Windows 7 will drive virtual desktop adoption, VMware says

The release of Microsoft's Windows 7 should increase adoption of desktop virtualization technology, but won't necessarily cause a massive shift from physical to virtual desktops, a VMware executive said this week.

Industry analysts say many IT customers are interested in desktop virtualization but have been waiting for the introduction of Win 7 to make a wholesale shift to the technology. Migrating from physical to virtual desktops is a potentially enormous project, and many businesses decided it would be inefficient to take the virtualization leap and then be faced with a separate project to upgrade operating systems.

VMware's Bogomil Balkansky, vice president of product marketing, agreed that Win 7 will bring the topic of desktop virtualization to the minds of IT pros, and customers he has spoken with seem to be more interested in Win 7 than Vista, he says.

A decision to upgrade employee desktops to Win 7 may also make a CIO think more broadly about a desktop strategy, Balkansky says. "[Windows 7] is very topical and puts the question on the table," he says. "I think it really forces the subject of virtual desktops to become an agenda item in many companies."

But Balkansky does not expect an immediate massive uptick in adoption.

"As you expect, a whole migration to Windows 7 or migration to virtual desktops is something that will not happen overnight," he says.

The switch from XP or Vista to Win 7 can be simplified by virtual desktop technology, however, Balkansky says. For example, desktop virtualization can minimize the risks of migration by preserving a customer's XP environment. If anything goes wrong with Win 7, the customer can simply revert back to a working state of XP, he says.

"Obviously, Windows 7 poses a challenge for customers, in the sense that migrating hundreds or thousands, or tens of thousands from one generation of a desktop operating system to another is a fairly serious and involved logistical challenge and logistical problem," he says.

In addition to the Win 7 desktop operating system, Microsoft is releasing its new server operating system, namely Windows Server 2008 R2. (See "Three creative ways to evaluate Windows Server 2008 R2") The server operating system's virtualization technology will let Microsoft compete more directly against VMware because of features such as live migration, the ability to move running virtual machines from one physical server to another without taking an application down.

Massive adoption of Microsoft's Hyper-V virtualization software, which is significantly less expensive than VMware's, could deal a huge blow to VMware's core business. Balkansky, while admitting that he is a biased observer, says there are few compelling reasons for customers to switch to Microsoft server virtualization. VMware delivers a lower TCO per application and "has historically supported more versions of the Windows server operating system than Microsoft itself," he argues.

For VMware customers that do upgrade to Windows Server 2008 R2, Balkansky says they won't have to make any major changes to their virtualization strategy in order to take advantage of the new OS.

"You don't need to do any change in design," he says. "One of the core benefits of VMware virtualization is complete abstraction between the hardware and operating system, so you can treat these elements independently of each other."

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