Ponder This

Desktop Virtualization Poll - What path will you take?

I was reading Johnathan's blog the other day with a slight grin because I have heard this story before. Its a classic story, not an uncommon occurrence really in the Technology space where new things come to market at a higher price and are bleeding edge. Over time, they become commodities. Competition catches up, new technology comes out, demand plateaus and prices drop. The sales persons quota never drops though.

I have always found it fascinating in the US as mortgage interest rates drop and herds of people refinance their homes. It seems like sales people of all calibers migrate to being loan originators. When new hot technology comes out and interest rates go up, they migrate back.

I wonder what they will do as rates go up, and all those people that did interest only loans realize they still need to re-finance at a higher rate, than they could have gotten on a 30 year fixed?

There were some interesting perceptions in this blog to ponder.

1. If you double the performance of a machine, customers don't buy half as many, they tend to double their order. Same goes for utilization, if you can double server utilization via Solaris containers or VMWare, people don't buy fewer computers - they buy more.

OK, the message I get here is, virtualization technology is good.

2. "wow, this is a great idea... thank you, Sun. But hey, why are you guys here? I thought you built big expensive stuff that ran in banks?"

Ok, the message I get here is bad. Sun is still perceived as a provider of high cost products.

One of my short comings if it is one, would be that I have never looked at the cost of the product alone. The cost is everything hardware, software, services,cultural changes etc. it takes to solve the problem, change the way something is done for the best, or taking something to market. With such a broad portfolio of products and potential ways to offer a solutions to customers why does this perception still exist?

Listening to a lot of thoughts lately on future direction and the politics that come with that. My opinion is the way the choices are presented to the customer drives this perception. We have not always been about offering choice but, over time this has changed for the better. For example, with our Sun Ray technology we offer the choice for you to choose which desktop environment you will deliver to your end users. Solaris, Linux or Windows. Somewhere people stop listening to the customer, the right choices are not offered and therefore a perception is created.

Desktop Virtualization is a RED HOT topic. It has the promise to help customers drastically improve how they deliver and manage desktop environments for their end users. Virtualization is reaching the point where competition is building. Technology providers are starting to posture and customers are going to have to make choices. Will I virtualize my desktops or not? If I do, what approach will I take?

Lets assume you have some industry standard hardware and are going to virtualize your desktops. All things being equal, cost and performance, what choices will you make? I really want to hear what the customer thinks!

Poll A: What desktop OS will you virtualize?

Poll B: Given the choice of a bare metal Virtualization solution, where there is no underlying “Host OS” . Or Given the choice of a Virtualization solution where the “Host OS” is installed first, the hypervisor is part of the OS and “Guest OS's” are added on top. Which approach will you use?

Posted by ponderthis ( Dec 07 2006, 07:15:43 AM EST ) Permalink Comments [2]