Q&A: VMware's Jocelyn Goldfein

Jocelyn Goldfein

What is the significance of this week's announcement about VMware View 3?

Jocelyn Goldfein: VMware View 3 is a major release of View Manager and is the next generation of our existing VDI [virtual desktop infrastructure]. It's really taking us forward from a set of techniques for server computing, to fundamentally changing the nature of what a desktop is, making them cheaper and easier to manage.

Key new features are View Composer, which lets hundreds of thousands of desktops share a master template. This cuts the amount of storage required but also lets you manage just a single image. Admins can also provision new desktops instantly, so it will really change the way desktops are managed.

Our connection broker now provides unified access to virtual machines, physical PCs and Terminal Server sessions, which means more management simplicity. Also, the offline virtual desktops feature lets you check out a VM [virtual machine]. This demonstrates our leadership in virtual desktops, because it lets you take your desktop out with you wherever you go.

It looks like you are playing catch-up with Citrix in some areas, such as user access. How do you respond to that?

We got into this because customers started using our stack for desktop computing. They did this even though using a VM for each worker is inefficient, and they did it because of the limits of using Terminal Services for running particular applications.

As we started getting into this space, we realised that a VM as a container means you can really change the way the environment is managed. You can do things like view composing, where you bring together a desktop from different pieces and have transparent portability like on a laptop. You can't do that with Terminal Services.

This ability to sever the information content from the physical machine frees users. Your desktop is your files and applications; it's your identity. This gets tied to [a single PC]. If I can take this and tie it to a virtual device that can follow me, I've transformed what it means.

Citrix is fundamentally a server-based computing company - they're in the server-based business. We have some catching up to do on areas like delivering the user experience, but we're not trying to emulate them, we're trying to transform what a desktop is.

How easy is it for firms to move from physical PCs to virtual clients?

I think it's much easier than you imagine. A VM imitates a physical PC, so it's much easier to move to this than to a Terminal Server architecture. You can snapshot a physical machine and turn it into a VM, for example. Your existing applications will still run. It still works the same as a physical PC.

Another reason is that, because of the capital expenditure replacement cycle, companies already face a disruptive replacement of infrastructure every few years. They're looking at Vista, and saying 'that doesn't really give me what I want.'

If they are faced with a massive forklift upgrade anyway, bringing in virtualisation at the same time isn't that hard to swallow. I think it is inevitable. It's not necessarily the best technology, but we probably won't be running Windows the same way we do today in 10 years' time, because it's too painful.

A key insight is that the key benefits [of virtualisation] don't come from centralising CPUs, they come from centralising images, so you can provision new copies very quickly. And with offline desktop I can still centralise images, but instead of needing a constant connection, I can use it locally. Companies get all the management benefits of centralisation even for laptop users.

It's not just about them getting on a plane and losing the network connection; a laptop delivers more bang per buck than a Terminal Server. Management simplicity comes from the image, rather than pushing pixels to the endpoint.

How similar is Offline Desktop to VMware's existing ACE product?

It's entirely based on VMware ACE, which has built-in virtual machine synchronisation and its own management tools. What we've introduced is a live connection back to the admin console. The management tether is what's new, so you are operating the same policies as when you are on the server.

Running the virtual client locally is a powerful concept, and VMware is the only company that can do this. We're the only company with a server-based and a client-based hypervisor technology. A client hypervisor is actually as different from a server-based hypervisor as a laptop is from a server.

Do you think virtual clients will ever have a comparable user experience to a standalone PC?

That's difficult to say. It's a bar that's constantly moving. In PCs, the GPUs are always getting more powerful, and things like Flash content are now a big part of the user experience, whereas they weren't just a year or two back.

Real business applications may come to depend on 3D graphics in future. I don't think there will be any point where we will reach some end point and it will be done; no matter your protocol, there will always be something. It's a game of catch up.

Customers don't blink at this, because [virtual clients] are so important to them for other reasons. We have licensed Wyse's technology [for multimedia redirection], and we will have more of this in the next version [of VMware View].

How long do you think enterprises will continue to have physical desktop PCs?

I just don't know. We've been at the server game seriously since 2003, and still only about 30 per cent of servers are virtualised today, whereas everyone expects it will reach 80 per cent eventually. It takes longer than you expect.

The real question is in 10 years' time will we still be using Windows? However, I personally bet we'll still be using Windows applications; big corporate users are not converting all their vital applications to Web 2.0 anytime soon. You can gradually move to a Web 2.0 position, but what web-based apps don't give you is the desktop - a place to keep all your own files. It's a bridge to the cloud world, a way to get applications into the cloud without having to give up your existing applications.