2010: the year of choices?!

Haha.. How funny is it that Application & Desktop Delivery spells "ADD?" (For those non-native English speakers, "ADD" is "Attention Deficit Disorder," which is used to describe people who are sort of hyper and can't do one thing for more than a few minutes without getting distracted. It seems like the perfect fit for me!

Office 2010, under app-v now supports Windows Desktop Search within Outlook Fast Search and it supports direct editing of Microsoft SharePoint documents.

I think this is good news.... and will help with adoption.

Sorry but ADD sound for me like "Advanced Dungeons and Dragons"... which bring us back in 1978 in a complete 'out of IT world' moment, it was when GaryG set up advanced rules to his now famous Dungeons and Dragons RPG... is 1978 not to far for today IT people ;-)

Apart this funny comment which make me fell old, 2 things :

- Application virtualization is for me key to serve the "non traditional windows" devices by just placing application on it (with no additional OS layer). this could also bring more intuitive way of using app especially on handled devices.

- 2010 is the inflexion point (at last for me) regarding traditional desktop management. Windows 7 and "everything-could-be-virtualized" technologies will help to change the way we think about desktop. OS change is the time for "way of doing" changes.

It will probably take time to get to this new world but it start now...

I'm sorry, but I still don't think 2010 is the year of adoption.  It might be the year everyone thinks about adoption, makes plans about adoption, tries adoption, but I just don't see fully enough baked solutions to go mainstream yet.

But hey, it should be a great wave to catch if you are a consultant!

I am with you Tim. 2010 is almost here and no way VDI will take off/over as predicted in the next 12 months. For sure we will see a growth, more companies interested and so on but no mass deployments. This is one prediction Brian will be way off. :-)

Ruben, I'm not following you. I do not believe this statement is true: "Application Virtualization is key (essential!) in local and centralized Desktop Virtualization"

I'm don't claim to be a VDI expert, but I haven't encountered a single VDI environment with application virtualization. The VDI environments I've worked with, have a single or handful of base images with MOST or EVERY application installed. Then they deliver the applications via publishing the user-specific applications on the Desktop or website (like Citrix WI). There is no need to deliver applications virtually...

The most practical implementation for application virtualization is for delivering applications to a non-supported OS. For example, trying to run a Windows XP application on a Terminal Server - some single-user applications store settings in areas of the registry or user profile that's unsupported in multi-user environments.

Perhaps the need for application virtualization will increase as Windows 7 becomes more popular, but there is no reason you can't use a Windows Server 2003 Terminal Server to delivery the the applications that aren't compatible Windows 7... Also, I don't know of a single organization that is looking to adopt Windows 7 in VDI. Everyone is still looking to use Windows XP.

As for your question - No, I don't think 2010 will be the year of VDI. It's a niche market, and the vendors are trying to force it down everyone's throats. Why use VDI when you can accomplish everything with TS?

@ KATA, I still have my A D&D Monster Manual 1st Edition!

@jszivos

You may well not have seen much Appvirt in VDI to date - most of the early implementation were 1:1 persistent images. What changes going forward is an increasing proportion of componentized VDI where applications will be delivered on top of a fresh OS. Hence most applications will need to be delivered on demand on top of the non persistent OS. There are many ways to do this including application publishing and application virtualization. But the key point is that we will see a lot more AppVirt as we move to componentized.

Martin Ingram (AppSense).

@jszivos

Ruben is right  - application virtualisation is a perfect fit for VDI

Why bother installing applications into virtual desktop images when they can be streamed based on user rights?

That means an identical clean image  - and the same thing goes for Xenapp\TS

No regression testing as application patches can be deployed and removed in an instant - you can't do that with applications installed locally....

I think the Softgrid product profile suffered after it was absorbed into Microsoft when it became 'just another product'. However with the W2008 R2 TS Licensing model that allows 'free'  App-V for TS\Xenapp this is going to grow in many environments

It's one of the paths to the VDI future for sure :>)