I saw this and thought I should offer some congratulations to the folks at Emergent OnLine. I realize other companies have deployed VDI solutions and use virtualization as a desktop alternative but this is exactly where it needs to be used. Depending on how this solution is deployed we should be done hearing about hundreds of thousands social security records being lost on a laptop. It can now be imagined that if an employee of this agency leaves a laptop in a cab, that laptop may have only an operating system and a desktop shortcut. Leave the hardware to do things hardware needs to do but put your work into a virtual solution hosted on the server with all the redundancy and data policies of the enterprise.

It is a good idea to use the horsepower we have in hardware this way. The machine is used for the operating system and whatever hardware intensive tasks we engage in, video editing, image work, gaming, etc… For tasks that don’t require the horsepower we use virtual machines. When a user sits at a workstation they connect to whatever VM represents the work their about to do, the VM stays on the server and they disconnect when their done. The environment is preserved, and available for them where ever they go next, be it home, another office or the customer’s location. They can work from home with corporate rules enforced but disconnect and be back to the rules of the home, everyone wins.

I’m not sure if this is the type of deployment Emergent is doing with the DoD but I read the PR that way. If it is then they are using the right tool for the right problem and getting recognized for it, and in turn helping to validate the efforts of the industry overall.

The press release: http://www.prnewswire.com/news/index_mail.shtml?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/12-04-2006/0004484877&EDATE