desktops as a service - wordpress.com...isn’t resting on those laurels as hyper-v gains market...
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DESKTOPS AS A SERVICENew approaches to desktop management from cloud service providers
As end users become more demanding consumers of IT, and desktop environments
become increasingly complex and distributed, organizations are looking for third-
party options to handle these challenges.
4 FINDINGS•WiththeconsumerizationofIT,thegoalistoaccommodateincreasinglydemandingendusersandthemyriaddevicestheyusetoaccesstheirapplicationsanddata.PAGE 1
• Shared,session-basedcomputingisstillthemostcommonformofhosteddesktopvirtualization.PAGE 5
• ThefutureofVDIdependsonservice-providerlicensingagreementsthatmeetmostparties’needs.WhethertheseemergedependsonhowMicrosoftdecidestoworkwithservice-providerpartners.PAGE 7
• Interestinthird-partyDaaSisatafeverpitch,especiallyinlightofincreasinglycomplex,anddifficulttomanage,distributeddesktopenvironments.SMBsareearlyadopters.PAGE 2
5 IMPLICATIONS• Themajordesktopvirtualizationplayersmustpartnerwithserviceprovidersanddevelopvirtualizationmanagementexpertisetoremainrelevantincloud-based,centrallymanagedmarkets.PAGE 10
• ITshouldexpecttomanageenvironmentswithacombinationofvirtualapplications,VDI,andcloud-basedandlocalphysicaldesktops.PAGE 2
•OrganizationsneedtofigureouthowtocomplywithMicrosoftlicensingiftheywanttoadoptDaaS.Inmanycases,VDIasaservice(VaaS)istooexpensive,makingsession-basedcomputingamoreviablealternative.PAGE 7
•Desktopvirtualizationvendorsneedtoexpandtheirstorybeyondsession-basedcomputingandVDI.TheonslaughtofHTML5-readyWebapplicationsisadriverhere.PAGE 8
•OrganizationswillneedtolookatITasacompetitivedifferentiator,notjustanotherdrainonthebudget.PAGE 1
BOTTOM LINE• Attheverybasiclevel,wedefine‘desktopsasaservice’asanycombinationofsession-basedcomputing,adesktopconnectionbroker,userandapplicationvirtualization,aprotocolorclienthypervisor,andnetwork,securityandstorageoptimization–plusahostingpartner.Asitstandsnow,thereismuchconfusionaboutDaaS,andwhetheritwillmeanVDIasaserviceorsession-basedcomputing,andhowmuchHTML5mightdisplacebothofthesemodels.
FEBRUARY 2012
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ICE INFRASTRUCTURE COMPUTING FOR THE ENTERPRISE
THE 451 GROUP: INFRASTRUCTURE COMPUTING FOR THE ENTERPRISE i © 2012 451 RESEARCH, LLC AND/OR ITS AFFILIATES. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
SECTION 1: EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 1
1.1 INTRODUCTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.2 KEY FINDINGS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
1.3 METHODOLOGY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
SECTION 2: THE STORY SO FAR 5
2.1 SESSION-BASED COMPUTING . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
2.2 VDI . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
2.3 APPLICATION STORES. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
2.4 MICROSOFT LICENSING . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
2.5 HTML5 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
2.6 DAAS ADOPTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
SECTION 3: SERVICE PROVIDERS 10
3.1 DESKTONE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
3.2 DINCLOUD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
3.3 RACKSPACE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
3.4 NIVIO . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
3.5 NGENX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
SECTION 4: CASE STUDIES 14
4.1 FREED-HARDEMAN UNIVERSITY – DESKTONE . . . . . . . . . . . 14
4.2 ENFORM TECHNOLOGIES – WANOVA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
4.3 IMMIGRATION ATTORNEYS – DINCLOUD . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
SECTION 5: SURVEY DATA, MARKET SIZING AND M&A 17
5.1 SURVEY DATA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
Figure 1: Survey Question – What Percentage of Desktops Are or Will Be Virtual-
ized in 2011? In 2012? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .17
Figure 2: Survey Question – What Is the Status of Your Desktop Virtualization
Project? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .18
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5.2 MARKET SIZING . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
Figure 3: The Desktop Virtualization Ecosystem Market Opportunity . . . .19
5.3 M&A . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
SECTION 6: ADJACENT MARKETS 20
6.1 THIN CLIENTS AND MOBILE DEVICES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
6.2 IDENTITY AND ACCESS MANAGEMENT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
INDEX OF COMPANIES 22
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SECTION 1 Executive Summary
1.1 INTRODUCTION
Now that most organizations have their servers virtualized, they can turn their attention
to virtualizing their desktops. Many enterprise IT administrators that started desktop
virtualization pilots expected those to work in exactly the same way as server virtual-
ization did. These administrators quickly realized, however, that desktops, with all their
moving parts, were more complicated to virtualize than servers, and that desktop virtu-
alization can actually increase IT spending. At the same time, enterprises faced coping
with a new generation of end users that have become accustomed to personalized work-
spaces, downloading and using their own applications, and accessing their workspaces
from whatever device they choose.
Desktop virtualization gives IT departments a way to centrally manage increasingly
complex and distributed end-user environments, and show their bosses that they can
cut organizational costs and even bring competitive value, not just budget drain. Enter-
prises will continue to deliver session-based applications and also work on virtual
desktop infrastructure (VDI) projects in-house, and internal IT shops are beginning to
resemble service providers themselves. Even though these enterprises have an increasing
number of options to subscribe to desktops hosted by third-party service providers,
it’s the SMBs that are actually taking the plunge. In many cases, though, what they’re
subscribing to are hosted applications rather than entire desktops. Then there’s the
promise of an increasing number of Web applications that can be rendered directly in
HTML5-enabled browsers added into the mix. It’s the Wild West in end-user computing.
By VDI, we mean server-hosted desktop virtualization, sometimes (confusingly) called
hosted virtual desktops, or HVD. By ‘hosted desktops’ or (more usually) desktops as
a service (DaaS), on the other hand, we mean desktops offered by third-party service
providers. Of course, there’s the additional wrinkle that IT organizations are evolving
into internal service providers, further eroding the distinction. But, for the time being,
let’s think of VDI as virtual desktops hosted on-premises, while DaaS and VDI as a
service (VaaS) involve virtual desktops hosted elsewhere.
Organizations will continue to manage hybrid environments of physical and virtual
applications and desktops, and scores of desktop systems management vendors are
betting on that. A typical case is an enterprise busy developing its own cloud, then
finding it has to manage hybrid environments, as employees are already adopting shiny
new endpoint devices and Web applications such as Dropbox. And, despite the popu-
larity of these useful Web applications, the race is on to provide support for Windows
applications across non-Windows devices and operating systems.
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Desktop virtualization giants are onto it. Citrix and Microsoft maintain their awkward
closeness, and tell a similar story – that Microsoft Remote Desktop Services (RDS)
coupled with Citrix XenApp is the most viable delivery method for DaaS. They’re telling
this story as a temporary measure, because Microsoft’s licensing makes VDI and VaaS
really expensive. Microsoft recognizes the huge opportunity for DaaS, and isn’t writing
VaaS off. After all, one of its gold partners, dinCloud, provides just that. When, and if,
the desktop giant decides how to structure SPLAs that make this model viable for any
service provider, the market for VaaS could really take off. Citrix is ready and waiting.
VMware remains relevant in desktop virtualization, mostly with on-premises VDI, still
by very much leveraging its dominance in server virtualization. However, the company
isn’t resting on those laurels as Hyper-V gains market share. VMware’s DaaS strategy
is highly partner-centric, and in 2011, the virtualization behemoth forged a partner-
ship with Symantec. The two companies are working on a reference architecture that is
expected to be available in 2012. Another partnership with Desktone should make View
– which was not designed with multi-tenant environments in mind – more accessible to
service-provider partners.
While VMware gathers DaaS partners, the company doesn’t have a competitive session-
based offering that can stand up to the current Microsoft-Citrix standard. Instead, and
as the virtual desktop window of opportunity closes, VMware is preparing for the next
generation of application delivery. The company’s Horizon App Manager platform rivals
Citrix’ Receiver application portal. In addition, Project AppBlast demonstrates its seri-
ousness about HTML5-based Web application delivery. Look for more.
Overall, interest in DaaS and development of the DaaS marketplace are exploding. We
can thank the introduction of the iPad for getting the race into full gear: tablets with
access to hosted applications and desktops can solve a variety of end-user problems.
It’s still early on, and SMBs are the first to adopt. In this report, we profile a handful
of service providers that are already delivering DaaS. We also provide a few use cases,
both third-party DaaS deployments and an internal DaaS-like deployment.
1.2 KEY FINDINGS
• It’s no longer about just the desktop; it’s about users and their applications and
data. Where and from which devices users access their data and applications will
determine which delivery model makes the most sense.
• Mobility and the complexity of managing distributed desktop environments moves
the conversation away from VDI in many use cases. Workers can easily log into
shared or Web applications from a tablet or smartphone while on the road. The
infrastructure is less expensive and complicated to support and manage in these
environments.
THE 451 GROUP: INFRASTRUCTURE COMPUTING FOR THE ENTERPRISE 3 © 2012 451 RESEARCH, LLC AND/OR ITS AFFILIATES. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
• Although we are already moving into a ‘post-PC world,’ it’s not going to be a ‘post-
Windows world’ anytime soon. Vendors are betting heavily on this, and are mostly
working to get Windows applications on non-Windows devices.
• Microsoft licensing favors session-based desktops in DaaS deployments. The real
take-up in VaaS depends on whether Microsoft develops SPLAs to validate the switch
to fully hosted desktops.
• SMBs are early adopters of DaaS. Enterprises are just dipping their toes in the water,
and sticking largely to on-premises desktop infrastructure.
• Desktop virtualization is really just another way to manage end-user environments.
Organizations are harnessing these technologies to provide services to workers that
are demanding a better work/life balance, and to use whichever device they want.
• HTML5 is already in use. As it develops further, it will be a major factor in how
users access their data, and how desktop administrators work. For now, there are
significant limitations due to WAN latency.
• For the foreseeable future, most organizations will still need to manage physical
environments as well as virtual, or cloud, environments. Dozens of desktop systems
management vendors are happy to do this.
• Even though many say that the world isn’t ready for DaaS, we are seeing increasing
interest and adoption. For many cash-strapped startups, putting their desktops in the
cloud is a no-brainer. Enterprises tend to have more resources to provide internal
services.
• Service providers need to negotiate Microsoft SPLAs that make VaaS an affordable
option in order for enterprises to consider looking at third-party hosted desktops.
• Organizations that have been burned by VDI projects in the past are good candidates
for DaaS.
• Vendors and service providers need to educate potential customers in this nascent
space. That means they must come to agreement on what DaaS really is. For now, all
eyes are on Microsoft.
1.3 METHODOLOGY
This report on DaaS is based on countless anecdotal conversations with IT managers
across multiple industries, as well as our regular research on software vendors. This
research was supplemented by additional primary research, including an end-user
survey that was conducted by our sister organization TheInfoPro, and attendance at a
number of trade shows and industry events.
Reports such as this one represent a holistic perspective on key emerging markets in the
enterprise IT space. These markets evolve quickly, though, so 451 Research offers addi-
4 DESKTOPS AS A SERVICE© 2012 451 RESEARCH, LLC AND/OR ITS AFFILIATES. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
tional services that provide critical marketplace updates. These updated reports and
perspectives are presented on a daily basis via the company’s core intelligence service
– the 451 Market Insight Service. Forward-looking M&A analysis and perspectives on
strategic acquisitions and the liquidity environment for technology companies are also
updated regularly via the Market Insight Service, which is backed by the industry-
leading 451 M&A KnowledgeBase.
Emerging technologies and markets are also covered in additional 451 practices,
including our CloudScape, Enterprise Security, Eco-Efficient IT, Information Manage-
ment, Commercial Adoption of Open Source (CAOS), Infrastructure Computing for the
Enterprise (ICE), Datacenter Technologies (DCT) and 451 Market Monitor services. All of
these 451 services, which are accessible via the Web, provide critical and timely analysis
specifically focused on the business of enterprise IT innovation.
This report was written by Karin Kelley, Analyst, Infrastructure Computing for the
Enterprise, with assistance from John Abbott, Chief Analyst; Rachel Chalmers, Research
Director; Steve Coplan, Senior Analyst; Peter ffoulkes, Research Director; and Swapna
Subramani, Analyst.
Any questions about the methodology should be addressed to Karin Kelley at:
For more information about 451 Research, please go to the company’s website:
www.451research.com
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SECTION 2 The Story so Far
As we stated before, we define DaaS as any combination of session-based computing,
a desktop connection broker, user and application virtualization, a protocol or client
hypervisor, and network, security and storage optimization – plus a hosting partner. In
the industry, however, DaaS is defined in many different, and often conflicting, ways.
Beyond desktop virtualization, the DaaS acronym has been defined as ‘data as a service’
and even ‘development as a service.’ With that in mind, let’s take a look at the evolution
of what, for now, we will call DaaS, with regard to desktops.
2.1 SESSION-BASED COMPUTING
Session-based computing in Windows and DOS environments was invented by Citrix,
when the company introduced WinView in 1993. At the time, the multiuser product was
intended to compete with Unix and Xenix, Microsoft’s x86-based desktop version of
Unix. Later, when Microsoft released Windows NT 4, it licensed Citrix code, and began
work on its own similar product. The result was Windows Terminal Server Edition for
Windows NT Server 4.0, which was released in 1998. In the deal, Citrix agreed to not
ship a competing product, but negotiated the rights to sell an extension to Windows
Terminal Server called MetaFrame.
These early iterations were developed to deliver hosted applications to endpoints; but
let’s fast forward to 2012. What Microsoft had called Terminal Services is now named
Remote Desktop Services (RDS), and the suite includes its application virtualization and
streaming product App-V.
For its part, Citrix called its flagship MetaFrame Server and Provisioning Server before
settling on the name XenApp. The product also includes application virtualization and
streaming. Competitive platforms in remote session-based computing include: Quest
Software’s vWorkSpace, 2X Software’s ApplicationServer, Ericom Software’s PowerTerm
WebConnect, Oracle’s Secure Global Desktop and Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop.
Service providers are also using these products to provide session-based DaaS.
2.2 VDI
Virtual desktop infrastructure moves the Windows workspace to the machine room or
datacenter. This workspace is served to end users over the LAN or WAN. There’s defi-
nitely a resemblance to its session-based predecessor, but in this model, the end users
get a whole OS to themselves, albeit on a shared CPU.
The advantage of having the whole OS is that users can customize their environments,
adding their own applications, for example. The disadvantage of VDI is that servers
6 DESKTOPS AS A SERVICE© 2012 451 RESEARCH, LLC AND/OR ITS AFFILIATES. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
can’t support as many simultaneous users as they can in terminal services models.
Consolidation ratios are far lower in VDI. But on the upside, any workload consolida-
tion at all is better than the 1:1 ratio yielded by a traditional desktop PC.
TheInfoPro conducted a survey on desktop virtualization, and discovered that most
respondents intend to investigate on-premises VDI, if not to deploy it. However, we also
discovered that most VDI deployments still haven’t made it past the POC or pilot stage.
Why does VDI fail? Complexity and cost are big issues, but they don’t explain it all.
While there are sophisticated tools to manage VDI environments, particularly around
storage and I/O, user and performance monitoring and management, the real concern
is user acceptance, which stymies most VDI rollouts. Latency over the WAN, and slow
log-on times during the morning ‘boot storm’ contribute to users’ frustration with VDI.
For all of these reasons, VDI burn victims are excellent candidates for managed DaaS.
Companies like Desktone, dinCloud and tuCloud are actually delivering VaaS today.
That said, VaaS is not the primary model for the emerging DaaS market – although
there’s the widespread misconception that it is. The problem is that performance issues
with pure, on-premises VDI flow logically to VaaS deployments.
2.3 APPLICATION STORES
Inspired by Apple’s App Store for the iPhone, enterprise IT departments daydream about
offering a similar storefront to their internal ‘customers.’ Such a storefront is coming
to be known as an ‘app marketplace,’ and it exists in at least three main flavors: self-
service catalog, online showcase and full-fledged app marketplace. Vendors coming
into this space include PaaS and SaaS players, MSPs, traditional enterprise ISVs, dedi-
cated startups and desktop virtualization providers. There are also mobile and consumer
app marketplaces, while other adjacent markets include security providers and data and
application integration players.
We can trace the genesis of application marketplaces to CRM and ERP vendors’ deci-
sion to open up their development platforms and tools to partners and customers. Some
were SaaS pure plays; others had hybrid on-premises/hosted strategies. As they opened
up their platforms, they became PaaS pioneers. When partners developed to their PaaS,
these providers built the first online showcases to demonstrate the vitality and richness
of this partner ecosystem.
By and large, the app marketplaces remain software showcases rather than actual store-
fronts. This means that while potential customers can look at app specifications and
reviews, and perhaps download and try out the software, they often can’t buy directly
from the apps marketplace.
At the same time, we’re seeing a variety of other app marketplace models emerging. For
now, the kind of online showcase we’ve outlined – initiated by a particular vendor to
THE 451 GROUP: INFRASTRUCTURE COMPUTING FOR THE ENTERPRISE 7 © 2012 451 RESEARCH, LLC AND/OR ITS AFFILIATES. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
demonstrate the flexibility and maturity of its PaaS – is the norm. But we’re also seeing
some app marketplaces that are functioning as a meeting point between apps developed
using a variety of third-party PaaS and apps from a single vendor using its own PaaS. We
are also seeing aggregators emerge to pull together a wide variety of different vendors’
apps built on disparate platforms.
Desktop virtualization players like VMware and Citrix are betting heavily on cloud-deliv-
ered applications. Citrix augments its application delivery smarts with a self-service
application portal called Receiver. Similarly, VMware aims to take advantage of its large
enterprise customer base with the release of its Horizon App Manager, as well as Project
AppBlast, which aims to take advantage of HTML5-based browsers. Citrix has already
released a Receiver client for Chrome OS that integrates with Facebook. These moves are
a no-brainer for the desktop virtualization and management vendors, and may leapfrog
both companies’ VDI initiatives.
2.4 MICROSOFT LICENSING
As we’ve said, Microsoft’s current licensing options favor session-based computing over
VDI. In fact, both Microsoft and longtime partner Citrix maintain that session-based
virtual desktops make more sense in most use cases, especially when those sessions are
delivered from the cloud. They argue that organizations can achieve much higher consol-
idation ratios on servers because of the shared architecture of session-based computing.
IT administrators have tighter, locked-down control over those resources when employees
take them on the road, or when malware attacks make them vulnerable. Session-based
computing does have certain advantages, but the consequence – whether intentional or
not – is to strangle VDI, hosted or on-premises. The model won’t really take off unless
and until Microsoft makes some changes to its licensing.
Traditional Windows licensing models simply weren’t designed with VDI and a post-PC
world in mind. These come in three flavors: original equipment manufacturer (OEM)
licenses, full packaged product (FPP) licenses and volume licensing (VL). OEM licenses are
bound to hardware, cannot be transferred, and are valid as long as the equipment oper-
ates. Even though these licenses can be cost-effective in a traditional desktop environ-
ment where people use one physical device for work, it can get expensive in a VDI envi-
ronment, where workers ideally access their virtual desktop from a variety of devices.
FPP licenses were designed specifically for retail machines, and require VMs on a host
server to be mapped to only one user, which negates any benefits of VDI. In this arrange-
ment, only one VM can be assigned per user, and if the VM needs to be moved to another
host, it must also be removed from the device that VM was assigned to. According to
Microsoft documentation, organizations that want to put multiple VMs on a host server
should look into Software Assurance licenses. We’ll get into that shortly. Last, but not
least, is VL, which has all the limitations of FPP, and more restrictions that limit using the
load-balancing and business-continuity benefits VDI offers.
8 DESKTOPS AS A SERVICE© 2012 451 RESEARCH, LLC AND/OR ITS AFFILIATES. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
In addition to these, two more licenses were created especially for VDI – Windows Client
Software Assurance (SA) and Virtual Desktop Access (VDA). SA is basically VL on steroids.
These licenses include technical support, consulting and training. SA also comes with
virtual desktop licenses for fat clients. For organizations that want to use thin clients in
their VDI deployment, they must purchase an additional VDA license. VDA is also required
on employee-owned and contractor devices. VDA is available through all VL and SA
licenses for $100/device/year. What these VDI-specific licenses give customers in flexi-
bility, they take away again in cost.
2.5 HTML5
Another major driver of change in end-user computing comes out of left field, in the
form of a new Web standard. The latest version of HTML is still under development, even
though some pieces of it are already in use. Work on HTML5 began in 2004. It is still
in ‘working draft’ status, and is expected to be completed by 2014. New features will
continue to be added gradually. Development is a joint effort between the World Wide
Web Consortium (W3C) and the Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group
(WHATWG). All of the major browsers already support it, to some degree or another.
Google’s open source Chromium project, and the resulting Chrome OS, has been custom-
built to work with Web applications written in HTML5.
Like its predecessor, the basic principle behind HTML5 is interconnection on the Web.
While earlier versions connected static images with hypertext, HTML5 allows Web devel-
opers to embed and manipulate video and audio into Web pages without third-party plug-
ins like Adobe Flash or Apple QuickTime. Another important new feature in this version
is ‘canvas,’ which, through the use of JavaScript APIs, can dynamically render graphics
pixel-by-pixel in the browser. Canvas was developed by Apple in 2004, but is now incor-
porated into HTML5. In addition, HTML5 uses the Cascading Style Sheets language for
presentation semantics. By using accepted standards and features, Web developers draw
from the same toolbox, and can communicate through the JavaScript Web-messaging
framework in a more dynamic, media-rich and interconnected Web – across multiple plat-
form and devices.
Instead of using HTTP, which requires every request for data to receive a response, HTML5
uses a protocol called WebSockets. This protocol allows for a continuous, multithreaded
stream of textual data between browsers and devices through a single TCP socket. This
makes it possible to handle complex Web applications more efficiently than HTTP, which
needs multiple connections for multiple requests. With new offline storage capabili-
ties, application data can be cached on the users’ local hard drive. Applications then have
access to that data in a local SQL database, thereby reducing calls to the server.
The remote media protocols that work with virtual desktops and applications use binary
files, so tweaks need to be made to port through the WebSockets layer, which only accepts
textual data. Several companies, including Ericom Software with its AccessNow product,
THE 451 GROUP: INFRASTRUCTURE COMPUTING FOR THE ENTERPRISE 9 © 2012 451 RESEARCH, LLC AND/OR ITS AFFILIATES. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
offer software clients that translate the binary data from RDP into textual data and
other bitmap images that HTML5-enabled browsers can render natively. Citrix has
released its HTML5-compatible Receiver for Facebook that is currently only avail-
able on Chrome OS. VMware announced Project AppBlast last fall. It, too, aims to
deliver Windows applications to HTML5 browsers, but has not yet been released. Other
players in this emerging market include Cybele Software, with its ThinRDP offering, and
Remote Spark, with its Spark View offering.
2.6 DAAS ADOPTION
So far, most adoption of DaaS has been in the SMB market. To be clear, these DaaS
deployments are primarily session-based computing. Typical workloads include
accounting and payroll, data storage, email, collaboration and CRM. Enterprises are
dipping their toes into DaaS, although many of these deployments aren’t supplied by
third-party DaaS providers, but delivered by the internal IT departments.
While the king of desktops acknowledges VDI, and the potential market opportunity in
delivering it as a service, Microsoft still regards VDI as an emerging technology. It is
working on a strategy for VDI models, but in the meantime, is not openly promoting
VaaS. Instead, Microsoft (and partner Citrix) maintain that a combination of RDS and
Citrix XenApp works in most use cases. Citrix claims that 90% of its current DaaS
deployments are actually XenApp sessions, and that users don’t even realize that they
aren’t getting a full Windows 7 desktop.
That said, two of the companies profiled in this report primarily promote VaaS. After
struggling for years, Desktone, the pioneer of the service-provider-based approach,
had to change its original business model. Now it hosts the service itself, in order to
be in a position to iron out the complexities of VaaS. The company built its software
on open source technology to minimize some of the Microsoft licensing costs, and is
now partnering with service providers as well as offering the service itself. DinCloud
is able to offer VaaS at reasonable prices through a volume-licensing deal from Micro-
soft. TuCloud uses Citrix’s VDI-in-a-Box platform, which is based on its acquisition of
Kaviza, to deliver DaaS.
10 DESKTOPS AS A SERVICE© 2012 451 RESEARCH, LLC AND/OR ITS AFFILIATES. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
SECTION 3 Service Providers
Most, if not all, service providers have DaaS in their sights. Those already providing DaaS are
still fine-tuning their offerings to make financial sense. Partner clouds are proliferating at a
dizzying speed, consisting of a batch of service providers, software and hardware vendors.
We expect to see new partnerships and offerings in our radar almost daily. We’ve profiled
only a handful of these below, simply because they are spreading like a wildfire. All of the
major systems integrators, including IBM, Wipro and CSC (just to name a few) are vying for a
piece of the market. Smaller systems integrators and consultants are already seeding the SMB
market. As it stands now, larger enterprises are working on their own internal DaaS offerings.
3.1 DESKTONE
DaaS pioneer Desktone is back in the news after partnering with VMware to offer service
providers a DaaS package. The joint roadmap includes Desktone’s multi-tenant DaaS Plat-
form, which features a grid architecture, role separation and lots of open source to keep costs
down; VMware’s View 5 with the PCoIP display protocol to keep the end-user experience
sharp; VMware vSphere 5; and vCloud. The combination of a reinvented Desktone, which is
now targeting service providers rather than enterprises, with a VMware anxious to crack the
service-provider market, makes sense from the vendors’ points of view.
Founded in 2007, Boston-based Desktone has about 50 employees and 80 direct customers.
Desktone Cloud subscriber QueBIT provides training, sales enablement, test and development,
and business continuity to its remotely based consultants and contractors with the service.
A partnership with UK-based MSP Molten Technologies should extend Desktone’s European
footprint. In North America, outsourcing and cloud services provider mindSHIFT Technologies
is using the Desktone Platform to provide its cloudSHIFT Desktop to SMBs. Longtime services
partners including, but not limited to, IBM, Infosys Limited, Verizon and Marubeni all use the
Desktone Platform. Desktone also has a couple of its own datacenters, and is hosted on Rack-
space’s infrastructure.
3.2 DINCLOUD
Spun off of En Pointe Technologies in January 2011, dinCloud provides what it calls Hosted
Virtual Desktops, as well as hosted servers. In fact, the company claims that it provides every-
thing you can do in a datacenter from the cloud, including networking, storage and security.
Most important for DaaS, though, is the company’s close ties to Microsoft. DinCloud lever-
aged its roots in En Pointe, which is a major reseller of Microsoft licenses, to obtain a
volume-licensing deal. Also drawing on its genesis within En Pointe, the company provides
its customers with what it calls a ‘licensing desk.’ Here, a team evaluates each customer’s
THE 451 GROUP: INFRASTRUCTURE COMPUTING FOR THE ENTERPRISE 11 © 2012 451 RESEARCH, LLC AND/OR ITS AFFILIATES. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
desktop and infrastructure requirements and determines what licensing models work, across
all of its software partners. The service includes recommendations on whether perpetual
licensing makes sense over a subscription model.
Executives claim its customers can realize a 20-55% savings by subscribing to the DaaS
service. The company says it is one of the only firms that can offer full VaaS because of its
relationship with Microsoft. Although dinCloud offers RDS when it makes sense for the end
user, the company really wants customers to use VDI. At the endpoint, dinCloud recom-
mends low-power, small-form-factor laptops over thin clients. It claims thin clients just
aren’t powerful enough to provide an acceptable user experience.
In the datacenter, customers can opt to be hosted on shared, multi-tenant infrastructure or
pay for a ‘dedicated public cloud’ of their own. Regardless of whether the customer’s data
resides on shared infrastructure or dedicated, all of the infrastructure appliances are virtual
and dedicated. This means that each customer has its own virtual firewall, for instance.
To overcome bloated storage and I/O bottlenecks that come hand-in-hand with VDI,
dinCloud has chosen to use InfiniBand architecture, instead of iSCSI or fiber channel-based
technology – both of which, CTO Mike Chase says, have technology flaws. VMware ESX
and Hyper-V sit at the hypervisor layer. Other infrastructure partners that are part of the
‘dinStack’ coalition include, but are not limited to: NetApp, Trend Micro, Vyatta, LANdesk,
Xsigo and Quest Software. On the hosting side, Equinix, Qwest Communications, AT&T and
Alchemy Communications are partners.
In January 2012, dinCloud secured $1m in seed funding from a handful of angel investors.
The company, which has been incubated by En Pointe since its incorporation in January
2011, will use the capital primarily for sales and marketing purposes. Los Angeles-based
dinCloud has been selling fully managed cloud-based virtual desktops and virtual servers
since April 2011. The company currently employs 30, but is likely to expand to 50 by the
end of 2012. It is already planning a series A institutional round, which is expected to be
secured by March.
3.3 RACKSPACE
Rackspace supplies the IaaS for a number of desktop virtualization service providers.
Launched in May 2011, Rackspace’s Hosted Virtual Desktop (HVD) is a joint offering
with partner Citrix. Potential customers can sign up for a free 30-day trial, and down-
load a Citrix plug-in to get started. The hosted virtual desktop is actually a XenApp session
running on a Microsoft Windows 2008 Server R2. Because this is shared, session-based
computing, users can’t install their own applications or store any personal files on their
HVDs. The environment has access to 15GB of RAM, a shared quad-core processor and
150GBs of disk space that is shared by all concurrent sessions. Citrix’ CloudPortal is a self-
service provisioning and automation platform that IT administrators can use to manage
cloud environments.
12 DESKTOPS AS A SERVICE© 2012 451 RESEARCH, LLC AND/OR ITS AFFILIATES. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
Rackspace also provides the IaaS for Desktone and joint channel partners. The hoster is
happy to let the channel use their datacenters for other desktop virtualization deployments,
too, including VMware View. When a customer contacts the HVD team, Rackspace refers
them to the proper platform, and says that it sees most interest in Citrix-based deploy-
ments. Customers can choose to have a dedicated environment. If the customer wants
to leverage a shared infrastructure for a fixed number of desktops, and has not already
decided upon a virtualization technology, Desktone is often the choice, even though Citrix
works in those scenarios, too.
Rackspace claims that the response to its HVD service was far greater than initially
expected, and came from a wide variety of verticals. The company reports it has deploy-
ments anywhere from the 10s to 1,000s of seats, and that incoming requests for trials
are growing. That said, the biggest inhibitor to adoption continues to be cost. Latency
and performance over the WAN are also causing concern. The company observes that
early adopters in this space will be the IT departments that can show TCO by repurposing
resources to more strategic projects than desktop management, at least until prices drop.
3.4 NIVIO
Cloud-hosted desktop and application provider nivio was founded in 2004 by Sachin
Duggal and Saurabh Pradeep Dhoot. The Switzerland-based company now has offices in
India, Singapore, the UK and Australia. The initial goal of the founders was to bring down
the cost and complexity of desktop computing for the cash-strapped educational market
schools in developing countries. In fact, the founders’ goal is to help educate 100 million
children in their lifetimes. Today, the company has its sights on broader markets. It is
opening a US office this year.
Nivio’s flagship offering, nDesktop, is a Windows desktop hosted on multi-tenant, cloud-
based infrastructure. With it, users can access their desktops over the Internet and from
various devices and operating systems, including Android, Mac, iOS, Linux and Windows.
Nivio does this using Microsoft Remote Desktop Services with App-V, along with some
proprietary provisioning and load-balancing software. Future versions should include
support for HTML5.
Interestingly, the founders started their project using VDI. After building a five-user pilot,
however, they ran into issues around scalability. They maintain that VDI works in ‘niche’
cases, and that it was not designed to scale in a multi-tenant cloud.
Nivio has a few other products, including nApps, which is an application store that users
can temporarily ‘rent’ hosted applications from. NDrive is an online storage service, and
nShare lets users share data, files, pictures and documents. Users can do this publicly or
privately through the service. The company also offers low-cost, low-energy PCs called
CloudBook and CloudPC.
THE 451 GROUP: INFRASTRUCTURE COMPUTING FOR THE ENTERPRISE 13 © 2012 451 RESEARCH, LLC AND/OR ITS AFFILIATES. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
3.5 NGENX
Hosted virtual desktop provider nGenX was founded in 2000 as a traditional application
service provider (ASP), and purchased in 2004 by Q-Comm, a competitive local exchange
carrier. In 2010, Windstream Communications bought Q-Comm, but two subsidiaries,
including nGenX, were left out of the deal. Instead, the company’s management team
recapitalized, and was able to operate as a startup with the benefit of an existing customer
base and a substantial datacenter infrastructure. The independent company now has three
datacenters in Indiana and Kentucky.
After evaluating several other desktop and application virtualization alternatives, nGenX
settled on a combination of Microsoft and Citrix. According to president Robert Bye,
nGenX was the first beta customer in the Citrix Cloud Service Provider Program. NGenX
also started working early on with Australian startup EMS Cortex, and its cloud service-
automation platform – now owned and operated by Citrix itself. In addition, the company
was involved early on with application virtualization and streaming pioneer Softricity,
which is now Microsoft’s App-V.
NGenX’s virtual desktop offering, Office Anywhere, is based on a combination of Windows
Server 2008 R2, with Hyper-V and Remote Desktop Services (both are bundled with the
OS anyway). In addition, the service works with Citrix XenApp for desktop delivery and
streaming, Citrix’s cloud-automation platform Citrix EMS Cortex, and Microsoft App-V for
application virtualization. Citrix’s Cortex Control Panel provides a Web-based automation
and management portal that the service providers can offer their customers. Bye claims
they chose this base architecture because they had already invested in Systems Center to
manage the rest of the datacenter, and also because Hyper-V integrated better with the
automation software they use. Other tools used in the service include (but are not limited
to): Citrix User Profile Manager and EdgeSight, SolarWinds, Aria Systems subscription and
billing management, and salesforce.com. On the back end, Office Anywhere is run on a
Cisco Unified Computing Systems and HP servers, with an expandable Compellent SAN, a
NetApp SAN and Cisco Nexus switches.
The company charges customers in three ways. The first option is a true white-label model.
NGenX gives the customer a buy rate, which they are then free to mark up. Most ISV part-
ners are in this program, along with a few telcos, which bundle this with other services
for their customers. The second option is a co-branding arrangement, where the customer
chooses the price and nGenX gets a share of the revenue. Third is a residual commission
model, with the subscription service under the nGenX brand. Currently, the company is
seeing most demand for the white-label approach.
The Overland Park, Kansas-based company has about 40 employees, and is growing. On the
roadmap is an application store, although that’s a tough sell to ISVs, which worry about it
cannibalizes their own sales. Currently, users can request apps through Citrix Receiver.
14 DESKTOPS AS A SERVICE© 2012 451 RESEARCH, LLC AND/OR ITS AFFILIATES. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
SECTION 4 Case Studies
As previously noted, SMBs are the key adopters in DaaS. However, education markets have
been at the forefront of desktop virtualization since early on, and DaaS is no exception.
We’ve also noted that not all DaaS deployments are provided through a third party; internal
IT departments can also be providing that as a service. We expect enterprises to adopt this
approach. Note that in this use case, it can be hard to distinguish VDI from on-premises DaaS.
4.1 FREED-HARDEMAN UNIVERSITY – DESKTONE
Freed-Hardeman University is a private Christian school located in Henderson, Tennessee.
Director of network operation Greg Maples and his team are responsible for providing IT
infrastructure and support for more than 2,000 enrolled students and about 300 faculty and
staff. When users, both students and faculty, started to bring pressure to support the Mac OS,
the team faced a great challenge: their entire infrastructure was Windows-centric. Worse,
many of the programs used at the university, including grade keeping, bill payment and
accounts-receivable software, did not have a client for Mac OS.
The team tried using Parallels Virtuozzo Containers. With log-in times between three and five
minutes, users were not happy. Next, they compared Microsoft Remote Desktop for Mac and
Citrix XenDesktop. While discussing the proposal with Citrix, Maples saw an announcement
about DaaS from Rackspace, and gave the company a call. Rackspace recommended that he
call Desktone.
Since July 2011, the team has rolled out 60 Desktone desktops, mostly in the IT department
and in remote locations in Memphis and Nashville. There are plans to deploy more, specif-
ically in the classroom. One potential use case is in the biology department, which uses a
statistical and graphics program called SYSTAT that requires Windows to run. Another benefit
is that students can share data between classes by leaving the desktop running like a worksta-
tion. A further use case, according to Maples, is to give student workers access to a desktop
for their work. Come the following semester, access can be taken away and given to the
student that then fills that same position.
Maples claims that login times have been reduced to 30 seconds, and that the learning curve
is short. He also reports fewer helpdesk calls as a result of the deployment. Any hiccups, he
says, were on the university’s end. In fact, it was Desktone’s customer service that discovered
the problem was outdated Active Directory Group Policy settings. Maples no longer takes his
laptop home from work; instead, he just calls up his desktop through his iPad.
THE 451 GROUP: INFRASTRUCTURE COMPUTING FOR THE ENTERPRISE 15 © 2012 451 RESEARCH, LLC AND/OR ITS AFFILIATES. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
4.2 ENFORM TECHNOLOGIES – WANOVA
Enform is a safety association for the upstream oil and gas industry in the Canadian
provinces of British Columbia, Alberta and Saskatchewan. Out of 150 employees, 30%
are mobile, including auditors that perform inspections at sites that extract and produce
crude oil and natural gas. Increasingly, demanding end users were starting to complain
about downtime when laptops needed to be worked on. Users were also becoming more
tech-savvy, and wanted to harness the ever-improving power of their devices.
In 2007 and 2008, while the IT team was virtualizing servers in Enform’s datacenters
with VMware, it decided to do a VDI pilot with VMware View. Enform also tried a pilot
with Citrix XenDesktop during this time. Manager of corporate IT Philippe Mawugbe
claims that although each platform had advantages, neither met the company’s busi-
ness needs. The economic downturn that was unfolding also made it hard to justify the
high costs of these deployments. When Virtual Computer turned up with the NxTop
client hypervisor and management suite, Mawugbe thought the approach was brilliant
and launched another trial. That experiment ran into issues, including limited platform
support and troubles with driver compatibility. Users were also annoyed about having
to log in to two separate sessions.
In 2010, the team discovered Wanova’s Mirage platform, and started yet another pilot.
Mawugbe was impressed at first because the platform was so lightweight, he would
not have to build another datacenter to support it. In addition, he could do every-
thing he could with VDI, without as much load on the network. Central management
was another key factor, as were backup and recovery capabilities. Finally, the end user’s
experience was not adversely affected. Out of 150, 120 now get their desktops through
Mirage, and the team plans to roll out to more once an in-progress hardware upgrade is
completed. Going forward, Mawugbe is pushing Wanova to be a one-stop shop for its
desktop needs. New features he would like to see include increased support during hard-
ware migrations, user-rights management capabilities and support for tablets.
4.3 IMMIGRATION ATTORNEYS – DINCLOUD
Immigration Attorneys is a new business that spun off of a much larger, well-estab-
lished law firm in late 2011. Headquartered in Chicago, the firm has 33 employees and
branch offices in Phoenix, Milwaukee and Tampa, Florida. After the decision was made
to split from the larger firm, Immigration Attorneys had less than a month to accom-
plish the transition, including finding new offices, dealing with the transfer of sensitive
data and setting up a desktop infrastructure. Initially, the team thought to replicate the
traditional client-server architecture they were familiar with from the old firm. But high
costs and new desktop technologies sent the firm on a path to hosted virtual desktops.
It looked at Rackspace’s offering, but found that out of line with its budget. Instead,
Immigration Attorneys chose dinCloud. The vendor impressed CEO Ira Azulay, primarily
16 DESKTOPS AS A SERVICE© 2012 451 RESEARCH, LLC AND/OR ITS AFFILIATES. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
by its willingness to commit to the firm’s aggressive deadline to go live in less than a
week. Immigration Attorneys shipped an external drive with all of its data on a Friday,
and was able to go live the following Wednesday. There were no serious concerns over
security, as dinCloud offers multiple layers of authentication, and Immigration Attor-
neys was already comfortable using remote technologies from Citrix. Using dinCloud
eliminated the need to use Citrix for remote workers, too. The only problems the firm
encountered were essentially getting users acquainted with the new environment.
DinCloud was very responsive to any issues. One minor issue was a delay between
keyboard stroke and the display, but that was due to a bottleneck in the firm’s own
network, and easily fixed by adding bandwidth.
THE 451 GROUP: INFRASTRUCTURE COMPUTING FOR THE ENTERPRISE 17 © 2012 451 RESEARCH, LLC AND/OR ITS AFFILIATES. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
SECTION 5Survey Data, Market Sizing and M&A
5.1 SURVEY DATA
In a survey of nearly 40 IT professionals conducted by our sister organization TheIn-
foPro, we found that desktop virtualization is on the roadmap for most respondents
in 2012. VDI and session-based computing top the charts, but not one of the small set
of respondents had cloud-hosted desktops in their business plan. The market is indeed
nascent, although we remain bullish that it will continue to grow over the next few
years, and believe interest is real. Adoption will depend on how the early players can
educate potential customers. For now, let’s take a look at some of the survey results.
FIGURE 1: SURVEY QUESTION – WHAT PERCENTAGE OF DESKTOPS ARE OR WILL BE VIRTUALIZED IN 2011? IN 2012?
Full sample: 2001, n=37; 2012, n=48
> 25%
21%-25%
16%-20%
11%-15%
6%-10%
1%-5%
0%
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50%
2011
2012
4%
17%
0%
2%
2%
4%
0%
13%
4%
13%
42%
38%
48%
15%
18 DESKTOPS AS A SERVICE© 2012 451 RESEARCH, LLC AND/OR ITS AFFILIATES. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
FIGURE 2: SURVEY QUESTION – WHAT IS THE STATUS OF YOUR DESKTOP VIRTU-ALIZATION PROJECT?
Full sample: n=49.
Preliminary Investigation –
No Funding and/or Staff14%
In Consideration With an Active, Funded,
and Staffed Project12%
In Pilot29%
In Use – Production Deployment
45%
THE 451 GROUP: INFRASTRUCTURE COMPUTING FOR THE ENTERPRISE 19 © 2012 451 RESEARCH, LLC AND/OR ITS AFFILIATES. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
5.2 MARKET SIZING
FIGURE 3: THE DESKTOP VIRTUALIZATION ECOSYSTEM MARKET OPPORTUNITY
5.3 M&A
The incumbent virtualization platform players will continue to acquire startup vendors to
round out their cloud suites. Last year, Citrix made six acquisitions, including EMS Cortex,
which gives it an application delivery platform for the cloud; RingCube Technologies,
which brings layering of personalization smarts; and AppDNA, which manages application
migrations. Similarly, Quest Software picked up ChangeBase for application analysis and
user management. VMware also chimed in with a number of SaaS acquisitions, including
SlideRocket and Digital Fuel Technologies.
Going forward, we expect to see consolidation in the storage and I/O management space
for VDI environments. We think Dell, HP or IBM might be interesting suitors for storage
I/O optimization company Atlantis Computing. Along the same lines – and if Dell is inter-
ested in moving higher up the stack – it may look at Unidesk, which also provides some
clever layering technology. Deals are already happening in this space. Tiny California-
based DeskStream just bought even tinier Belfast-based WorldDesk, which has created a
DaaS service that uses Dropbox for online storage. The service also runs on DeskStream’s
DVD platform, which provides workspace layering and storage optimization.
2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015
Initial Adoption:• Desktop virtualization viewed as a
market with a lot of potential• Hyper-growth stage yet to be achieved• Launch of Citrix XenDesktop 4 &
VMware View 4.0• Performance and ROI hurdles hinder
progress toward ‘desktop nirvana’• Session-based computing accounts for
over 75% market share
Focus shifting toward DaaS
The Desk
top
Virtualiz
ation E
cosystem
$5.6bn
$1.6bn
Broader Adoption:• Adoption in best use cases • Push by Citrix & VMware• Desktop + application + user virtualization =
closer to ‘nirvana product’’• First growth spike in 2010• Desktop virtualization revenues expand to com-
pete with session-based computing revenues• User-centric evolution of desktops with an aim
toward next-generation end-user computing
The desktop virtualization ecosystem revenue includes:• Server-, client-, cloud-, and OS-hosted desktop virtualization• Session-based computing• Application virtualization• Management (includes user virtualization)
20 DESKTOPS AS A SERVICE© 2012 451 RESEARCH, LLC AND/OR ITS AFFILIATES. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
SECTION 6 Adjacent Markets
6.1 THIN CLIENTS AND MOBILE DEVICES
Thin clients were once seen as PC replacements, but only partially succeeded in that
role, remaining a tiny niche within total desktop sales. Even in the terminal services
sector driven by Citrix, thin clients never reached more than a 25% penetration rate.
Now, however, the increasing adoption of desktop virtualization assumes that access
will be available not only from PCs or thin clients, but also from mobile devices,
including smartphones and tablets. Some enterprises are adopting ‘bring your own PC’
strategies, where users are free to choose whichever device they prefer for both personal
and corporate use, with the IT department providing secure access to the enterprise
resources.
Wyse Technology’s recent purchase of mobile device management company Trellia
Networks indicates that the thin-client market is shifting its focus toward mobility. Also,
market leader HP now talks in terms of mobile thin clients. Number three in the thin-
client space (at least in terms of number of seats) is nComputing, which turns standard
PCs into thin-client servers. Others include Dell (still establishing itself), Germany’s IGEL
Technology and zero-client pioneer startup Pano Logic.
In the end, it’s all about end-user experience, and whether thin clients and mobile
devices can deliver that on par with PCs. Remote media protocols play a large part here.
In general, the various approaches to remote computing have been shifting in recent
years toward hardware-rendering and host-rendered protocols. Before this trend took
hold, thin clients had been getting fatter and were starting to require updates – in effect
turning into the PCs they were meant to replace and undermining any claimed cost or
ease-of-management benefits. That is perhaps one reason why thin clients have never
risen beyond single-figure percentages in desktop market share vs. personal computers.
The other reason is, of course, the limited user experience when compared to a PC. In
combination with VDI vendors, thin-client advocates now hope to fix that by pushing
much leaner and simpler clients, more capable hosts, tuned protocols that can deliver
full graphical interfaces, and virtual desktop software for personalization.
THE 451 GROUP: INFRASTRUCTURE COMPUTING FOR THE ENTERPRISE 21 © 2012 451 RESEARCH, LLC AND/OR ITS AFFILIATES. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
6.2 IDENTITY AND ACCESS MANAGEMENT
Managing identity is key to delivering applications and desktops from the cloud. Iden-
tity in the cloud is entering a more advanced phase of evolution that builds on the
initial need to securely and consistently exploit internal identity logic to manage access
to off-premises resources and applications. Previously, we spoke about identity in the
cloud as the extension of authentication, authorization and provisioning to manage
access to resources and services outside of the corporate firewall.
The market is now contending with what the cloud requires for identity management
as a technology set relative to what the identity management industry can deliver. The
rise of a portable identity, or ‘identity container,’ is defined first by the work done to
define authentication and authorization standards by the identity management industry.
However, the desire for a ‘cloud aware’ identity that is free of the legacy concerns of
internal identity management to enable unconstrained, dynamic utilization of cloud
resources across service APIs is driving the new programmatic definition of identity.
As a result, spending on identity in the cloud is undergoing a shift from tactical invest-
ments (like federated single sign-on) to a single SaaS application. Rather than simply
serving as a means to extend the enterprise sphere of control, identity becomes a
crucial element in managing continuous services across discontinuous infrastructure –
not only between the enterprise and a third-party application, but between and across
cloud instances, whether private, public or hybrid. With identity now portable – but
still contingent on an enterprise identity – the stage is set for converting enterprise user
profiles into assured attributes articulated in standards for dynamic, automated and
granular authorization and provisioning.
Realistically speaking, the degree to which standards-based articulation of an enter-
prise identity and associated attributes will play out as a central management concern
– and the pace this happens at – is tightly linked to an organization’s strategic invest-
ment in cloud computing, application isolation and IT consumption models like desktop
virtualization. Plus, for many organizations with existing investments in identity and
access management infrastructure, managing access to external services, applica-
tions and resources alongside legacy applications is linked to the complex challenge of
governance. And the administrative processes are tied up with legacy infrastructure like
Microsoft Active Directory.
22 DESKTOPS AS A SERVICE© 2012 451 RESEARCH, LLC AND/OR ITS AFFILIATES. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
INDEX OF COMPANIES
2X Software 5
Adobe 8
Alchemy Communications 11
AppDNA 19
Apple 6, 8
Aria Systems 13
Atlantis Computing 19
AT&T 11
ChangeBase 19
Cisco 13
Citrix 2, 5, 7, 9, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 19, 20
Compellent 13
CSC 10
Cybele Software 9
Dell 19, 20
DeskStream 19
Desktone 2, 6, 9, 10, 12, 14
Digital Fuel Technologies 19
dinCloud 2, 6, 10, 11, 15, 16
Dropbox 1, 19
EMS Cortex 13, 19
Enform 15
En Pointe Technologies 10, 11
Equinix 11
Ericom Software 5, 8
Facebook 7, 9
Freed-Hardeman University 14
Google 8
HP 13, 19, 20
IBM 10, 19
IGEL Technology 20
Immigration Attorneys 15, 16
Infosys 10
Infosys Limited 10
Kaviza 9
LANdesk 11
Marubeni 10
Microsoft 2, 3, 5, 7, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 21
THE 451 GROUP: INFRASTRUCTURE COMPUTING FOR THE ENTERPRISE 23 © 2012 451 RESEARCH, LLC AND/OR ITS AFFILIATES. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
mindSHIFT Technologies 10
Molten Technologies 10
nComputing 20
NetApp 11, 13
nGenX 13
nivio 12
Oracle 5
Pano Logic 20
Parallels 14
Q-Comm 13
Quest Software 5, 11, 19
Qwest Communications 11
Rackspace 10, 11, 12, 14, 15
Red Hat 5
Remote Spark 9
RingCube Technologies 19
salesforce.com 13
SlideRocket 19
SolarWinds 13
Symantec 2
Trellia Networks 20
Trend Micro 11
tuCloud 6
Unidesk 19
Verizon 10
Virtual Computer 15
VMware 2, 7, 9, 10, 11, 12, 15, 19
Vyatta 11
Wanova 15
Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group 8
Windstream Communications 13
Wipro 10
WorldDesk 19
World Wide Web Consortium 8
Wyse Technology 20
Xsigo 11