I presented a breakout session at VMworld 2011 on user virtualization and why it was important in the cloud. I thought I would put a post together to summarize what I spoke about and to go over some of the key points of the presentation again…
Understanding user virtualization…
Before we get into why it is important in the cloud, it is pertinent that there is an understanding about what it is that we’re actually talking about. Firstly, user virtualization is not a technology or product but more a technology category which comprises of various pieces of technology or components. Much in the same way that Salesforce.com is a product within the CRM technology category and Citrix XenDesktop is a product within the desktop virtualization technology category, user virtualization is in its own right a technology category which consists of various elements.
When conceptualizing user virtualization it is easy to think of it in terms of layers. At the very bottom we have the hardware virtualization layer (that I also believe rightly or wrongly contains the operating system) which is then followed by the application virtualization layer.
Its important to understand that when the application layer is referred to, it not only contains application virtualization technology such as Microsoft App-V or VMware ThinApp but also other application delivering mechanisms such as streamed or cloud delivered. The application virtualization layer is simply the layer that contains applications that users will use however (and importantly) it has been completely abstracted from the operating system.
Finally, the user virtualization layer exists on the top of the stack and contains all elements that pertain to the user including items such as the user state, user data and user (installed) applications. When understanding this layer, the important factor to take into account is the ability to abstract it from both the application virtualization and hardware virtualization layers so as it can be managed in isolation.
User virtualization is not specific to a single vendor and in fact many vendors have products which fit into this category including AppSense, RES Software, Liquidware Labs and even Microsoft (user state virtualization). In fact, if you regard user virtualization as a true user layer, one could also argue that vendors such as DropBox, Box and Syncplicity all produce products that could actually exist within the user virtualization category too as data is certainly an element of the user which needs to be portable.
I would like to recognize at this point that while user virtualization as a category is something that was established by AppSense, various other bloggers and analysts have adopted the term including Brian Madden, and the 451 group to name a couple. On the flip side, to keep neutral and respect others, there are also people in the camp who don’t like the terminology such as Simon Bramfitt – each to their own I guess…
Why is user virtualization important in the cloud?
To answer the question above, we need to consider some of the user related challenges that people are starting to face which really begin with the increased use of technology. While a few years ago the average user typically used a single device (either a desktop and laptop) today things are very different.
The increased capabilities of smartphones for example have enabled users to have more power and be more productive with mobile devices and the introduction of the Apple iPad created a catalyst for this type of technology adoption meaning that users increasingly are now using mobile devices for every day computing tasks. While this advancement in technology is most certainly a good thing, the effect on user experience can actually result in a negative given the complexity that is being introduced with the variants of operating systems now present. Consider that today, if you have a laptop, smartphone and some form of tablet or slate device, you generally configure each one separately; this means that you configure settings such as your location and timezone 3 times, your email server settings 3 times, your email signature 3 times, and possibly your various data provider credentials (such as DropBox) 3 times. Granted, its not a whole load of effort making 4 configuration commits 3 times each but this is early days in the use case of these devices and pretty soon, 4 configuration commits will turn into 40 or more. When you consider the previous scenario, the thought of issuing a 40 page document to the CEO of an organization so as they can configure their devices doesn’t appeal to most IT departments.
Cloud is a little like the wild west right now…
Its interesting when you think about cloud and the speed at which it is developing and in many ways it feels a little like the wild west with a severe lack of rules and regulation. If you think back to the early Microsoft Windows days when there were an abundance of developers writing software for the platform, things quickly got into a mess with applications writing user settings to machine specific configuration locations within the registry or placing configuration files in the general operating system directories. The developers couldn’t really be blamed for this as for while there was guidelines, there wasn’t really any hard and fast rules so people did what was easiest and trouble grew from there.
Cloud is very similar to the early Windows days in some respects in that there are many developers creating cloud applications, storing user data and information without a set of rules to work to. Brian Madden wrote an article which spoke about this in March 2011 where he said that the ultimate personalization solution would synchronize settings across all devices and operating systems. While the article is a solid work, I believe that its important to place part of the responsibility on the application developers too and create user virtualization standards that make sense.
As the use of the mobile devices increases the reliance on cloud applications will accelerate with more users looking for their resources to be delivered anywhere. If a common set of rules are not established early on while usage of technology such as SaaS is limited the technology industry will once again find itself in a situation down the line that needs a course correction. The hardest part of all of this however, is who…
Maybe the solution is for one of the open source groups such as Mozilla to try and establish standards now or that someone sponsors a project with the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and and figure out if we can get a standard user virtualization structure of storing user information. I’m not sure that any of the vendors in the space should tackle this directly, sponsor it yes but I believe all are too close to the market to take an agnostic and impartial view to establishing a standard.
As always, happy to hear peoples thoughts…
This post was filed in AppSense, Citrix, Cloud Computing, Desktop Virtualization, Liquidware Labs, Microsoft, RES Software, User Installed Applications, User Virtualization, VMware
About Jon Wallace:
Jon is a senior executive and technology veteran having worked with some of the largest and most complex technology environments in the world. As director of emerging technologies for a leading multinational software organization Jon focuses on creating disruptive strategy and maintains an in-depth view of the industry at large.
With the experience of working from the field level to the boardroom Jon brings a unique viewpoint catering for many factors and one which is based on real world experience.
Great article.. Timely..Just today my kids asked if i could “fix” a problem they have. Some of the games they play sore the game setting and “personality” on the local device. So if they try to navigate from the ipod to the ipad for example, the settings are not carried over from device to device. So much so in fact that my kids will at times play a game on the ipod because that is where they started playing the game, and refuse to move over to the ipad even though it would be a better visual experience. Agree a standard needs to be crafted.
Exactly… And the problem is that most user context vendors are basically reverse engineering the various apps – trying to figure out what they do and tackle the problem after the fact – its a never ending battle.
The responsibility needs to exist with the game developers – if they wrote user settings using a standard, managing them would be a snap…
Thanks for commenting Mike…
This is a great article and I love the idea. I believe we can take the first steps now and a product like AppSense is perfect.
The first step is to worry only about Window applications. Similar to the way there are application groups in AppSense we could have setting groups. For example ‘HomePage’ or ‘RememberPassword’ settings in web browsers. A setting group would mean you only set this once and the setting is injected into the appropriate locations for all browsers listed under this group.
I agree the utopia is to synch application settings across all devices and operating systems, but a solution that would synchronize ‘like’ settings across similar applications is attainable now and maybe a required first step.
As informative as ever Jon.
Setting aside minor disagreements on terminology (I think User Virtualization is outstanding marketing term, and I certainly admire AppSense for being able to generate such a widespread adoption of the term – even if 451 Group should know better. I just don’t feel that it is accurate description of what you are trying to achieve) it is absolutely clear that with the diversity of platforms that we have to contend with today the ability to abstract certain aspects of a user’s online identity (Persona?) and make it seamlessly available across multiple platforms is a major opportunity.
Quite how we achieve this goal is one of the most important questions that still remains to be answered the personal computing space will we see Google or Facebook take ownership of that data for their own ends, or will we see an independent platform offering this as a service. I agree with you that having this information in the hands of many of the existing market leaders would place them in a position of too much power and would rather see new organizations built from the enterprise persona all those aspects that are already managed within certain browsers extend their reach to provide a persona management service beyond the reach of giants like Google and Facebook.
Regards
Simon
I really love this idea.
This reminds me of what the great app/browser add-on LastPass (password manager/form filler) does.
User virtualization does seem like the next logical step in virtualization.
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