Microsoft Ups the Ante on Virtual Desktops

Microsoft has been steadily adding chips to its arsenal for its much anticipated match of virtualization poker with VMware. Wednesday's announcement of Microsoft's intent to acquire Kidaro is their latest addition to a virtualization product portfolio that is quickly taking shape. Following yesterday's announcement, I have to wonder if some of the Microsoft folks are losing their poker faces in favor of a small smirk.

Before I get to Kidaro, I want to first backtrack and talk about what I saw as a very good move several months ago when Microsoft acquired Calista Technologies, announced January 21st. Calista's technology adds a great deal of efficiency to the Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP), and I believe Microsoft is thinking that with Calista they'll be able to rival Citrix's ICA protocol in terms of performance. ICA is a known commodity, and the Calista solution has yet to prove itself in production. However, Microsoft had to see something special in the Calista solution to snatch it up before Calista was even shipping a product. Microsoft sells software, and they're not about to get into the hardware business, so Calista is a great fit in terms of providing a software-based thin client. The cost of hardware thin clients (along with the volatility and consolidation in the virtual desktop space) have caused a number of organizations to hold off on deploying a virtual desktop infrastructure. But what if you could repurpose existing desktops as terminal devices using the Calista software? Now the cost of consolidating and virtualizing your desktop infrastructure drops significantly. Down the road, thin clients will be the predominant virtual desktop delivery platform, but a software-based thin client can allow organizations to transition to a virtual desktop infrastructure today with a modest investment.

Now onto Kidaro. I see this as another good move on Microsoft's part. The Kidaro acquisition allows Microsoft to directly compete with VMware's Assured Computing Environment (ACE) solution. For several years, I have seen VMware ACE as ideal for allowing mobile or remote users to securely connect to an organization's VPN. For political reasons and often to support legacy applications, many mobile users often have administrative rights to their system. While this allows them to install software they "need" to do their jobs, it also presents the risk of them installing malware on their systems. With ACE, you can centrally deploy a VM to mobile users and have the VM be the users' "work" system. Furthermore, you can leverage policies to lock down the VM and restrict the resources the VM can access. For example, you could configure the VM to only talk to a single VPN gateway address. You can also set via policy the ability to render a VM unbootable if it does not check-in within a certain number of days, thus mitigating the impact of a lost or stolen physical system. Kidaro is very similar in functionality to VMware ACE, and with Microsoft acquiring Kidaro I can easily see Kidaro's management policies transitioning to Group Policy Objects (GPOs). The ability to leverage GPOs to manage remote VMs will be very appealing to many organizations, and I would not be surprised to see VMware more tightly integrate ACE management with Windows GPOs in the future.

Of course, the tricky aspect of product acquisitions is getting them to play nice with your core management architecture. Microsoft has a good story going with System Center and I see System Center (and Active Directory) integration as crucial to the long term success of both of these acquisitions.

For months, talk around virtual desktops has centered around a two-horse race between VMware and Citrix. VMware is in the lead, and Citrix is beginning to come on strong. If you haven't noticed some of the back-and-forth between the vendors, I suggest you take a look at Citrix CTO Simon Crosby's blog or the VMware blogs Virtual Reality or A Little Truth (by VMware's Mike Dipetrillo). The fact that both vendors are paying so much attention to each other clearly shows that each is acknowledging the other as a competitor.

Microsoft's recent acquisitions is an obvious indication that they are not ready to concede the virtual desktop space to competitors, or even friendly partners like Citrix. And why should they? The virtual desktop market is the least penetrated of today's x86 virtualization solutions. My four year old son loves the story of the Turtle and the Hair, with its theme of slow and steady wins the race. Microsoft has been slow and steady in the evolution of their virtualization solution, and we all have to wonder if that will allow them to ultimately win the virtualization race.

VMware, Citrix, Virtual Iron, Novell, Sun, Parallels - what do you think? Microsoft has upped the ante. Do you already have enough on the table, or is it time to go out and get another chip? Do you want to show your poker face, or perhaps are you ready to tip your hand? If your answer is the latter, I welcome your comments.

Posted by: Chris Wolf