2014 Will Be A Big Year For Desktop-as-a-Service

Scott Davis, CTO for VMware’s End User Computing B.U. shares his vision for technology in 2014.

“I think we will see a growing realisation that mobile app to cloud services is the key distributed application construct to focus on. That means less focus on securing and managing physical devices, as well as less reliance on VPNs and the corporate LAN itself since it is becoming a less significant boundary. There will be a greater focus on app to cloud service security technologies. I think we will see more embracing of mobile/cloud applications in our day to day lives. The apps on your phone will become the brains for your car’s navigation and audio systems, and the car dashboard becomes just the display technology,” says Davis.

As part of this broader movement to the mobile/cloud, he predicts 2014 will be a big year for Desktop-as-a-service (DaaS) aka Windows-as-a-Service. With users demanding greater mobility and access while IT departments look for ways to reduce TCO of enterprise desktops, DaaS is an ideal approach for enabling/delivering access to business critical Windows applications for mobile users in a cost effective manner.

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He further adds, “Our phones will also become more common as a payment engine in stores. I also predict that our phones will be used more pervasively as identification mechanisms – text message password callbacks and the Apple iPhone 5s-like fingerprint authentication will become prevalent as a replacement for 2-factor authentication. I also think we may well see our mobile device front-end backed by cloud services become our IDs, replacing physical driver’s licenses and corporate badges/key cards. Wallets are going to follow watches into the realm of fashion accessories, and will no longer be essential entities that everyone carries.”

There have been interesting studies lately on how crowd sourced shopping reviews are changing our behaviours, especially with regard to effectiveness of consumer product marketing. “I think automated analytics on consumer reviews will become more pervasive and mainstream. I suspect that our mobile devices wilI help us pick not just which products to buy, but also our service providers, automatically based on these analytics. I predict that cumbersome tasks such as deciding on home service workers and contractors will be intelligently sourced through our devices. Instead of hoping you get somebody reliable recommended through your friends and colleagues, the aggregate ratings will provide you with better vetted services. I also think the trend of our devices as remote controls for physical world devices brokered through the cloud will continue as well. We will advance from home cameras, remote DVR control and thermostats to more pervasive controls and robots. In five years I look forward to the day when the maps app on my mobile device drives my car from point A to point B, starting with driving itself from a remote parking lot to the door of the building I’m in,” continues Davis.

He concludes, “I could go on and on, but I hope the pattern is clear here. Mobile/cloud applications are quite different than the PC client/server applications we used. They are more pervasive, they make our lives easier. And as you can see, the use cases they enable are completely foreign to the PC-based client/server world. Very exciting times for our industry!”