All About Microsoft
Mary-Jo FoleyWindows 8 to showcase 'desktop as a service'?
By Mary Jo Foley | November 16, 2010, 7:41am PST
Summary
Since April, it’s been quiet on the Windows 8 leak front. But here’s a new tidbit to keep the “what’s next for Windows” faithful going for a bit longer.
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Mary-Jo Foley
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Mary-Jo Foley
Mary Jo Foley has covered the tech industry for 25 years for a variety of publications, including ZDNet, eWeek and Baseline. She has kept close tabs on Microsoft strategy, products and technologies for the past 10 years. In the late 1990s, she penned the award-winning "At The Evil Empire" column for ZDNet, and more recently the Microsoft Watch blog for Ziff Davis.
Got a tip? Send her an email with your rants, rumors, tips and tattles. Confidentiality guaranteed.
Since April, it’s been quiet on the Windows 8 leak front. But here’s a new tidbit to keep the “what’s next for Windows” faithful going for a bit longer.
Blogger Charon at Ma-Config.com unearthed a slide presentation from a Microsoft architectural summit held in London in early April of this year that focuses on virtualization futures. (As Microsoft watchers may recall, new virtualization capabilities are expected by many to be part of Windows 8 when it ships around 2012 or so.) There’s only one slide in the deck that explicitly calls out the 2012+ “Windows Next.” But the deck still gives some general sense of what the Softies are thinking on the Windows client virtualization front.
The Microsoft solution architect presentation, entitled “Desktop as a Service,” describes some of the customer pain points associated with Windows today. From notes that are part of the slide deck:
Customers today “see application compatibility issues, they see DLL hell, they see an inability to manage efficiently, they see high costs associated with maintenance and upgrades, they see a relatively short lifespan…..This cannot continue. Customers are increasingly refusing to let this continue.”
What could alleviate these problems in a single bound? Virtualization technology! Or — to reflect the deck’s messaging more accurately — a panoply of virtualization technologies.
Microsoft already offers a number of virtualization technologies — Virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI); application virtualization (App-V, MED-V, Remote Apps, Terminal Server), OS virtualiztion (Remote Desktop, Terminal Services, VDI); data virtualization (folder redirection and synch); hardware virtualization (Hyper-V), plus various System Center management offerings. While many are touting VDI as the holy grail, VDI is not the same as desktop as a service (DaaS), according to the Softies, and DaaS is more than just VDI.
Here’s a slide that shows how Microsoft is thinking about the next-gen virtual desktop:
In the brave, new DaaS world, “the desktop should not be associated with the device. (T)he desktop can be thought of as a portal which surfaces the users apps, data, user state and authorisation and access,” according to the slides.
DaaS means applications and data are centrally managed, as are the deployment of these apps and data. Apps and data are “treated as cached entities and synchronized with an appstore and “user state store,” the slide deck explained. (Aha! Another mention of the infamous Windows 8 app store concept.) The operating system also is cached and synched with the appstore in this new model. Hardware failure becomes a non-issue (at least in theory) for users, and more reliable maintenance of applications and the operating system become possible, according to the slides.
More and more of the desktop will be virtualizable, as this slide (with the Windows Next mention) shows:
With Windows 7, Microsoft is able to provide virtualization of a user’s data, settings and applications (by using App-V). With “Windows Next” and beyond, Microsoft will be adding the ability to virtualize the operating system, as well, by providing native virtual hard disk (VHD) capabilities in/with Win 8, according to the slide.As I noted when Windows 8 slides leaked earlier this year, any/all of these concepts and plans could be shelved by the time Microsoft starts delivering the first public test builds of Windows 8 (some time in 2011). But it’s still interesting to see the thought process behind the next Windows release — and how/if it eventually will map to reality.
I’m wondering what the DaaS concept will mean not just to businesses, but also consumers. Would Microsoft be the one providing OS virtualization, via its own centralized datacenters — the way it is currently providing hosted applications via BPOS/Office 365?
Other thoughts/interpretations of what Microsoft might be planning on the virtualization/cloud front with Windows 8?
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Mary Jo has covered the tech industry for more than 25 years for a variety of publications and Web sites, and is a frequent guest on radio, TV and podcasts, speaking about all things Microsoft-related. She is the author of Microsoft 2.0: How Microsoft plans to stay relevant in the post-Gates era (John Wiley & Sons, 2008).
Disclosure
Mary-Jo Foley
Freelance journalist/blogger Mary Jo Foley has nothing to disclose. WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get). I do not own Microsoft stock or stock in any of its partners or competitors. I have no business ventures that are sponsored by/funded by Microsoft or any of its partners or competitors.
Biography
Mary-Jo Foley
Mary Jo Foley has covered the tech industry for 25 years for a variety of publications, including ZDNet, eWeek and Baseline. She has kept close tabs on Microsoft strategy, products and technologies for the past 10 years. In the late 1990s, she penned the award-winning "At The Evil Empire" column for ZDNet, and more recently the Microsoft Watch blog for Ziff Davis.
Got a tip? Send her an email with your rants, rumors, tips and tattles. Confidentiality guaranteed.
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Thin Clients
I remember using a sun thin client box in 1995. Is this essentially the same concept repacked by Microsoft.
RE: Windows 8 to showcase 'desktop as a service'?
@mjaus01 The shelf-life of a concept is 10 years according to Microsoft....So this is innovation now.
RE: Windows 8 to showcase 'desktop as a service'?
@cyberslammer2 We get it - you hate Microsoft. Now try adding to the discussion.Djblois11/16/2010 09:07 AMYou hit the nail ON THE HEAD cyberzodder2!!!
M$ NEVER innovates, everything they do is an EPIC FAIL -Kinect - only 1 million units sold since the 4th = EPIC FAIL
Win 7 phone - SOLD OUT = EPIC FAIL
Windows 7 - EPIC FAIL
Xbox = EPIC FAIL
Windows Server = EPIC FAIL
Zune = EPIC FAIL
M$Office = EPIC FAILI'm with you - M$ will be gone by the end of 2011 (if not sooner)!!!
cyberspammer11/16/2010 12:00 PMSounds like...
Citrix XenClient or perhaps a Microsoft spun version of similar tech. The hardware is entirely virtual (Intel vPro only right now) and the running OS can be synched back and forth with a "Synchronization" server. You can quite literally have a near-real-time backup of an entire "local" OS on a remote server. Its really quite amazing in action. I've got some vPro laptops setup with it at work and, honestly, I'm impressed enough I'd consider it on all of the laptops. Replacing a laptop is beyond trivial in that situation and can even be done remotely by the end user with a simple instruction sheet. Best part is that XenClient costs $0 and is basically just a rebuild of CentOS. Goes on the physical box using a CD or thumb drive and you can load the OS from CD or from the Synchronizer service.
RE: Windows 8 to showcase 'desktop as a service'?
I am wondering, with all the virtualization of our desktop,, who is responsible for security, and what will the holder of our apps do with it? I know, maybe I am just paranoid?
Cost?
Microsoft has had desktop virtualization available for several years no. It hasn't gone anywhere and it won't unless the pricing structure changes. It should be considered a built-in feature of the OS and not an add-on that is only available to you if you license the whole MS catalog.
sounds like the dumb terminals from the 80's
its great if you have a ton of machines that need the same stuff on them and you have the bandwidth. But I don't see this killing a traditional OS, especially when you have high performance programs like gaming or multi-media. This concept was around before there was a desktop OS, its just upgraded with a lot more functionality.
Exactly what it is...
@KBotThat's exactly what it is (and WAS).
This is all cyclical. After so much time in the "cloud" (and potential private information being let out) people will go back to normal desktops, and so on and so forth.
Plus there's SO many different definitions of "Cloud Computing". It's like there are as many different String Theories (not ACTUALLY a theory, according to the Scientific Method, which is taught in elementary/middle school).
Ah well.
I don't see a user benefit at home...
at all. I can see where this would be useful in a corporate environment though.
RE: Windows 8 to showcase 'desktop as a service'?
@JT82
NOPE. not for corporate either. DLL hell goes away simply by moving my station to your server? right...This is simly belligerent marketing to minimalize all IT professionals and to increase the recurring revenues for Microsoft. Do NOT buy in and push back hard!!!RE: Windows 8 to showcase 'desktop as a service'?
at home I surf, answer emails,store movies and pictures, and occasionally play some games on my computer. What does this get me? Sounds like complication I don't need or want. I surely would not trust my data to go back and forth to some company somewhere else.
The more elbows, T's and...
other plumbing you add, the greater the chance of stopping up the drain. I'd prefer they kept it simple. Frankly I miss 98SE. Even more frankly, there are times when I miss my trusty old TRS80.
Time for a Mac
How exactly am I supposed to run music production software, which MUST run as close to real-time as possible, on stuff like this? VST plugins must be aware of the ASIO drivers. My next machine will be a Mac; I've had it (especially since my souped-up Windows 7 box doesn't run Cubase as well as my old XP box).
RE: Windows 8 to showcase 'desktop as a service'?
@davidr69
Totally agree, windows next should be something tangible like a rewrite of the kernel, resulting in faster boots, more security, better extensibility, etc. this is simply a ploy to move all work to their servers so that IT is marginalized and their vapor is monetized.
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Tuesday, 16 November 2010
Windows 8 to showcase 'desktop as a service'? | ZDNet
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