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Corporates under the cost-reduction cosh and facing ever-rising PC costs will increasing turn to desktop virtualization says IDC, which has a report on the subject to sell.

By shipping virtual desktops to PCs, notebooks, thin clients, and other possible end-point devices corporates can drastically reduce the costs of provisioning, maintaining, and supporting their end-user PC/notebook estate.

VMware is the obvious market leader in virtual desktops with its VDI [now View] product set. Citrix has its Xen Desktop, and IBM has just announced its VERDE Linux and Lotus virtual desktop which removes all Microsoft-associated costs from the equation.

IDC says its study, Virtualizing the Desktop Part 2: Client-Hosted Virtualization Leadership Grid, "compares the solutions of the top vendors providing desktop virtualization solutions, executed directly on the client. Solutions are ranked in an IDC Leadership Grid, and extensive information is provided on solution capabilities and vendor market positioning."

Terrific, but just four vendors' products are evaluated and they are VMware, RingCube, MokaFive, and Sentillion. So it has limited value for total cost of ownership (TCO) comparisons.

Don't bother looking for Xen Desktop in the study. It isn't there. Nor is the IBM virtual desktop. Just in case you think that VMware is it and you can forget the other three vendors in the study, IDC says: "from a technological perspective RingCube offered some of the best features currently available, while VMware held the strongest marketing position and ecosystem. MokaFive delivered a strong product with excellent management features and Sentillion provided a solution with a high degree of security."

Matthew McCormack, a client computing consultant in IDC's European Systems Group, said: "2009 will be a developmental year for desktop virtualization technology with lots of pilot activity. From 2010 we'll see the technology begin to enter the mainstream."

To find out more, you have to shell out $4,480, but you still won't know any more about Xen Desktop or the IBM VERDE thing. ®

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