There is a lot of buzz about Microsoft’s Windows Virtual Desktop, a VDI Solution running on Azure. Let me tell you this: VDI should not be around anymore, it should be buried, and the epitaph should read something like “Promising but never delivered”.
It’s not that I see no use cases for VDI Solutions, unfortunately we, as an IT Community, have allowed those use cases to still be out there. In 2007 I joined Qwise, a major multiple award-winning Citrix Partner in The Netherlands. I was a stranger there, I do Microsoft only. And seeing all the struggling, the complexity, the money absorbing craziness of all those efforts to give users access to their applications, it made me wonder if there was no better solution. And there was, and that solution is a valid one still in 2018. And I even think that a lot of people would agree me with me, and, we did nothing about it.
Already back then, in 2007, web applications were mature enough to regard them as a serious solution for the growing complexity of managing and maintaining the application landscape, both on local desktops and centralized desktops. My “SBC/VDI” colleagues agreed, but, they argued, we must also support the legacy and the traditional client-server applications. And now, almost 12 years later, I still hear that same argument. And so, we still need desktops and full-blown operating systems. To run legacy applications. And we did nothing about it, no vision, no strategy. Software vendors, software buyers, consultants.
Of course, that is not completely true, I really love the Office WebApps and plenty of legacy apps are now WebApps. They offer a good portion of functionality for most users. But still, the battle on the VDI market continues, where we now do “serverless” in the cloud, doing “who needs a server OS”. We are afraid Windows7 becomes the new Windows XP but Microsoft’s WVD allows for Windows7, even offering 2 years of extended support. Allowing us all to not move forward. Keeping the 2007 eco-system alive, making some bucks. But keep in mind, we are probably end customers of our professional customers so who are we kidding?
Just saying……