The fastest growing server workload running in the data centre over the next two to three years is going to be the desktop, a senior Gartner analyst has predicted.
“We really do believe it’s going to be the fastest growing client architecture over the next few years” said Brian Gammage VP of the analyst house.
It is estimated that the hosted virtual desktop (HVD) market will accelerate through 2013, reaching 49 million units.
“PC vendors must prepare for the growth in demand for this client computing architecture by adjusting sales strategies and compensation models or they risk losing expenditure share with enterprise customers” Gartner said in a statement.
It is reported that worldwide revenue for the HVD market would grow from about $1.5 billion in 2009 to around $65.7 billion in 2013, or roughly from 1% to 40% of the worldwide enterprise PC market.
Gammage explained that it signals a return to centralisation, but that this was not a return of the vision of thin-client. “It is something much more than that,” he said.
With thin client there is the need to reengineer applications for the hosted server environment. With the new generation of hosted virtual desktop systems the bubble of applications can simply be picked up off the remote device and brought into the data centre, so that the user can access them remotely and from where they can be centrally managed.
He said that it is an easy path to transition to, but one that will not suit all users and every application pay load.
The greatest benefit he said, was that it offers adopters a way of protecting their existing application investments by ensuring maintenance of the existing application model.
Gartner has suggested the HVD market will be heavily influenced by market leader VMware by 2012, and expects that Microsoft will become an HVD supplier in the next 18 to 24 months, through its partnership with Citrix.
