It is a marriage of convenience. Google wants to smite Microsoft, especially Windows 7 and 8, while VMware could care less about customers’ operating system choices, so long as the OS can be virtualized. That’s what passes for a strategic relationship these days. So now, Chromebooks can access the Windows universe.

Google and VMware have cooked up a tasty plan to help corporate and education IT chuck self-sufficient laptops and desktops in favor of cloud-dependent, absented-minded Chromebooks. Absent-minded because, compared to a traditional computer, a Chromebook seems to have no brain at all.

But, in a world where “Big Brother” (aka the cloud) is taking control, the Google/VMware combine makes a whole lot of sense. Especially, if your users are totally untrustworthy.

This is a deal about Chrome OS devices providing access to legacy OS apps and desktops running remotely atop VMware’s Horizon View desktop virtualization product. VMware can deliver apps or an entire desktop to its own client, called Blast, or to any HTML5 browser.

This gives Chromebooks the ability to work almost like a real computer, right up until the moment the network fails and Chrome OS devices become useless. An important benefit of this is that your users never have a copy of your data or applications on their machines, so if they lose the Chrome OS device or become disfellowshipped at work or school, nothing is compromised.

Virtualization also provides admins total control over what the serfs can do with the Chrome OS devices. No personal applications. No wasting time on social networks. It’s almost like isolating the user in front of a Wyse terminal and a timeshare application three decades ago. There’s nowhere to go beyond where you are told/allowed to go.

Oh, if that had only been done to Edward Snowden, again pointing out the value of the near total control this Chrome OS and VMware arrangement provides managers.

Of course, this won’t work for everybody. The higher-functioning your workforce is, the more workers will resent being handed a mostly brainless dumb terminal, even one with a Google logo attached. There will be applications that need to run even if – or especially, when – the network fails, and the cloud goes bye-bye. Maybe some apps will not virtualize very well.

A limitation for education customers will be having to cross the digital divide, in which students who might benefit most from a take-home, school-provided computer don’t have cloud access at home.

The reverse of this is that if broadband is available, a Chrome OS device or HTML5 browser makes it easy to deploy an army of stay-at-home service reps, without the worries of how they access the apps they need to use. Chromebooks are so inexpensive that they are easy to send, painless to lose and don’t require more in the way of support than the apps they are accessing.

Overall, this is a good deal that could potentially benefit many, many customers and users. I am not wild about Chromebooks, seeing a computer as an extension of me rather than an extension of my employer. PCs have always been about freedom, a concept I find hard to associate with Google. At some point, user freedom may block Chrome OS and Chromebooks, but it won’t be very soon.

photo credit: Morid1n via photopin cc