What is a virtual desktop?

Virtual desktops are enabled via desktop virtualization technology. Virtual desktops are defined as a guest operating system presented alongside or on top of the host operating system. A virtual desktop is isolated from the host operating system for several purposes:

• Leveraging the extra capacities available on current generation computers
• Allowing resources to be utilized more effectively
• Increasing flexibility in engineering development on the same device
• Reducing IT administration headaches
• Running applications that do not work on certain operating systems

Depending on the technology, the virtual desktop can either be accessed locally from the same physical machine or accessed remotely from the datacenter. In either case, virtual desktops still suffer from the inherent problems of applications, operating systems, storage, and user settings being hard coded to a user or device. Additionally, storage requirements could grow exponentially as multiple copies of desktops are running in the datacenter.

Only Citrix XenDesktop enables you to achieve the best economics as well as user experience when deploying desktop virtualization. XenDesktop is the only complete desktop solution that addresses different user requirements in the enterprise.