Pi Smart Desktop and VDI Vs SaaS.

Steve Todd is mentioning product code names like there's more tomorrow. Not to feel left behind it's about time I pre-announce something.

Nah! ;)

But now for your perusal the other application from P(ersonal) i(nformation) Corporation and this one is all about adding Intelligence to Information.

Smart Desktop.

Again it's in Beta so you may or may not get an invite, but what Smart Desktop does is analyse how you interact with the information on your computer then automatically generate metadata for your information and organise it accordingly into a project view. You can then get a break down of where you've been spending your time and it can advise you as to what you might consider working on next. 

Give the website a look.   

Moving on somewhat I received an interesting comment from a colleague asking if VDI threatens SaaS.  To be honest while I can see the overlap in some places for the most part I don't see it as an "Or" I see it as an "And".

Let me explain..

I was speaking with a customer recently who were considering both but for completely different reasons. They had hundreds of desktops on their production floor all of which had to be locked down physically, imaged, maintained, upgraded and then retired when they aged. VDI makes perfect sense in their case but as VDI is a centralisation play they were considering SaaS for offsite backup copies all the new data which was now going to land in their data center instead of scaling an onsite backup solution to deal with it.

VDI while a new implementation isn't a new idea, we've had remote desktops, thin clients and dumb terminals going back to whenever IBM ever first invented the idea (Obligatory "IBM created everything" statement put here to ensure I don't get notes from IBM people telling me such), and since I use VDI as part of my job nearly every day, as I did with Telnet/SSH/XTerm sessions before that, when I connect into systems which have been pre-configured, systems which I don't have to worry about maintaining or patching and are located thousands of miles away that doesn't mean I don't need the services SaaS can provide to me right to the fat client I'm using or in the data centre(s) where the VDI resides.

That's my burned out from travel take on that question. Now it's your turn.

VDI is it a threat to SaaS?

Comments

[John Bergin]

There is a company called Faronics making a software suite - DeepFreeze which is a smart alternative to either implementation.

It essentially locks down the box without letting the end user know it is sealed off. Every time the system reboots all the changes made are lost and it reverts back to its original state. The program is huge in the academic world to support public labs etc (That is where I spent a lot of time with it).

SaaS is great for some things, so is VDI, but bandwidth isn't free. Bandwidth is a HUGE expense and if we are operating on the WAN we have to start thinking more creatively rather than just using the snazziest tech strategies from CIO magazine.