Function over form

While most experts expect the desktop to shrink, others say that in the future, form factor will be irrelevant. "It will have a keyboard, a mouse and a display, but whether that is connected to a tower, a laptop, a thin client or just coming out of a hole in the wall, I really think that won't matter," says Brian Madden, an independent technology analyst and author. "Instead, it's all going to be about use cases, delivering the right user experience and right application for the right use case."

Madden is a proponent of what he calls the employee-owned PC. In that scenario, employees can use whatever client they like, whether it's a corporate-provided PC or a laptop from home. The idea is that the employee retains control over the PC, its applications, the Internet sites it can reach and the peripherals it can support. But when they hook it into the corporate network, they are delivered a virtual desktop that runs locally, in much the same manner as VMware's current VMware ACE product. That corporate desktop is configured with the enterprise applications they need but is completely locked down and separate from the host PC.

Madden cites new technologies such as VMware Fusion, which lets Macintosh users seamlessly run virtualized Windows, and the Kidaro Managed Workspace as enabling tools for his vision. Kidaro, which was recently acquired by Microsoft, wraps enterprise data and applications in a virtual machine hosted locally, but it also includes something called Trim Transfer, which enables organizations to download virtual machines to desktops efficiently, without requiring an excess of network bandwidth.

"What's cool is that using something like VMware Fusion or Kidaro, we can have a seamless integration between the host machine and the Windows virtual machine," he says. "So I'll have a Windows desktop sitting in front of me, and within that Windows desktop, I have my personal Windows desktop and the corporate Windows virtual machine running locally. I have corporate Word and personal Word, and corporate Outlook and personal Internet Explorer."

The best part is that the corporate environment remains secure, locked down and controlled. "The corporate virtual machine can come with certain security settings so it can get on the corporate VLAN," Madden explains. "But the host can only stay on the VLAN connected to the Internet, without access to anything else."

Madden says such a scenario will be necessary as Generation Y moves into corporate leadership positions. "Users want more freedom and flexibility," he says. "The so-called echo generation, the MySpace, YouTube, text messaging, cell phone generation is turning 30 years old this year," he says. "They're starting to move up pretty highly in companies, and they won't put up with the corporation saying you can't change your device."

Opening up the desktop

Once desktop virtualization scenarios take hold, the choices for desktop operating system will be opened up a bit more, experts say. For example, in a VDI scenario, the actual client computer can use any operating system, be it Linux Ubuntu or Apple Macintosh OSX, and still seamlessly work with corporate applications standardized on Windows XP or Vista.

"That's what we're seeing here -- you just use what you like, thin clients, PCs, Macs or even Linux," Metro Health's House says.

Others say they see Linux perhaps outstripping Windows, especially for organizations that don't require custom programs and rely more on typical Office-type applications. "Five years down the road, Linux will have a bigger chunk of at least the small business market," Gaskin says.

As proof, he says he recently switched two of his four PCs over from Windows to Linux, one using Ubuntu and the other configured with Foresight.