by Harry Labana
By most accounts I've read, the desktop virtualization market is not growing at expected rates. As a result, the big players in the space have made a strong shift towards mobile. However, this new revenue—even if growing fast—is a fraction of the more mature desktop virtualization market. I believe this lack of growth explains Citrix's decision to bring back the XenApp brand (to stimulate mid-market growth), and to acquire Framehawk (to expand use cases by enabling remoting over mobile networks). It also explains VMware's bet on DaaS by picking up Desktone (an attempt to carve out an adjacent DaaS market), as it’s too early to count for Amazon and Microsoft. Despite all this hullaballoo, these recent moves won't accelerate the desktop virtualization market in a material way in the short-to-medium term. However, I do believe they are all valid strategies to sustain current growth rates.