gained the reputation of being easier to install and use than other Linux distributions--factors that have kept even many open-source enthusiasts from adopting Linux on their desktops or notebooks. And user experience remains a significant focus area.

Mark Shuttleworth, who heads and financially backs Canonical, is on record with comments such as "I think the great task in front of us in the next two years is to lift the experience of the Linux desktop from something stable and usable and not pretty, to something that's art." Or more broadly, to surpass Apple, in terms of desktop experience.

I strongly suspect that there are inherent trade-offs between the flexibility and choice associated with open source, and the unified approach (epitomized by Apple) that tends to be associated with good user interface design. But the bigger issue with mainstreaming the Linux PC has nothing to do with design and everything with where we are in technology history when it comes to accessing and interacting with software.

Writers of heavyweight client applications (think Adobe Systems' Photoshop, for example) don't want to support additional operating systems. Getting the latest versions of applications for its platform is even a challenge for Apple--resurgent sales and market share notwithstanding.

While there's lots of open-source software for Linux clients, there's a very modest amount of closed-source software available. This is not especially a knock on Linux, per se--though low software costs certainly contribute to Linux's attraction in some cases--but rather reflect the decades-long winnowing of the number of platforms that software vendors are willing to support.

There's also a general maturation of the PC operating system. Linux desktop distributions, Mac OS X, and--dare I say it--Windows are far more alike than they are different. You may choose one over the other to make an ideological or stylistic statement, to gain access to specific applications, or just as a matter of personal preference. But both differences and advances are increasingly at the margins.

I think we see some of this in the relatively slow take-up of Vista. The Microsoft haters blame Vista; the blame at least equally sits on the reality that Windows XP is a good enough desktop operating system for most purposes.

In short, I just don't see a lot of enthusiasm for another desktop operating system in the Windows or Mac OS X mold. This is especially so because it represents the past in many ways. Many new applications are running in the network, and the client--in its myriad forms, from desktop to smartphone--is merely a portal to access them.

In a sense, this is an opportunity for Linux. In a world where all you need is a browser and some other standardized client components, why not Linux? And, indeed, I expect that we'll see Linux on a lot of thinner clients, where it will act more as the underpinning for a browser than as a more generalized operating environment.

But I think that it is important to distinguish this from Linux, the desktop OS--as that term is normally used. This isn't about running games or editing movies on the latest quad-core Intel processor. This is about powering lighter-weight clients in which the operating system--and, especially, the general application support enjoyed by any given operating system--just doesn't matter very much.

In most enterprises, PCs are what the accountants call a "corporate asset." The company buys them, loads software on them, sticks on a little asset tag, and lets employees use them as tools for their jobs. A given IT department may have more or fewer formal processes--or may simply be more or less control-freakish. But, whether employees get much choice in choosing a preferred PC model and whatever IT's general attitude toward running "unapproved" applications, the PC is company property.

There are lots of historical reasons for this general approach. Desktop PCs sat in an office or a cubicle and were clearly part of a company's physical plant. At least as importantly, PC management (and security) of those PCs was largely predicated on controlling the entire PC software image. Not that managing this way was particularly effective or easy but there were few tools to deal with applications at a more granular level. Finally, even after a PC became a standard fixture of the corporate desk, that didn't mean they were in every home--nor that everyone was exactly "computer literate."

It would, of course, be silly to say all that history is now part of some dead past. However, we're starting to see a variety of intersecting changes that make it much more thinkable that IT shops could at least partially divest themselves of their PC supplier role. Instead, the idea is that employees would just use their own personal systems. There might be stipends; there might be negotiated bulk purchases that people would have the option of hooking into. IT would still be on the hook for at least corporate application support. But, whatever the details, it would be a very different way of thinking about PCs.

(Think of the following discussion specifically in the context of what are often called mobile professionals: executives, sales reps, developers, and so forth.)

Pricing, notebooks, and ubiquity. Pricing has come down, many PC buyers are going mobile, and "everyone" (in the group I'm talking about here) has a PC and is pretty comfortable with using it. That's a broad-brush statement, of course. But the bottom line is that PCs, and even notebooks, are something that people routinely own and use independently of however they use them for business. There are a lot of analogies to mobile phones here; early car phones and even their pocket-able successors tended to be company supplied. Today--especially if we're talking about basic voice phones--employees mostly just use their own.

Changing nature of work and workforce. More mobility, more contract or project-based workers, more blending of the personal and the professional. Collectively, these mean that it's increasingly impractical for IT to give someone a notebook with the stern admonition that "this shall only be used for official company business." It's not surprising that one IT manager I've spoken with who is pushing this personal PC theme particularly hard does indeed work for a company which brings in lots of consultants, local experts, and so forth on a project-by-project basis.

Changing security models. Increasingly work doesn't happen from a single location or a particular device. Furthermore, in part for the reasons noted above, a largely binary approach to security that distinguishes between those inside the "moat" and those outside doesn't really work any longer. And once you open the door to partners and others accessing your infrastructure using equipment that isn't locked-down by your IT department, you pretty much have to move to a model that does security on the basis of user roles and permissions rather than depending on specific device characteristics.

Virtualization, Rich Internet Applications, and other application delivery mechanisms. Finally, and by no means least, today there's an increasingly rich set of tools that provide ways of keeping corporate applications or even complete operating system images isolated within a personal PC. VMware ACE is an example of a product that is specifically designed for this purpose. However, because many software services are now delivered through a Web browser, in many cases users don't even need to directly connect to a corporate network in the usual way.

My point here isn't that every PC in an organization will get personal. In fact, as I've written about previously, I'm seeing a lot of interest in thin clients (which are inherently part of a formal IT infrastructure) for security and other reasons. But we are starting to see a shift toward more personal PCs as notebooks become ubiquitous, application access becomes less hardwired, and security shifts from device-based to user-based.

For as long as I've been following alternatives to traditional "fat client" desktops, most vendors have been touting thin client and related technologies mostly in the context of better return on investment (ROI).

They'll admit that up-front costs are higher. They'll even reluctantly concede that the user experience (in the sense of response time, adding a unique application, and so forth) may not be as good as for a traditional PC. But, the pitch goes, management costs will be so reduced that you'll make back your money.

As for the users? Well, so long as the thin client pitch has been mostly about gear for call centers and the like, it's hardly surprising that IT buyers often haven't put of a premium on richness of experience for that class of user. It's about the basic function.

The resulting business that this approach has driven has been respectable enough--especially for Citrix--but it's been fundamentally niche-y. Something for specific uses and users, rather than something broader.

One reason is that, to be frank, a lot of buyers don't believe ROI claims. The size of an up-front check you write is something tangible. Purported savings over the next three years? Not so much. Especially given that the savings are often "soft costs" that posit things like lower management costs or higher user productivity. Vendors may not be able to justify literally anything with the right ROI study. But they can try.

Moreover, justifying thin client computing strictly on a cost basis depends on these sorts of soft cost savings. After all, in a typical thin client architecture, you still need a desktop device (with a hardware bill of materials that isn't really all that much slimmer than that of a regular PC) plus you need all the back-end servers and software to deliver applications.

As a result, suppliers of complete (hardware/software/services) thin client solutions have started emphasizing two other benefits of thin client computing: compliance/security and user experience benefits.

The compliance and security aspect is pretty obvious. If data and applications aren't stored locally on a user's PC, they can't "walk" out the door. And, in general, it's pretty commonsensical that centralized applications and desktops would be easier to control whether we're talking software licensing or enforcing data retention policies.

In fact, the only thing that surprises me is that vendors didn't more widely focus on this aspect on thin client computing before now. To be sure, there's a broader awareness of data security issues, more compliance regulations, and more remote contract workers today. But ClearCube, an early "Blade PC" company, built its business largely on demand from three-letter government agencies and others for whom security was a front-and-center requirement. So antecedents were there to see.

It also shouldn't be a surprise that the historical "cheaper but not as good as a PC" storyline around thin client computing never had a whole lot of grassroots support. However, today, we have faster networks (both wide area and local area); this helps at the infrastructure level. Perhaps fundamentally, we're starting to see a variety of application and desktop virtualization approaches.

The specifics differ considerably but these new (and "reimagined") forms of virtualization collectively focus on delivering applications and operating systems to a user PC in a controlled way. For IT, this means a thin client-like degree of centralized management. But users still have a conventional desktop--or even notebook--so they retain the PC experience. And that experience can be even better to the degree that their operating system and applications can be easily refreshed ("de-crappified" to use the technical term).

Think of it as a sort of hybrid client model. In fact, this model has even broader implications in that it means that IT can selectively control and wall off parts of a PC without necessarily taking control of the whole thing.

This, in turn, means that many of the past justifications for PCs as locked-down corporate assets no longer apply. But that's a topic for another post.

Intel perhaps most of all, but a lot of technology vendors are pushing the idea of MIDs (Mobile Internet Devices) and Netbooks (essentially scale-down, low-cost notebooks). Intel's interest here is pretty straightforward: the more a mobile device resembles a traditional PC, the more Intel's x86 franchise gives it a leg-up. By contrast, smartphones are based on any number of low-power processors, typically something other than x86 architecture.

I'm skeptical that these categories between the smartphone and the notebook will amount to a whole lot.

The issue I see with MIDs and Netbooks in the general case, however, is essentially a matter of form factor.

One the one hand, smartphones fit easily in most pockets. The downside is a small screen and text input that is largely by thumb, rather than by finger. Furthermore, because smartphones have historically been built using such a hodgepodge of hardware and software--including browsers--Website compatibility has been spotty at best, even leaving aside the (significant) issues that a smaller screen area introduces.

At the other end of the scale are familiar notebooks. Even the more portable varieties have more-or-less full-size keyboards and screen. Besides relatively high cost and the need to maintain and update a full-fledged operating system on a PC, notebooks weigh a few pounds and pit in a backpack or briefcase form factor--not a pocket, however oversized.

Against this backdrop, one can imagine Netbooks that sit in a kitchen to look up recipes or a MID that functions as a mobile browser and entertainment gadget somewhat in the vein of an iPod Touch. However, these scenarios feel like stretching to me. The cellphone is ubiquitous and highly portable (and smartphone browsers will get better). The notebook is well-suited to keyboard input and rich Website display (and will inevitably get ever smaller and lighter).

What do the alternatives offer?

A MID is a form factor that is neither as portable as a smartphone nor as full-functioned as a notebook. A Netbook is a notebook that is underpowered and otherwise compromised. At a low enough price point, perhaps. But the One Laptop Per Child experience suggests that the most aggressive price points may well be too aggressive to be practical.

In short, at least in a market where almost everyone has a cellphone and notebooks are the full-function PC of choice, it's hard to see the compromises of the MID and the Netbook as anything but too much pain for too little gain.

All that said, I'm now going to do something that used to intensely annoy a former editor of mine who never let the facts interfere with a good argument. I'm going to qualify my skepticism. By analogy, people ride and pedal all manner of vehicles. Some, such as bicycles and cars, are clearly mainstream. A few are true oddballs (unicycles). Some have very specific use cases (two-seater cars). Others are generally uncommon in the US but are relatively common in other locations (scooters).

Perhaps MIDs or Netbooks will emerge as the two-seaters or even the scooters of the computer world. Truly mainstream device? Probably not. But the uber-portable and inexpensive notebook, in particular, could find takers in the developing world or as a third- or fourth household PC in more developed nations. Especially as Moore's Law and other technical advances bring faster processors and bigger storage to even the most entry of price points.

A couple of weeks ago, I was in Las Vegas for the Citrix iForum show. Citrix is best known for its Presentation Server product, nee MetaFrame. Presentation Server delivers specific business applications to remote desktops using Windows Terminal Server on the back-end. It's usually thought of in terms of thin client computing; in fact, the vast majority of Presentation Server installations deliver applications to ordinary PCs. (I describe the technology in more depth in this Illuminata research note.) However, these days, Citrix has many other products as well, variously tailored to delivering applications and full desktop images to a variety of clients.

I've been seeing more interest among IT folks in alternatives to traditional desktops over the past year since, well, ever. Traditional SMS-style provisioning and management systems never truly performed up to hopeful expectations; increasing concerns about security have only exacerbated an already sub-par situation. Nor are users thrilled with the current state of affairs. Their PCs tend to accumulate "cruft" (that's the technical term) over time and software loads "blow up" (another technical term) periodically. Furthermore, IT policies intended to keep things under some vague semblance of control tend to consist, in no small part, of long lists of "Thou shall nots" that limit what users can do with corporate PCs.

And, before the various fanboys chirp in, switching to Linux or a Mac doesn't make all these issues magically go away.