Virtualization Magazine

Desktone has gotten trademarks on the expressions "desktops as a service" and "DaaS" from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

Senior director of strategic development Jeff Fisher says the company will enforce the trademarks if it can - which may not be the most judicious thing to do considering Citrix throws the terms around a lot and Citrix is one of Desktone's investors - but Desktone wants it clearly understood that desktops as a service (DaaS) specifically describes an outsourced subscription service for server-hosted desktops powered by its Virtual-D Platform and delivered by Desktone-certified service providers.

Desktone says DaaS is not any of the client computing models that have appropriated the term to mean enterprise VDI where the organization owns the infrastructure used to deliver hosted virtual desktops to its end users; or streaming virtual desktops to client machines where the VMs are cached and executed locally; or server-based computing built on shared service environments like Terminal Services; or webtops that don't provide a true Windows client experience.

For Desktone the meaning of DaaS resides in outsourcing the VDI to a service provider.

Enterprises won't achieve their operational and economic goals otherwise, it says. Simply enabling PCs as an internally provisioned network service isn't enough. And Desktone claims its widgetry enables hosted virtual desktops to be delivered as a truly outsourced subscription offering.

Of course, practically nobody's seen this stuff yet because Desktone as been working on the platform. But it's supposed to be delivered by IBM, Verizon, HP and Softbank among others.

Desktone's scheme lets users keep their data in their own infrastructure, maintain ownership and control over their Windows images, applications and licenses, and outsource the physical data center infrastructure to a Desktone service provider.

The company has just added multi-tenancy as well as multiple data center support for high availability and disaster recovery; a single web console for managing multiple customers on a common network, storage and virtualization infrastructure; support for a dozen languages; and delegated administration so roles and permissions can be assigned at different levels both on-site and at the service provider.

IBM supplied the Pike County School District in Kentucky with the Desktone Virtual-D Platform and, after a trial run, it's rolling it out to 25 schools spread across 700 square miles claiming a 64% savings in TCO and Internet access speed 10 times faster than it used to be.

Credit Suisse expects desktop virtualization to reach $1.5 billion by 2011.