Leading industry analysts are tracking Desktone's progress and impact on the virtual desktop infrastructure market. Read the excerpts below and click on the links to see what some of them are saying about Desktone and desktops as a service.

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• Robin Bloor, Hurwitz & Associates

  If nobody had influenced you in any way and you were just asked to draw out a sense of a virtualization of services to end users, you would probably head in this direction. I have no doubt about it. It's very appealing; it looks like what Desktone DaaS enables – resources under control – and we've never had that with a PC before."
  – Cloud-Hosted Desktops: The Evolution of the Corporate PC

  [Desktone's] is the kind of proposition you'd have expected to emerge in time, but not this early in the nascent client virtualization market. I've covered the various species of client virtualization in Does Client Virtualization Make Sense? and this qualifies as a new one. Many of the business advantages are the same (cuts desktop TCO and support effort in a big way, etc.), but there are some advantages that are true differentiators.

  Read Robin's blog:
  • The Recession: A Disaster for Vista and the PC
  • Desktone: Client Virtualization in the Cloud
  

• Rachel Chalmers, The 451 Group

  Desktone pioneered desktops as a service, from the technology perspective as well as the business model. With increasing interest in both desktop virtualization and cloud computing, the market is ripe for an approach that marries the two technologies. By delivering cloud-hosted virtual desktops, DaaS meets this need.

  Desktone has been the pioneer in defining what a [cloud-hosted desktop architecture] should look like, where the enterprise data should reside, where active directory [...] should reside, and what gets handled by the service provider...
  – Cloud-Hosted Desktops: The Evolution of the Corporate PC

  The potential market is huge. No one knows whether this will be led by service providers or driven by the internal enterprise model, which is why Desktone is so interesting.
  – Virtualization Review, 8/15/2008

  Learn more, The 451 Group published reports:
  • Virtualization: Reinventing desktop computing
  • At its coming-out party, Desktone's head is in the clouds
  

• Dana Gardner, Interarbor Solutions

  The proper IT architectural approach is not just going to be a PC in every desktop, but it's going to be a broadband Internet connection in every coat pocket regardless of where you are. That fundamentally changes things. And so when I look at a diagram like Desktone's [cloud-hosted desktop architecture] I say, "Ah-ha!" If we could look at it rationally from a business and cost perspective, how would we properly architect how we deploy and distribute IT resources? We're really starting to get to a much more sensible approach and that's important.
  – Cloud-Hosted Desktops: The Evolution of the Corporate PC

  Desktone, the desktops as a service (DaaS) provider, has lined up a powerful ally in Hewlett-Packard (HP), which has signed on as the first member of Desktone's partner program for desktop virtualization technology.
      While many companies can benefit from virtualizing their desktops, building the infrastructure can be expensive, especially for small and medium-sized businesses. Acquiring the technology as a service, and paying for it as an operating expense can put the technology within the reach of many of those businesses.
      By targeting the largest-scale performance and integration needs of service providers – and their enterprise-class customers – Desktone is turning desktop as a service from a vision into both a provider business opportunity and a huge cost-saver for user organizations.

  Read Dana's Blog:
  • HP Partners with Desktone to Advance Virtual Desktops as a Service
  • 'Desktop as a service' coming soon to a PC near you

• Judith Hurwitz, Hurwitz & Associates

  Desktone has an interesting opportunity. It is stretching what we have traditionally thought about for desktop virtualization. I think that desktop as a service is the right conversation for the industry to be having just about now.

  Read Judith's Blog: The Desktop as a Service: Can Desktone be a Focal Point?

• Dan Kusnetzky, The Kusnetzky Group

  ...the folks at Desktone appear to have developed some interesting technology that would make moving a desktop environment into the cloud workable for many organizations. That move would certainly help organizations that face a large capital expenditure to acquire desktop systems, software licenses, IT staff and the like. They would be able to move to a position in which they see IT as a variable cost that is based upon use rather than the acquisition of hardware and hiring staff.

  Desktone clearly understands what it takes to bring a new product to market. They've developed a sophisticated platform and have already signed up several hosting companies to pilot the software and related service offerings. If your organization could offer access to desktop solutions without having to purchase, install, update or administer desktop systems, would you take Desktone and its partners up on their offer?

  Read Dan's blog: Desktone - Desktop in the Cloud

• Natalie Lambert, Forrester

  Lambert anticipates that...service providers like AT&T (NYSE: T) and Verizon (NYSE: VZ) will be best suited to offer desktop virtualization as a service. – Source: InformationWeek, 4/8/08

  Learn more:
  Read Natalie’s DaaS Case Study: Desktops-As-A-Service Elongates The PC Refresh Cycle: A Pike County Schools Case Study
  Forrester published report: Demystifying Client Virtualization

• Brian Madden, Brian Madden.com

  Desktops in the cloud is kind of interesting, there's a company called Desktone. If you haven't heard of them, they are called DAAS, Desktops as a Service.  As Desktops as a Service, you pay per month for each employee and they deliver a remote desktop to your users. [...] and Desktone's senior management are ex-Softricity people, so these are not people who you ignore when you make a company and sell it to Microsoft for several hundred million dollars we pay attention to what they do next

  Watch Brian's TV episode 2: Predictions for 2009, Cloud-Based Desktops (20:18)

• Alessandro Perelli, virtualization.info

  Desktone is a US startup which left the stealth mode 10 days ago to unveil an innovative hosted VDI architecture. While waiting to unveil the first major implementation (probably from Verizon) the small company announces its support for the upcoming Microsoft virtualization products: Hyper-V and System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) 2008."

  Read Alessandro's Blog:
  • Desktone Announces Support for Microsoft SCVMM 08
  • Desktone leaves the stealth mode and launches a VDI solution for service providers

• Michael Rose, IDC

  One of the most interesting use cases of server-hosted desktop virtualization is a services model. If you can host desktops virtually aboard server hardware, why not host it somewhere that already has the infrastructure and data center capacity, such as a telco? This idea of desktops as a service is gaining a lot of interest in the market. IDC believes it is very valid model; the technologies are coming together and I expect it will gain in adoption."

  Learn more, IDC published reports:
  • Desktop Hosting Provider Gets Financially Juiced
  • Virtual Client Computing Private Vendor Overview