“We are living in a new world where Windows no longer is the only choice, it is just one choice,” says Vittorio Viarengo, vice president of end-user computing for VMworld. “Windows will be around for a long time,” he said in an interview in The Cube with Wikibon Chief Analyst David Vellante and SiliconAngle CEO John Furrier, webcast over SiliconAngle.TV from VMworld 2011. But in the new world of end-user computing we are all living in, organizations have to support a variety of end-user devices, not just Windows desktops and laptops.

VMware’s vision is a world in which users can work on whatever device they prefer to use at the moment. Viarengo’s new title and VMware’s nomenclature surrounding VDI – end-user computing rather than desktop computing – reflects this vision. And, Viarengo said, that vision is also reflected in the new products announced at the conference.

He describes Octopus, the first of these, as “the dropbox for the enterprise.” The concept is to provide one place where users can see and access their mobile, SaaS, Windows and server-based enterprise applications, providing them with a unified view of all the apps they need.”

AppBlast allows IT to drop an agent on any application – whether server- or Windows desktop-based – and instantly make it available to any device supporting HTML5.

These, however, are only pieces of the full picture. Virtualizing end-user devices presents unique challenges, he says. “On the server side you can virtualizing things under the covers, things that IT uses that end-users don’t see – for awhile before you start moving on to mission-critical applications. But with end-users you’re mission critical day 1.”

And the workloads are more complex. End-user virtualization presents difficult IO problems, and if the system is not sized correctly they can experience IO and anti-viral storms. VMware has worked with the storage vendors over the last two years to figure these problems out.

Developing the products and technologies is one thing. Winning the two-horse race against Citrix for the virtualized end-user market is another, Viarengo acknowledges. Citrix may have an initial lead, but, says Viarengo, today 50% of servers in enterprises run on vSphere, which means that companies have a large investment in VMware.

To win the race, he says, “We need to become more assertive about the strength of our end-user platform. We are geeks. We like to sit in the corner and do fun things with technology. We have to come out of that corner more and talk about why the things we do are providing value to our customers.”


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