White paper: Everything you need to know about desktop virtualisation

Think of desktop virtualisation as a superhero. That's not to say the software arrives in Lycra with a flowing cape more that when the broad and accumulated spread of software within your organisation stops feeling like a racing car and starts feeling more like a thicket of uprooted trees hitting a bridge in a flash-flood, you don't need more of the same thinking that got to that condition.

You need a transformative change.

Transformative changes are either painful (people get fired and their successors get to implement the Brave New World) or they are an epiphany (the guy in a tight-fitting costume has arrived and swept away the logjam with a single glance of his X-ray vision).

Desktop virtualisation helps those IT professionals looking at complex and long-standing deployments to make platform change into a longer-term, softer-impact process.

This white paper:

Describes the architecture that underpins desktop and application virtualisation

Lifts the lid on the terminology to help with design, sizing, selection and implementation

Provides a view of, and links to details on, the Microsoft Desktop Virtualisation portfolio

Illustrates using these products through a case study from an early adopter

Outlines some custom and practice guidelines for Windows 7 guests

Dips a toe in the much larger topic of Virtual Machine Management

Explains what's free and what's paid for

Presents a sample checklist for a VDI (virtual desktop infrastructure) project that IT professionals can use as a starting point