Though virtualization has become firmly entrenched in the server room, the technology has not had the same impact on the desktop. A joint initiative between Intel and Citrix Systems could change that, and herald a new era of virtualized desktops.
Citrix already has a virtualized platform for delivery of desktop applications in its XenDesktop product; however, XenDesktop is a hosted solution, using virtualized servers to run the software and present the desktop experience to the end-user with Citrix's ICA protocol. The new initiative, code-named Project Independence, uses virtualization software running directly on the desktop machine.
Project Independence builds on the existing capabilities of XenDesktop. XenDesktop offers centralized control of the exact mix of operating system, applications, and data provided to each user. The software dynamically assembles virtual machine environments on a per-user basis, then sends it to the hosting platform (which could be XenServer, VMware, or Hyper-V). From the hosting platform it is then delivered to the user's terminal. Project Independence takes the same infrastructure, but will stream the virtual machine directly to the user's machine.
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