Very cool post.

A main reason for this is that SMB’s use a plethora of software pieces, with very little practical thought given to the ERP (one size fits all) notion of the larger business. Consequently, the desktop support footprint is considerably larger for the SMB.

The issue with the Terminal Services (TS) technique was the inability to find all of the myriad software pieces that the SMB invariably buys that work in TS.

But desktop virtualization will allow them to bypass this problem, simply because they are now running their mixture of desktop software, still on a (VM) desktop machine. The desktop support is hugely reduced (and yes, a thin client becomes a possibility for some of the users).

So once we’ve seen some simpler, practical and cost-effective DR,HA and Image creation solutions, the SMB’s will quickly identify the benefits of VDI.

1) Desktop Virtualization/VDI deployments remain limited: Like “thin-client” computing before it, the idea of virtualizing entire desktop environments will fail to gain traction. Certainly, companies are doing this now. But, I think the potential drawbacks won’t be addressed quickly enough (if ever), and other solutions will help address security and manageability issues. Most importantly, though: What does everyone else think?

2) Other forms of virtualization gain traction: Presentation- and application-level virtualization will become much more common, and IT organizations will find that they have many different ways to address potential management issues.

3) Server Virtualization technology will start to become commoditized: Already, numerous companies provide useful Hypervisors and virtualization layers. It’s a cool technology, but many vendors have figured out how to do it. Moving forward, the real challenge will be in managing VM deployments, implementing backups and DR, HA, and dealing with storage issues. The virtualization layer will be considered the “foundation”, whereas management tools will receive the focus.

4) Virtualization Knowledge: For most IT people, managing basic virtualization functions will become a standard job function (like performing backups). There’s nothing shocking there. As virtual platforms get easier to manage, most organizations will need only a few “experts” (such as those that have the VCP certification) to work on design and troubleshooting. The rest of the IT crowd will adapt on their own. This might not be ideal, but I don’t see the VCP certification being as popular as the MCSE c. 1996 - 2000.

Some of this might be going against conventional “wisdom” (and aggressive marketing), but these wouldn’t be very useful predictions if I stayed with the safe bets. It will certainly be interesting to see how things pan out.