{"id":289,"date":"2009-02-16T22:56:54","date_gmt":"2009-02-16T22:56:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/refraction.co.uk\/blog\/?p=289"},"modified":"2009-02-16T23:00:50","modified_gmt":"2009-02-16T23:00:50","slug":"live-mesh-desktop-a-pointer-to-a-cloudy-future","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/refraction.co.uk\/blog\/2009\/02\/16\/live-mesh-desktop-a-pointer-to-a-cloudy-future\/","title":{"rendered":"Live Mesh Desktop… A pointer to a cloudy future?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Over the past few weeks I\u2019ve been doing a fair amount of thinking and work about how desktop computing will be delivered in the future.\u00a0 I doubt we\u2019ll be seeing the end of full-fat desktop and laptop computers anytime soon, but change is definitely in the air.<\/p>\n

Within the enterprise thin provisioning of desktops is gaining pace.\u00a0 Virtual desktops offer significant benefits in utilization, management and energy consumption.\u00a0 Taken further, blade workstations such as HP\u2019s can also offer performance benefits.\u00a0 Especially in a world where data is increasing centralised and the workforce increasingly mobile.\u00a0 The technology now allows true \u2018desktop as a service\u2019 solutions to be offered.<\/p>\n

But what about the consumer and small business world?\u00a0<\/p>\n

I\u2019m a big fan of Live Mesh<\/a>.\u00a0 I now use it on all of my PC\u2019s and the work Mac to keep a single view of my working docs.\u00a0 One thing that I\u2019ve always wondered about though is the Live Desktop.\u00a0 It\u2019s undoubtedly useful as a server side copy of my files but why make it look so much like a desktop?\u00a0 Is it just to deliver a similar user experience?<\/p>\n

\"image\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I would love to see the Live Desktop gain some application functionality.\u00a0 We already know that browser based versions of the Office applications are on their way with the Office Web<\/a> applications.\u00a0 We also know that MS has a huuuuge amount of computing capacity at it\u2019s disposal in the Azure<\/a> platform.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Could the Live Desktop (or something like it) be used to deliver a web desktop with both storage for data and the applications to open and use it?\u00a0 With the capabilities that are coming over the next year or so I can\u2019t see why not.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Looking at what\u2019s now possible with remote desktop protocols like HP\u2019s Remote Graphics Software (RGS)<\/a> it may even be possible to take that further and present a desktop running real applications.\u00a0 It may not be something we\u2019ll see in the short term but many of the components you would need are in place:<\/p>\n

– Significant amounts of computing power in the cloud \u2013 yep
\n– Broadband to the end-point \u2013 getting there\u2026 but yep
\n– Efficient display protocols \u2013 yep
\n– People storing data in the cloud for fast access \u2013 yep
\n– Virtualisation layers to protect the host environment \u2013 yep
\n– Application virtualisation to protect the host and other apps \u2013 yep<\/p>\n

It\u2019s going to be an interesting 18 months I reckon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Microsofts Live Mesh desktop provides a web view of documents stored in the cloud. With innovations such as Office Web apps, Azure and HP RGS what will desktops look like in the future?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,4],"tags":[189,45,35,53,13,93,229,230],"class_list":["post-289","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tech","category-work","tag-azure","tag-cloud","tag-enterprise","tag-hp","tag-microsoft","tag-office","tag-office-web","tag-rgs","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/refraction.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/refraction.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/refraction.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/refraction.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/refraction.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=289"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/refraction.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":291,"href":"https:\/\/refraction.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289\/revisions\/291"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/refraction.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=289"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/refraction.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=289"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/refraction.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=289"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}