Microsoft opens virtual desktop options

Changes Microsoft has made to its desktop-virtualization licensing are giving enterprises more scenarios for how they can virtualize Windows XP or Vista on corporate desktops, but it's still a complicated and relatively expensive endeavor, according to a recent report by Forrester Research.

Effective Jan. 1, Microsoft loosened some previous restrictions regarding how PCs can access a virtualized corporate desktop of Windows PCs in its Vista Enterprise Centralized Desktop (VECD) license, Forrester analyst Natalie Lambert wrote in the report, "Desktop Virtualization: The Updated Rules Of The Road For Virtualizing Windows."

However, the licensing is still tied to Software Assurance (SA), Microsoft's costly enterprise maintenance and update service, and Microsoft still requires companies to license Windows on top of whichever enabling virtualization software -- its own, VMware or another competitor's -- a company is using, she said.

"It's still very complicated, but the scenarios are opening up to make the vision of desktop virtualization possible," Lambert said.

Desktop virtualization allows an enterprise to run a virtual image of a user's desktop, complete with OS, applications and data an employee would normally have access to, in the data center rather than locally. Companies can, among other things, use this to take the cost out of their IT environments.

The changes to VECD licensing in particular open up two scenarios that allow contractors and full-time employees of enterprises to use their own PCs to access a virtualized corporate desktop that are among the problems enterprises are trying to solve using virtualization, she said.

On one hand, enterprises are trying to reduce the number of IT assets they provide to employees to reduce costs, Lambert said. This is particularly true with contractors who don't work full time for a company. On the other, full-time employees want access to their corporate desktops even when they are not in the office, which is another problem desktop virtualization can solve.

If an enterprise had virtualized its desktop PCs on a corporate network even before Jan. 1, these scenarios were possible, she said, but were not allowed under the previous version of VECD. Now Microsoft is allowing them, but with some caveats and additional fees, Lambert said.

The new licensing works like this: If an enterprise already has SA covering all of its devices, it costs them US$23 per device, per year, to grant employees the ability to access their corporate PCs through their company's virtualized desktop.

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