"We've demonstrated that technology, but we don't have a product in that space yet," says Jerry Chen, VMware's senior director of enterprise desktop. "We have the technologies to run it offline, with our ACE Workstation product, and we can also run it online with our VDI. We showed an early concept of moving it back and forth, between the online and offline environments, but it's just a concept right now."

And that's the biggest challenge experts hope will be tackled in five years. Although many pieces of this future virtualized vision currently exist, they're all separate piece-meal products. In the future, however, enterprises should be able to purchase more integrated, fully functional products.

"Today, there is no one vendor or one integrated solution that can truly allow IT to deliver desktops and applications with one product, one platform and one framework that allows any user from any device to access any application or any data online/offline from any form factor anywhere," Madden says. "Even though all the technologies currently exist for the most part."

He portends more mergers and consolidations, followed by the availability of integrated products in five years. "It will take a while to shake out, but eventually, we'll get to where they're building one, integrated desktop solution that an IT person in 2013 can go out and buy and deploy."

Top desktop players in five years

Experts say these firms are likely to play key roles in delivering the desktop of the future.

1. Microsoft. Microsoft will still be a big factor in 2013, because of its near-monopoly on the desktop OS and applications. Plus, it's recently made some astute acquisitions that line it up to be a strong player in virtualization. These include Calista, which works to streamline RDP to make it more efficient and virtual machine-ready, as well as Kidaro. "I just cannot envision a future that doesn't involve Windows applications -- not in 2013," says Brian Madden.

2. Google. If anyone has the resources to challenge Microsoft's dominance on the desktop, it's Google, experts say. "I think Google in five years will have a huge impact on how people use computing resources and information," James Gaskin says. "It has the resources, drive, intelligence and force of will to challenge Microsoft, and I think it will have a bigger impact than Microsoft by far."

3. VMware. Right now, VMware has all the pieces in place to make true virtualized desktops, both offline and online, a reality. Its Achilles' heel, just like in the server virtualization arena, is Microsoft's stranglehold on the OS. "The reality is that VMware does amazing stuff and has great technology, but I think they'll be a has-been in five years," Madden says. "I think they'll have a market share problem, because everything VMware can do, Microsoft can do cheaper and better."