Citrix’s announcement this week of XenClient could radically change the desktop virtualization landscape.
Unlike VMware’s hypervisor, XenClient is a “bare metal” software – or hypervisor type 1 – that loads in the computer’s memory, even before the operating system (MacOS X or Windows) does.
Enterprises would most likely use this to create separate and totally independent virtual desktops on the user’s PC: one for the workplace and one for private use for example.
“This is becoming important as more companies allow users to bring their own equipment in the workplace but still need to make sure it provides the necessary level of security to access corporate data,” explains Citrix CEO Mark Templeton, in a conversation at the company’s Synergy user and partner conference this week in Las Vegas.
Having several virtual machines on a single PC is nothing news. VMware does it, so does KVM and Parallels. But because these solutions use hypervisors type 2 – running on top of the operating system that can be hacked – it’s clunky, not as secure and complex.
Although, Citrix is the first to go the “bare metal” route on desktop computers with XenClient, nothing prevents VMware to follow suit as the Palo Alto, Calif.-company has all the technology in-house.
“VMware seems to be believe that virtual machines is the solution for everything they do. I guess it comes from their name (VM stands for virtual machine). It doesn’t have to be,” jokes Simon Crosby, CTO of Citrix’s virtualization business.
Citrix refused to say when XenClient will be available, but did several demos of the technology during the Synergy conference, including the hypervisor installed on a MacBook computer and running both MacOS X and Windows, side-by-side.
Cool website
I’m very happy I stumbled onto it through google. oing to have to add this one to the old bookmark list…