I don’t remember how this conversation started but most likely I was going on my rant about the separation of virtual desktops from session based desktops (VDI vs SBC) a common point of discussion when I’m sharing a table with the folks at Citrix. My argument is that the infrastructure and the OS are very different between these technologies so blurring the market is confusing clients and its why we at Gartner call VDI, SHVD or Server Hosted Virtual Desktops verses SBC (Server Based Computing). In any case, I’m sure I was in the middle of this discussion/rant/argument whatever you want to call it when Vishal interrupts the conversations and says:

Vishal: The architecture behind XenApp has radically changed. All that it takes to setup a XenApp server is just an agent.

Gunnar: So you no longer have 20 dependencies to install it?

Vishal: Exactly. All you have to do is install the VDA agent.

Gunnar: Is this the same VDA that’s used on XenDesktop.

Vishal: Similar, but under the covers there are differences, but its just an agent.

Gunnar: The installation of XenApp only requires VDA… that’s it…

Vishal: That’s it.

In Gartner this is what we call the “ah ha” moment.

I’m not sure if this has been well explained at this conference, in fact the only mention of XenApp was XenApp 6.5. But the fact is XenDesktop 7 is actually XenApp 7. The proof of this is found in the architectural designs Citrix is sharing at Synergy:

Here is XenApp 6.5 and XenDesktop 5.6:

Now take a look at “XenDesktop 7″:

As you can see XenDesktop 7 includes the server OS, which means XenDesktop 7 includes a new architecture for XenApp, thus it IS XenApp 7 as well. Also you can see my ah ha moment, that both XenDesktop and “XenApp” only require a VDA.

The idea that we manage XenApp or XenDesktop through the same console and we install and deploy these very different solutions in the same fashion, is a major change for Citrix. Its a change every administrator out there should know about. It changes my opinion on XenApp, moving from a very complex solution to something that has the potential to be easy to manage and deploy (I’ll have to play with it more to finalize my opinion on that comment).

To me this moment was lost in the keynote of Citrix Synergy. If I were Brad Peterson, Chief Demo Officer at Citrix, I’d have done a demo of the installation of XenApp and shown that all was required was a single agent. Furthermore I would have made this point of the blending of XenApp and XenDesktop. This is such a major shift in the approach to XenApp it finally makes me question my own argument. Citrix has been blurring the line between SHVD and SBC for a long time. With the advent of a VDA agent for both XenDesktop and XenApp, I feel their argument has some merit .. at least from the software side. The argument on the infrastructure is still valid… just warning you Citrix, I’m not done fighting this battle.

Follow me on twitter: @gunnarwb

My reason for this is simple. When a desktop dies, productivity stops, people get upset, and worst of all work will inevitably be lost. This is a fact of life and thus IT should be designing systems that accept the eventual failure of a single server and they should design the solution so that this failure minimizes user impact. Putting 100-200 VMs on a server may seem attractive from a cost stand point (due to the current way of thinking). But pulling the plug on 100-200 desktops is not something that should be considered acceptable. Instead, I am of the belief that we should be designing servers that have fewer users on them. In my perfect world a server should be completely disposable, costing significantly less than modern servers and host around 10 users (or less).

In today’s world this idea is insane. Servers are expensive and space would be a major concern because a small server burns at least a 1U, some compact servers allow two servers per U. If I wanted to build a system to support 2000 users and only have 10 users per host it would never work from a space standpoint. Okay, fair enough, but that argument just led me to believe we need smaller servers, much much smaller servers, and a little over a year ago I learned about HP’s project Moonshot.

Even though server hardware isn’t a big focus of mine I opted to attend one of HP’s early briefings on this project. I liked the size of the server, it was what I was looking for, but at that time that’s where the honeymoon ended because this server was going to be based on ARM. ARM wouldn’t work in my world of virtual desktops, I need x86 and I need VT, without these my ideas where DOA. Well I should have kept paying attention because this week I learned that HP made some major changes that bring my dream back to a reality. Most importantly I learned that Moonshot is now using an Atom processor that supports VT (or so I’m told). This at least makes my thesis technically possible, however at this point I still have more questions than answers, but I am excited at the possibility of what this brings for desktop virtualization solutions.

I love the idea of spreading out the load of virtual desktops. I don’t know if HP is thinking about virtual desktop, but I think they should if the price is right. My hope is that as this project becomes a reality I’d get to test it and see if it’s possible to deliver a decent Windows experience on this processor (my previous experience with Atom on desktop is anything but a good user experience). Regardless of whether it is possible today, I like this direction of thought and I know that technology has a history of getting faster and cheaper. So who knows, maybe one day soon my crazy nut brained idea might become a reality.

Feel free to follow me on twitter if you wish to continue the conversation @gunnarwb

Disclaimer: This blog is my personal musings on a specific technology. These views do not reflect Gartner as an organization (it takes a lot more work for me to formulate a fully hashed out Gartner opinion than the 10 minutes it took to write a blog). I do not endorse any vendors mentioned in this article, the only thing I endorse is Gartner. Gartner is pretty awesome. I mean they actually pay me to research technology. How cool is that?! Okay, I forgot this was supposed to be a disclaimer. Legal jargon, legal jargon, don’t sue me. The end.

For today’s blog I give you some WAN testing on Windows Server 2012 RDS running RDP8 (RemoteFX) from a Windows 8 client. Since a lot of the information is for Gartner clients only, I shot a video doing simple user experience comparison tests while the connect ran over an Apposite WAN emulator which simulated how RDP8 handles different WAN scenarios:

What I cover in the RDP8 paper goes into much more depth than this, as my paper dives into the feature set of RDP8/RemoteFX and while the user experience is extremely important, specific feature differences is where organizations may have to draw the line between vendor selection.

No summary or analysis in this blog readers, sorry, there’s plenty of that in the paper. Consider this blog a shameless plug (or tease). I plan on doing a video for each vendor running similar tests, so stay tuned for that.

-Gunnar @gunnarwb

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/rds/archive/2012/10/09/remote-desktop-protocol-8-0-update-for-windows-7-sp1-enabling-a-great-wan-user-experience-for-windows-7-sp1-virtual-desktops.aspx

If you clicked that link you’d see that Microsoft has announced official support for RemoteFX (RDP8) into Windows 7. This is great news for those of us who really care about this market. I’m continuing to hold on to my belief that Microsoft wants to enter this market strong and this announcement is a big move in that direction. However, as awesome as this announcement is, my second point still needs some addressing: Client support specifically iOS support.

Client support:

It is my job to take daily calls from a variety of Gartner clients. 100% of my calls are EUC related, mostly around SHVD (VDI) or SBC offerings. In at least two-thirds of my calls iOS comes up. IMO tablet support is one of the top drivers of SBC and SHVD solutions. I have asked Microsoft numerous times about creating an iOS client for their RDS or VDI solutions and on numerous occasions I have received the same reply: “these features will come via a third party”. Based on the poor RDP clients that are currently in the market place I don’t think it’s a big stretch to say that “3^rd parties” really means Dell Wyse (it’s the only decent RDP client out there). PocketCloud is a great RDP app at $20 a pop (yes I know there is a free one but it lacks many features), so it wouldn’t surprise me to see a RemoteApp capable PocketCloud app in the near future. I see a twofold problem here:

1. I don’t pay for the client app on Citrix or VMware’s solution (and I shouldn’t have to considering I already paid for the host license)
2. Dell has purchased Quest and Quest has a competing product: vWorkspace. I know Wyse and Quest are probably still managed as different companies but I feel that Dell wants to get into the VDI game and I think they will be successful at it. Having Microsoft depend on a partner with a competing product doesn’t make a ton of sense to me if they want to own this market.

I can’t help but think, what if Citrix or VMware said the same thing about their products. “No we don’t support it, we expect someone else to do this for us.” We’d, rightfully, give them tons of grief, heck we might just turn to a different product.

Why do we see Microsoft taking this “third party” stance?

I think the answer can be found in RDS. Any Citrix Admin knows that XenApp sits on top of RDS, so while the goal may be to deploy XenApp we first have to deploy and pay for RDS. This relationship makes it so there is no strong reason to innovate, that was Citrix’s job. This Citrix/Microsoft Partnership is one of best partnerships I’ve seen for Microsoft. The problem is SHVD isn’t as cut and dry as that.

In SHVD, you can deploy a solution that doesn’t sit on a framework built by Microsoft. Sure you’ll still need Windows OS licenses wherever they are applicable, but the architecture of SHVD does not literally sit on top of a Microsoft framework. This means much of the SHVD innovation is happening outside of a Microsoft framework, they are left out of the loop of this entire market. This is why we see Microsoft building the VDI solution in Server 2012.

If a survey I read by Imprivata turns out to be true (in that survey SHVD is on the rise while SBC is on the fall) then Microsoft needs to get into the SHVD game and it’s a different game than the RDS market because in this market they have to build the entire product from top to bottom. So how do they do this?

I see three roads for Microsoft:

1. Dell vWorkspace: I could see a world where Microsoft stops any major innovation around management and lets Dell pick up the slack. A new Dell/Microsoft relationship would emerge similar to the Dell/Citrix relationship, but this relationship would be centered on the SHVD market. vWorkspace would do well building up off the VDI product Microsoft has created, also Quest tends to do management tools very well, so why not. It lets Microsoft take the same stance in the SHVD market as they do in the SBC market. I could buy this theory, but as unrelated as this may seem, Microsoft’s move with Windows 8 and Surface just make me think they might take a different road on this. I think Microsoft is realizing that to complete in this market they have to own the product, in the case of tablets they are taking control of hardware and software. I wonder if Microsoft will decide it doesn’t want to sit back and let others innovate, and instead decide to innovate themselves. I hope this is true, but even if the final result is a Dell/Microsoft relationship I think this too could be good for the market.
2. HTML5: I think I’ve read everything there is to read about VMware’s Project AppBlast, and I’ve watched every demo that they offer, what I gather is that they plan on allowing you to connect to a desktop without a client, just by using HTML5. Citrix has a HTML5 solution as well. Microsoft doesn’t. Now the most interesting thing is Microsoft would be the biggest one to benefit from an HTML5 client. After all, they could try and build native clients for everything under the sun like Citrix has done, or overnight they could work on any device that has a HTML5 browser. This seems like the quickest way for them to deliver a client to an iOS device or Android, or any device for that matter.  If I’m Microsoft and I wanted to get in the game for real, this would seem like a great shortcut to that end.
3. Just do it! That’s right, instead of depending on others to do it for you, and instead of taking an HTML5 shortcut, just do it. Take the bull by the horns and start writing some code to support iOS, Andriod, and Mac. With those three additional clients you’d cover the bulk of your user base and make this VDI product a viable alternative to VMware or Citrix.

Microsoft has proven that when they want to win a market they can do it; Office and Exchange are great examples of markets that Microsoft owns well. I think a third strong contender to the SHVD market would be welcome by many clients. Microsoft is doing well is so many of the components of the SHVD solution (broker, hypervisor, protocol) I hate to see them lose it to something as simple as building some clients. So Microsoft, if you’re listening, I have faith in you, and I think you entering the market will increase the adoption rate of SHVD and ideally lower the cost across the board (and maybe just maybe we can talk about cleaning up the licensing that surrounds SHVD). In any case, I welcome you to come in and own it, and I don’t think I’m alone.

Pod/Block is a design principle where you buy storage, compute and networking, then mirror it until you have enough of it to cover your user count. The problem is you tend to scale in 500 or 1000 chunks. The appliance approach is completely different. First off, appliance embrace storage and compute happening in the same box. Second, it scales at much smaller chunks 100-200 users. This approach means I’m not buying a big bucket of IOPS for 1000 users, I’m utilzing local storage which tends to be faster (running on the same bus) cheaper (don’t need expensive SAN HDs) and scales better (every time I add an appliance I’m getting more IOPS). The appliance approach in one sense is still pod/block as its still storage/compute/network but it all happens within the singular appliance. The big catch though is that when you add an additional appliance you aren’t adding another separate bucket, you are increasing the size of your original bucket. This means every time you add an appliance EVERY user is affected positively.

Not all appliances are created equal. I will admit I haven’t talked to every appliance vendor out there, but after looking at a lot of appliances one vendor continues to stand out: Nutanix. Nutanix uses a mix of local storage SATA/SDD/FusionIO to give a massive amount of IOPS on each node. This should remove IOPS as being the bottleneck in desktop virtualization projects. Best of all when you add a node, you increase the total size of the infrastructure, e.g. its really a new way of building a SAN. This approach allows me to use local storage for persistent desktops. Most of the time when you are talking about local storage the conversation has to be about non-persistent desktops because if a node goes down you may lose important data. Not true with the grid approach Nutanix makes. For you storage admins think of each node as being an additional controller, if you lose one its no big deal, your data is safe. With all that fluff its only fair to point out that Nutanix is still too expensive, is limited in how they fail to a 1GB link (Update: as of 12/3/12 Nutanix now supports dual 10g), and although I have talked to one customer using Nutanix for 1000 desktops, I still have concerns as how far that solution can scale. So Nutanix isn’t perfect, I just think they are on the right track.

So I really like appliances and based on the “Rapid Desktop Program” announcement from VMware last week it appears that VMware likes appliances too, or so you would think. I have to admit when I saw the Rapid Desktop program I got excited, then I did the unthinkable, I actually looked into the program. To understand what the Rapid Desktop program is here is a blurb from the press release:

View “Rapid Desktop” program gains momentum – Today, Cisco, Dell, HP, and Intel join the growing eco-system of OEM, technology and channel partners that are helping to develop and sell VMware View appliances. These easy-to-deploy VDI appliances host between 25 and 500 virtual desktops that can be provisioned quickly, making them ideal for small and midsize businesses (SMBs) and scalable for larger organizations.

Again that release speaks to me, it sounds like OEMs are building appliances, woo hoo! The problem is this program doesn’t make any sense. I was handed sheet after sheet of every vendor that was in the appliance program and I took every free minute to stop by each booth and get the elevator pitch. What I learned was that to some vendors these “appliances” are just a reference architecture, to another it was a sticker they could put on their SAN and add some reference architecture, to others it was a way to promote a competitor to vBlock, and finally there was Pivot3 and Nutanix (the two solutions I felt where fair to be called appliances).

The Rapid Desktop program reminds me of my MCP (Microsoft Certified Professional) certifications. I have an MCP in Exchange Server and an MCP in Windows Server, you could also get an MCP for SharePoint or SQL Server, what do these various MCPs have in common? They are all called MCP and they are all stamped Microsoft, unfortunately outside of that there is nothing else in common. That’s how I feel about the Rapid Desktop Program. Its a way to get a nice VMware stamp of approval but it means nothing. Appliances should be a single device, not a reference architecture, anything outside of that doesn’t fit the bill as far as I’m concerned.

I am happy to see VMware realize that appliances solve a lot of the cost and complexity issues around desktop virtualization. They still have a lot more work to do to make this program more understandable, and hopefully they next step will be to get the software stack to run as an appliance to (Citrix VDI in a box comes to mind). Simple hardware solutions combined with simple software stacks will bring down the cost of desktop virtualization which in turn will make it an easier for organizations to deploy and maintain.

Security:
I read Shawn Bass’s blog last night and while I do agree with him on his major point: VDI is no more secure than Physical PCs. (I agree because in the end they are both running the Windows OS which would be identically secure be it virtual or physical).

I do disagree with the minor points such as this one:

Whole disk encryption products have been out for years now and given that a majority of federal, state, local governments require disk encryption on endpoint systems this is becoming less and less likely as a vehicle for loss of data when an endpoint is lost/stolen.

I disagree that data can be secure at the end point device. If there is anything I learned in my college courses it’s that security is an illusion. No matter how hard you try to secure something there is always something that makes in insecure. Encryption products only delay the inevitable. It’s this belief that makes me say, I believe that there is a big difference between not having the data at the end point, verses having it, regardless of encryption. This means I believe verticals that are very data sensitive (health care with PHI) are better off with a SHVD or SBC solution that keeps the data off the end point device.

As far as Shawn’s point about securing the data in the datacenter, and protecting from things like drop box, I think he is spot on; this is very difficult. However I do think he is missing something here too, this argument has nothing to do with physical verse virtual desktops. The data in the datacenter is difficult to protect, that’s a problem in both worlds. The issue with physical PCs is that not only do you have to protect it in the datacenter, you also have to protect it at the end point. SHVD/SBC eliminates the need to protect it in two locations. But again, Shawn is right, it’s extremely difficult to protect this data.

I also think there is less risk in protecting the datacenter, these areas are under surveillance, in protected rooms, the chances of something being stolen is very low, compared to a desktop. So virtual desktops do provide better physical security than physical desktops, but that’s just layer 1.

The underlying issue Shawn is getting as is that it’s VERY difficult to secure yourself against users that rightfully have access to things and break the rules. In my background in health care, we couldn’t stop doctors/nurses from looking at records they have no business looking at, but we could track it. With employees, this is really your only defense, track and punish the offending user.

Live Data:
I also feel Shawn is missing part of the live data argument. In a SBC/SHVD world, the data doesn’t cross the network except in the datacenter. What is sent to the end point is just screen updates, which could be argued has data (but it’s going to be very limited) compared to say an ODBC query running across a VPN, in that scenario the data that is sent over the link is a full queried response (IE real data). But to Shawn’s credit he does say that SHVD/SBC “may” improve this, I would just go a step farther and say it “does” improve it.

Overall I very much agree with Shawn, I just pick at some of the finer points.

Now to answer your questions: (these are questions I was asked in the journalists email to me)

How are VDI-based virtual desktops better than PCs?

1. Management. They are easier to manage. This is what the vendors push, this is what I talk about often. I can have thousands of desktops run off a single central image. Other products can do this but SHVD works in more use cases.
2. Performance. In many cases performance can be improved using a virtual desktop. Poorly written apps, that send large amounts of data to a remote user over a VPN, can see a significant boost in performance when running on a gigabit network (on the back end) and then remotely accessed. This is true for both SBC and SHVD. Also, utilizing technologies like Atlantis ILIO make it possible to have VMs that boot in seconds not minutes. I have a health care client that cites poor desktop performance a patient safety issue. I like how that client thinks.
3. Follow me desktop. This is one of those benefits of SBC/SHVD, the ability to have your desktop follow you anywhere, be it a tablet, desktop, or TV, your desktop following you is a big benefit. You could argue that laptops do this too, and you’d be right, but the ability to do this with follow me desktop technologies means I don’t have to carry one device with me, any device is my access point.

I want to switch gear, you are putting me as the VDI protagonist, but I’d like to flip it around. There are a lot of reasons not to use SHVD.

1. Cost. Need I say more. It’s expensive, and you tend to only see the benefits in OPEX not CAPEX. A major change in storage architecture could change this story. So I tend to praise any vendor that bring storage into the hypervisor host.
2. Other technologies that would do a better job. For instance, SBC would be better suited to deliver an application to a tablet than an SHVD desktop. Provisioning technologies like Citrix Provisioning Server, Wyse Streaming Manager, VMware Wanova, would be better suited to solve the management complexity of physical desktops without the need to build out a huge SHVD solution. This is especially true for environments that have already upgraded their physical PCs to Windows 7 so they have good hardware but still have major management complexities.
3. Expertise. SHVD isn’t simple and at scale requires some pretty sharp IT staff to keep it running. Thankfully technologies like Citrix’s VDI-in-a-box, Nutanix and others are working to simplify this complexity.

My stance is that you use whatever technology makes sense, and try to ignore all the negativity that is out there. PCs still make a lot of sense, so does SHVD, SBC, disk streaming technologies. They each have their place, they each solve a problem. No single technology is going to replace the need for all other technologies (at least not yet). I think VMware’s stance with Wanova further backs up this point, also what I just said could be used to define what Citrix calls Flexcast, so they too stand by that philosophy.

I’ve been attempting to start the debate up early on twitter (@gunnarwb) to see what others think about this market. So far Tal Klein (@VirtualTal) “Senior Director of Products at Bromium”  is the first to comment.

In response to a tweet talking about Divide, Tal has one comment:

“Meh”

I joined the conversation and stated that I find the solution interesting because unlike VMware’s solution, the Divide solution is not a hypervisor which I highly doubt will ever be allowed on iOS. To this Tal responds:

“Horizon Mobile is equally useless. People don’t think my stuff here/work stuff there.”

I’ve had enough conversations with Tal to know he is against any approach where the end user notices something IT has done. I reached out to him directly and he gave me this response:

“In the dual persona use case, IT is forcing end-users who don’t have multiple personalities to adopt multiple personalities. This is not holistic and forces people to work in a different context because IT says so with no added benefit to the end-user. It’s contrary to how we interact with our computing devices, especially phones and thus destined to fail.”

Tal hits on one of the differences between the Citrix and VMware approaches. In the Citrix approach your business apps will sit side by side with your personal apps. In the VMware approach they are completely separate environments.

• The completely separate environments approach has some benefits, such as the ability to completely remote wipe the business side of the device. Businesses could also play for a phone/data plan that is only used if you are on the business side thus allowing a separate phone/data plan for the personal side.
• The side be side approach is more in line with how Tal sees the end user’s non-split personality, but I imagine there could be legal issues for companies that want to remote wipe a device (in some country’s this is not legal).

There are a lot more advantages and disadvantages to each approach and I’m in the middle of picking them apart for the debate. I’d love to get your feedback though. What questions would you ask? What weaknesses do you see? What advantages to you see? I have informed both Citrix and VMware that I’m opening up the debate early through my blog so they will be listening for feedback here.

I’d really like to hear from you. Which approach do you think is best? Which is worst? Are they both wrong?

Comments appreciated!

I’m interested in this paper because I have wanted to do a deep dive into these protocols for awhile. Each of these protocols are very similar yet majorly different, but who knows the reasons for the differences? Are these differences important? Obviously, I think so or I wouldn’t be devoting so much time to write a paper up about it. What I hope will be interesting for my readers is how I look at protocol, and how I separate the protocol itself, ICA/PCoIP/RDP from the wrappers that strengthen the protocol, HDX/RFX. Notice there are no PCoIP wrappers? Why is that? Is that important? Well, to know if it’s important we need to understand what the wrapper is and what it does.

In this research I will go beyond the age old “who uses more bandwidth” argument, and instead focus on the wrappers that surround the protocol to make it better. A couple questions I’d like to get answered:

• Why did VMware support MMR in older versions of View but not newer versions?
• How does NVIDIA’s VGX card, and its ability to send a native h.264 stream, affect all of these protocols?
• What is HDX? How many features does it support? What are those features? Why do they matter? How do you determine if your client even supports these features?
• What were the major changes in Microsoft’s RDP version 8? Is RemoteFX a protocol, a wrapper, or a hypervisor technology?
• Is HTML5 important to the protocol conversation? What about H.264?
• Why is UDP being used more prominently these days? Is TCP the wrong transport protocol for remote desktop/applications?

While the majority of desktop virtualization deals today go to VMware and Citrix, I’m predicting a major uptick from a more Microsoft focused solution via Dell (but I could be wrong, they could be planning to make vWorkspace a major contender), either way my gut is that Dell is in it to win some major market share and as vWorkspace’s protocol was an enhanced version of RDP its safe to say RDP8 (RemoteFX) will be their protocol of choice.

Other than the many articles I’ve seen comparing bandwidth utilization, I’ve never read anything that really focuses on what the protocol does, and what gives it isn’t wings. I’m very excited to start that research today, but I’m wondering: am I the only person out there that is interested in this stuff? What are you most interested in regarding how protocols differentiate? Do most people believe that the protocol wars are over?

I don’t.

Comments are appreciated.

Welcome back to my final installment of my Windows 8 Review. At this point I’ve pretty much covered most everything I want to say, but I do have one last thing I’d like to talk about and it gets me a little bit excited:

Hybrids

This Sunday I’m flying to New York to do a series of presentations for Universities across the state and I was thinking about what I’m going to pack. I’ve been testing different phones, tablets and laptops, and it occurred to me that Windows 8 combined with the Samsung slate device is a hybrid device. I can leave the iPad and the laptop at home and just take the slate device with me. The reason I take both with me is that I use the iPad on the plane for entertainment and for quick email responses, and I take the laptop for the hotel when I want to hunker down and get some real work done. This slate replaces the need for both devices. More importantly, I no longer have to spend $700 on a tablet and another $1000 on a laptop, I can buy one device and have it be both. This makes me wonder how I was ever duped into buying multiple devices for one purpose (me working). Windows 8 is a hybrid, and as such if it’s successful it’s going to reinvent the mobile user. We’re going back to having one device not two (unless you really want an ARM tablet), so I’ll rephrase that, I’M going back to one device not two.

There is a lot more analysis that could be done on Windows 8, such as: How the Windows Market Place will determine the success of a Windows tablet market, or will Surface simplify MDM management. There are a bunch of questions going on internally at Gartner and a lot of very sharp analysts are on the case. The main point to my blog (and I realize I got off track) was to review Windows 8 and I will admit I really wanted to have a medium for me to point out flaws in the use case of enterprise desktops (something I care about). These flaws are very important for me, as I tend to not recommend remoting a Windows desktop to a tablet device because Windows 7 and XP are not designed for touch. Windows 8 is and I want it to be the answer I need in the desktop virtualization field. I only hope my blogs and the countless others I have read only help to continue the development of this operating system. If you are going to the Gartner Catalyst (Twitter: #GartnerCat) conference you will hear me state that Windows is going to be around for a long time, these blogs are me doing whatever I can to help steer it in the right direction.

I’ve enjoyed writing these blogs, I hope you have enjoyed reading them. Please feel free to tweet me @gunnarwb, or leave me comments below. I love hearing feedback.

Welcome back! Today is day four of my series on Windows 8. We’ve discussed Windows 8 as a business decision, what it’s like from a tablet device, and what it’s like from a desktop device; today we are going to focus on the OS itself. To start that off I want to address a question I heard the other day: ”Is Windows 8 the next Vista?” While some might disagree with me, I’ve got to say this question is ridiculous, and to justify that statement lets take a trip down memory lane…

Windows 8 vs Windows Vista

There are only three things I need to remember about Vista to compare these two operating systems.

1. Hardware. When I first downloaded Vista, I had a heck of a time getting it to install on any hardware I had. If it did install the chances of my drivers working were slim to none. I remember raking through vendor sites trying different versions of drivers just to get a NIC to work or a graphic card to display properly. Either vendors weren’t ready for Vista or something was just majorly wrong with it (I don’t know which).
2. Software. On the off chance I got Vista working in these early days the next step was getting my applications to work. This was hit and miss, when it failed chances where good vendors would point their finger at Vista and say they don’t support it on that OS.
3. Buggy. This includes both of the above, but overall I’d just say the OS was buggy when released. Maybe it was rushed, I don’t know, I wasn’t an analyst at the time, I was an IT professional trying to determine if Vista was right for me. It wasn’t, I waited for Windows 7.

Metro

Sorry to keep saying this but I really like this slate device, it lets me be a tablet when I want to be a tablet and a desktop when I want to be a desktop, the only problem is that Metro doesn’t understand that difference. I see myself reaching for my slate device more than my iPad these last few weeks. I like the Metro interface on it, its quick, its easy to see my apps, and Cut the Rope is addicting. When I’m in a tablet scenario (bed, travel, the loo) I prefer a tablet, which means I prefer an interface like Metro. Any issue I have with Metro is something very minor (such as I’d like a background of my choosing on Metro) for the most part I like Metro. But I’m not always in the loo, in fact I tend to work from my desk 90% of the time, its these times that I’d like Metro to bugger off (or at least change).

Screen Real Estate

On my dual screen, I don’t like that any Metro app dominates an entire screen, when I click the Windows key to launch Metro it takes an entire screen to show me maybe 20 application shortcuts, so metro wastes my expensive real estate. I read a study once (not a Gartner study) that said having two monitors can increase productivity by 60%, I don’t know how accurate this is but I believe there is definitely a productivity increase by having multiple monitors.  It seems a bit out of touch with reality to devote an entire screen to a Start Menu, or to only allow a Metro app to run full screen (I can play Backgammon in a window). I’m using a Windows Phone these days and I think the UI on that could be mirrored for Metro when I’m docked, in that UI I can see all my applications on a screen width of a few inches. I don’t think Metro needs to go away completely, I just think it needs to recognize when I am docked and value my screen space.

Start Menu

Metro is the replacement for the Start Menu as such we no longer have a Start Menu like we’ve had since Windows 95 (Remember Rolling Stones “Start me up!”), nor is there a nice doc with everything you need like OSX. Instead when in the desktop mode on Windows 8 you have a task bar that you can pin things to, this basically forces you to use Metro, and Metro is so designed for touch that using it with a mouse seems like a waste of effort. I don’t like scrolling around for things, I bought a huge screen so when I work in Excel I can see everything at once. Metro forces me to scroll to much, and I know how petty that sounds but its all the petty things that we don’t put words to that when added up explain why we use a different vendor’s product. Having metro use less real estate and again mimic what I see on a Windows Phone, would be less of a learning curve and be less dragging of the mouse all over the screen (here’s a video of this). If this could happen I think it could be beneficial to pin the Metro icon where the Start button used to be.

Corners vs Keyboard Shortcuts

The Charms menu (or the thumbs menu as I’ve been referring to them) are the menus that are easy to access with a touch device by flicking your thumbs on the edges of the screen. The main way to get around needing to use the mouse is by learning the Windows 8 keyboard shortcuts. I’m a huge fan of keyboard shortcuts, but my wife still doesn’t know what Alt-F4 does. How many average users out there know what Alt-F4 does, how many want to know? Keyboard shortcuts are not a new idea, they’ve been around for a long time, but the only people I know that use them tend to be power users. I don’t think people will want to have to learn all of these shortcuts, but to navigate Windows 8 with just a mouse and keyboard its pretty much a requirement. I think this issue is resolvable by slightly tweaking the UI and I hope Microsoft does this before it goes GA.

Boot to desktop

I’m also testing Windows Server 2012, but any information on that will be communicated via Gartner.com. One thing I want to point out is the Windows Server does not default to Metro, it defaults to the desktop. I think this “feature” will be highly requested by Microsoft by enterprises that don’t want to force Metro on their user-base. I’d like this feature on my desktop, because the first thing I always do is launch my desktop I shouldn’t have to click to do this.

Love

Its always easy to point out the things that you’d like improved and all to easy to by pass the things you love so in closing today I’d like to just bullet list the things I really like about Windows 8:

• Boot time. It’s crazy fast!
• Metro (from a tablet) is very easy to navigate and the easy to learn.
• Dual background images. I used to have 3rd party software that enabled me to have different background images on different displays, now this is a function of the OS.
• Search. Massive improvement on previous versions of Windows search, and I know the joke is that anything is an improvement on Windows search, but I do mean it, search has been greatly improved.
• Microsoft ID. I like that when I log into any of my Windows 8 desktops at home I get the same persona thanks to the Microsoft ID and SkyDrive.
• Appearance. Everything about Windows 8 is an improvement on appearance, the login screen stands out with its attractive date/clock and rich use of images.
• Taskbar on dual screen. I like that I can access my taskbar on both screens, so I no longer have to drag my mouse to my main monitor. (I realizing I have something against a lot of mouse movement.)
• Explorer. Not IE, just E. It got a face lift and I like it.
• RemoteFX. RDP8. Oh RemoteFX how far you have come. I have a ton to discuss on RemoteFX but that’s a Gartner client privilege, sorry tweeters.