VMworld 2009 Consensus - I’m Bullish on Application and Desktop Virtualization
Last week InstallFree attended VMworld for the 2
ndyear and I must admit that a year makes a world of difference. For those that think the economy is slowing, you should have been there... people were active and had defined budgets for virtualization projects addressing challenges from application compatibility to wide scale initiatives for migrating to Windows 7.
The biggest difference this year I saw is that people were far more educated about application and desktop virtualization than ever before. There were more people seeking out specific solutions and asking the right questions about how app and desktop virtualization can solve current desktop computing challenges.
The discussion moved from "what is app and desktop virtualization?" to "how can your app and desktop virtualization solution solve problem xyz?" From a vendor perspective, this is exactly the direction we want the conversations to be moving for 2 reasons:
- Prospects go into a conversation understanding the value of app and desktop virtualization - the key is now applying it to their pain points.
- It helps vendors move to solution selling which results in closing business.
There is no question that companies like VMware, Citrix and Microsoft have put a lot of wood behind the application and desktop virtualization arrow and customers are starting to see the value and apply it to their current environments. They saw the value of server virtualization and now want to reap the same or better results on arguably the important and mission critical IT component in the company... the desktop.
I can only imagine what next year will bring...