Now I get it... I think.

I mentioned below I would write about XenDesktop soon and I have noticed a lot of other people doing the same thing of late. And rightly so - it could possibly just be the next big thing in IT. One such person doing this much more intelligently than I ever could is Robin Bloor, founder of Bloor Research and author of the titillatingly entitled Have Mac, Will Blog. (Thanks to Harry at Citrix UK for showing me this.)

XenDesktop is a product, released recently by Citrix, that virtualises desktops - have a quick read through Robin's blog for more detailed information on what it does. In basic terms, in addition to the virtualisation of applications with XenApp (formerly Presentation Server, formerly MetaFrame XP, formerly MetaFrame, formerly WinFrame, formerly the artist known as Terminal Services) and the virtualisation of servers with XenServer (formerly XenSource, formerly Xen, formerly a couple of clever clogs at Sun Microsystems accidentally creating software that might actually dissuade people from buying loads of servers - which obviously didn't quite tie in to their business plan), we are now tackling the desktop.

Citrix promise nirvana: "It's like getting a fresh new PC every day" is the bold statement on their homepage at the moment. Citrix aren't exactly renowned for getting version 1.0 products quite as they intend but, to be fair to them, which software company is? Added to that, this product has been in evolution for a long, long time and if any of the guys at Citrix were to hear me call it a version 1.0 product, I don't think they'd be too chuffed. Nonetheless, it is, well, new-ish. And, on that basis, I expect there to be one or two teething problems.

But if it does anything like what that rather irritating phrase involving a tin suggests, I'm looking forward to trying it. In the past few months, my PC has been taking longer and longer to log on. I have been advised the easiest thing to do is just switch it on, put in your password and go and get a coffee. Well, how about switch it on, put in your password, go travelling for a few years, marry a Columbian girl, pro-create with her, watch the child grow up and become a coffee plantation worker, watch him grow the coffee beans, leave Columbia for the UK with said coffee under arm, take them to Maxwell House and ask them to turn them into instant cappuccino with hint of mint, then put the kettle on? At that stage, and only then, can I even think about starting Outlook.

Anyway, back to the main reason for this article - XenDesktop. As I understand it (I didn't make my training at Citrix this morning so this may not be completely accurate), but you need a hypervisor of some description for XenDesktop to work. This can be XenServer, and obviously Citrix would prefer it were, but the "co-opetive" MS Hyper-V or the dastardly VMWare will also do.

So Citrix spent half a billion greenbacks on XenSource.

And they want 50 million dollars revenue from XenServer before the end of this year.

And, with XenDesktop, we're talking about a technology that apparently eradicates slow log-ons, always provides a pristine image and always provides a user with their correct settings wherever in the world they log on?

Which means that desktop upgrade project I heard about where one guy was about to set off on a global tour of his company's remote locations that would take 3 years(!) to complete, could potentially now be done in, say, a few days?

And it needs XenServer to work?

The penny is beginning to drop...