Virtual desktops, the combination of virtual access, application virtualization and virtual machine software, has been a force in marketing of virtualization technology for years. When some of the technology that was announced by folks; such as Citrix, Ceedo, Ericom, Install Free, Microsoft, Pano Logic, Parallels, Quest/Provision Networks, VMware (VMware View), Xenocode and many others; one would think that this approach would be found at almost every desktop. It isn't. The key question is why?
It is clear that managing desktop systems, dealing with both operating system and application updates, helping folks deal with things that went bump in the night and other issues such as security for mobile systems is costing organizations more time and money than they'd really like to invest. Desktop virtualization offers the hope of getting this under control.
In no particular order, here are a few of the issues that get in the way.
Some suppliers, such as Parallels and VMware, are offering tools to make migrations from physical to virtual much easier. I tried to deploy a couple of these on an experimental basis and found that I couldn't make them work within the time I could spare to play.
Quite a few of the issues revolve around the human consciousness and not around technological issues. It is quite possible that the trend towards cloud-based personal productivity applications such as Email, document management and calendar management might make it easier for organizations to move to virtual environments. We'll just have to see what happens in 2010 to know if this approach will become more prominent.