I want my desktop to persist, though, when I’m not online. And I don’t want to mess about hosting it and then having to apply all sorts of gizmos to make it work. I want it done by one single provider.

So I’ve a look at Desktone. They appear to be having some good success in the market with their DaaS (“Desktop as a Service”) initiative. For instance, Thames Water swapped thousands of employees using Desktone.

I’ve filled in the form asking Desktone to call me. I also tried out the 7-day trial but unfortunately that wasn’t long enough for me to get organised enough to properly try it.

I’ve also taken a look at the hosted virtual desktop offering from Rackspace. It promises a 30-day trial so I’ll let you know how that goes.

Do you have any suggestions for companies I should look at? Please do let me know.

Initially I want to try it all out on me. Then I’d like to recommend the solution(s) to some of the FTSEs I’m working with.

Do any of the operators offer this as yet?

Update: I talked to the team at CyberlinkASP who are the partner behind the Rackspace offering (Rackspace provide the server infrastructure, CyberlinkASP do all the virtual desktop goodness.) I came away rather impressed from the call. They seemed to know their stuff. This was also upheld by the simply superb experience I had with the test VDI instance using Citrix Receiver. It all just worked. I’m going to do more experimentation shortly.

Update 2: CyberlinkASP also tell me that anyone who’s a big fan of the Rackspace “fanatical support” approach to business will rest easy with them — Cyberlink offer their very own version of that: Their services come with full help desk and call centre support. This is critical if you’re looking for a rounded solution as apposed to a functional service. Indeed many providers I’m seeing in the marketplace simply offer the bog standard basics leaving you to figure out everything from setting up Citrix Receiver to sorting out printer installation. Cyberlink do it all. Plus, if you’re looking to do a small amount of users (e.g. 1-5) they tell me they’d be delighted to help.

Our help desk/call center comes with our product, and all users take advantage, from help loading the Citrix receiver, setting up printers and anything in between.  Most of the guys out there are lacking in support if they offer it all.  Also, we’ll take 1  to 5 users anytime

Let’s get started with the Q&A…

1: Glenda, in Barcelona I kept hearing about mobile virtualization and what a big deal it is. But it sounds complex. Can you explain, in a nutshell, what your company does?

Glenda: Sure, first off, VirtualLogix is a mobile virtualization software supplier with a long history. We are here because of smartphones. The big need we address is enabling low cost consumer smartphones.

2: Yes, we are hearing a lot about the sub $100 smartphone. Can you comment on what you see happening in the industry right now and where VirtualLogix fits in?

Glenda: Sure, this is what I see happening and where we play:

1) There is no question that as an industry we are seeing Moore’s Law take affect in lowering the cost of silicon, we saw this help along the PC industry, and we are seeing the need for a similar transition in mobile.

2) Our customers are ultimately the end users of handsets but the way we add value is by helping silicon vendors– including our newest customers announced at MWC, ST Ericsson and Infineon —- to take a low cost single chip implementation and turn it into rich functioning platform that OEMs can design on.

3: Ok, that is a good overview. Can you take it a level deeper to really outline the big benefits we can see from mobile virtualization technologies like yours?

Glenda: Of course. In the past, hardware, operating systems and peripherals were all integrated because there was not enough horsepower. Now, you can slip in a virtualization layer, right onto the metal, which is what we do. This abstracts and removes interdependencies of the hardware and the core layer from the OS and from various platform management technologies. So we are able to remove some of hardware dependencies through our patented technology that ultimately achieves much faster time to market for device makers.

But what is a mobile device now? New e-readers, new classes of handheld devices where gadget guys need lots of resources with video and graphics also want to compete in the handset space. So we create software that allows devices to be customized so it is easier to modify a phone into an e-reader. We will see a whole host of OEMs in Asia with a real strength in electronics doing this.

4: Last year, everyone was talking about Google and how Android was going to be fantastic. But we’ve seen quite a delay. What do you see?

Glenda: Android needs to grow up from an open source OS to a battle-hardened phone platform. Sure, it’s Linux, but look, RedHat and Novell have made businesses around Linux. The challenge with Android is that Google needs to understand how to make a business around open source and be able to lose some control of the brand.

5: Does your software work on any platform?

Glenda: Yes. The background on the company is around an engineering team that has been together for 20 years working with every form of OS environment. Our focus is on mobile with ARM platforms, and we are the only supplier that is both X86 and ARM complaint. Because of the team’s knowledge, we know how to design for mobile.

6: How are carriers part of the virtualization equation?

Glenda: We have had specific carriers that are more involved than others. Some, like China Mobile for example, very actively look at hardware architectures and are aware of how we play into that. The silicon customers or OEMs that we work with are having these discussions with the carrier or us directly.

What we say is they need an environment where they can both create compelling service solutions for subscribers to deliver best and stickiest service and need platforms to do this. We enable them to do that because of what our software enables, faster time to market, lower handset costs, and another piece that is growing issue is that of security. As these carriers subscribers use more resources like licensed video content and e-wallets then security is a huge issue.

Because our software creates safety zones to allow secure resources to stop malware, worms, viruses, etc. at the handset level. Have not seen attacks on handsets yet —- but we are hearing more concerns from OEMs and operators as smarter hackers are born.

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Thank you very much for taking the time, Glenda!

You can find out a lot more about VirtualLogix on their site: http://www.virtuallogix.com/

VirtualLogix lets a user can access two separate operating systems on the same handset – allowing them to share some resources like memory, but also keeping other areas, such as applications, securely apart. VirtualLogix says virtualisation will make the inclusion of Linux on lower and mid-tier handsets easier by by allowing a handset to run the Linux operating system “together with the existing mobile phone stack simultaneously on a single processor core, without requiring a separate applications processor”.

Virtualisation is hotter than hot for enterprise PCs right now, and if Motorola’s bet is anything to go by, mobiles are going to be next frontier. After all, Motorola has a foot in practically all OS camps – Linux, Windows Mobile, Symbian and its own proprietary stack – is this investment a sign it’s thinking of combining them? Or just a way of getting more Linux handsets into the market?