Brian Madden
Brian Madden is an independent technology analyst, author, and thinker. He's written several books and over one thousand articles about application and desktop virtualization technology. Brian is the creator of BriForum, an annual independent application delivery technical conference. He’s also the editor-in-chief of BrianMadden.com, a popular industry website with millions of visitors per year. Brian lives in San Francisco.
Updated: 48 min ago
VMworld 2010 Opening Keynote Live Blog
I'm sitting in the opening keynote for VMworld 2010 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. The keynote starts at 9:00 local time. Updates to this post will be added in reverse-chronological order, so if you're just starting to read this now,...(read more)
VMworld 2010 preview: searching for desktop needles in the cloud haystack
VMworld 2010 kicks off next week in San Francisco. Gabe and I will be there along with 14,000 of our closest friends. While many have said that VMworld's shear size creates a borderline overwhelming conference experience (in a good way), I've...(read more)
Citrix's announces "XenVault," a secure corporate storage location on insecure non-corporate laptops
Back at Citrix Synergy 2010 this past May, Citrix announced a client plug-in for encrypted data. (Remember that Citrix's client components are modular, so Citrix and third parties can write plug-in components to extend the capabilities of the client...(read more)
VMware Project "Origami:" unifying the server, desktop, and SaaS app models?
For years we've been talking about how IT is really just about the applications, and how today's business world is about Windows applications. Of course now that's changing. We're not moving to the web/cloud/SaaS overnight, but we're...(read more)
How will Intel buying McAfee affect the desktop virtualization industry?
By now you'd heard that Intel plans to buy McAfee ( press release ), which will become a wholly-owned subsidiary rolling into Intel's software group. There are plenty of other more qualified folks who've been blogging about the deal in general...(read more)
My prediction for mass client hypervisor adoption is 2013. Here’s why.
I've written quite a bit about client hypervisors over the past few years. But now that we're getting closer to Citrix's production release of XenClient, and now that VMware is backing away from the client hypervisor, I'll take this opportunity...(read more)
Does anyone plan on using Windows Embedded Standard 7 (WES7) thin clients?
Now that the upgrade to Windows XP Embedded has been released (as Windows Embedded Standard 7 ) a few months ago, is anyone really excited about or planning to use it? I know this is the latest extension to the age-old battle between "rich"...(read more)
Take our "state of the industry" 2010/2011 desktop virtualization survey
It's been about 18 months since we last did a comprehensive end-user survey around desktop virtualization, so we've decided to update and relaunch the survey for 2010/2011: http://www.surveygizmo.com/s3/343154/BrianMadden2010 The idea is that...(read more)
What exactly is an "enterprise app store?" (No seriously... what is it?)
There's a lot of talk about "enterprise app stores." I'm not sure what the exact definition of an enterprise app store is, but the analogy most used is something like "imagine Apple's iPhone App Store, except for corporate IT...(read more)
Why aren't VMware and RSA working together to create the ultimate secure virtual desktop environment?
RSA and VMware both have legions of crazed fanatical customers, and as it happens both companies are owned by EMC. This was the topic of one of the side conversations I had at BriForum last month. We talked about how it's weird that the two companies...(read more)
“Help me manage users and then the devices will take care of themselves.” What does VMware mean when they say this?
“Help me manage users and then the devices will take care of themselves.” This is a quote from VMware's COO Tod Nielsen during the Q&A portion of the company's 2Q 2010 earnings call. (Thanks to Alessandro @virtualization.info for...(read more)
In 2010, desktop virtualization is still tactical. The Win7 opportunity has been missed.
I gave about 20 speeches about desktop virtualization in 2009, and one of the core tenants of those was that Windows 7 and desktop virtualization are sort of “codependent” on each other. I felt since most companies were still on Windows XP...(read more)
BriForum 2010 vendor DEMO Lab videos
Untitled Document We have 31 vendors exhibit in the DEMO Lab at BriForum 2010 in Chicago this year. Each of these vendors showed off their latest and greatest stuff, but unfortunately not everyone had a chance to visit every demo. So like last year ,...(read more)
Interview with Tim Mangan about his new book about App-V
Blogger , speaker, consultant, and friend of the site Tim Mangan just released a book (today!) about App-V. Tim's been in this space a long time (and is one of five people who have spoken at all eight BriForums), but this is his first book. I interviewed...(read more)
How the hidden "SLA bump" can kill your VDI project: You'd better know your desktop SLAs going in!
This week's conversation on BrianMadden.com about the whether you should use local or SAN-based storage for VDI has been one of the best conversations we've ever had on any topic. What's clear after reading the 50+ comments is that people...(read more)
F*** the SAN. VDI storage should be local!
When discussing storage in the context of VDI, people often talk about things like SAN sizing and IOPS and linked clones and thin provisioning and disk image streaming and... the list goes on. But one of the most important aspects of storage design for...(read more)
Microsoft RemoteFX is now available via public beta. Here's our in-depth guide to how it works.
Yesterday Microsoft made a beta version of the Windows 7 SP1 / Server 2008 R2 SP1 available for public download. One of the new features in SP1 is RemoteFX, an enhancement to RDP that will give LAN users near-perfect remote desktop experiences (complete...(read more)
BYOPC misconception: If your users have admin rights, then you're already doing it. (The "own" part isn't literal)
Bring Your Own PC—BYOPC—is something that lots of folks (myself included) have been talking about for a few years now. It’s the term applied to the concept of end-users “owning” their own laptops while IT resources (such...(read more)
Madden’s client hypervisor paradox: If we had the tech to make client hypervisors useful, we wouldn’t need client hypervisors!
Many people (myself included) have been talking up the benefits of bare metal client hypervisors and how they could play a key role in the success of desktop virtualization. Unfortunately we’ve yet to see client hypervisors enter the mainstream...(read more)
Did VMware just cancel their client hypervisor outright?
It's been almost two months since I wrote about VMware delaying the release of View 4.5 (and we've since learned that the release is being delayed even longer ). Back then I wondered whether the delay was related to the client hypervisor. My thoughts...(read more)