You can rule the world without being a dictator

By admin | June 11, 2009 | Leave a Comment 

admin

Brian Madden in his blog last week suggested: “If Symantec buys a client hypervisor, they could dominate the desktop virtualization market in two years.” His argument, in essence, was that Symantec had the potential to take the market by storm by buying a client-side hypervisor company. He was saying that endpoint virtualization today is complex and populated by products from many vendors, but Symantec could make it easy for customers to deploy virtualization in a way that could dramatically accelerate adoption—if only we owned a desktop hypervisor.

The reality is the hypervisor is a crucial piece of enabling technology—but one that, by itself, delivers little value. And in a situation like this customers often prefer choice—the ability to mix and match technologies to find the most effective, lowest-cost solution. Although this creates a more complex environment, that disadvantage is offset by the reduced risk of not placing all of the proverbial eggs in one basket.

But this customer preference for choice is also where I fully agree with Brian’s insight about client management. Ultimately, customers want solutions that support a complex environment, but make it simpler to secure and manage the applications and information that users need. And this is where the real power of coupling management and virtualization becomes apparent—by delivering on the promise of a workspace that can follow the user, rather than remaining tied to a device, and applications in that workspace that can be delivered independently in whatever way optimises cost, security, and performance.

So while I agree that client hypervisors will lead to faster adoption of endpoint virtualization, history has shown that it’s uncomfortable for customers to be chained to a single vendor. Symantec’s strategy rests on providing customers freedom of choice. Perhaps in this way we will take the market by storm, even if the path is somewhat different from what Brian envisaged.

Ken Berryman

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