Citrix 'Project Independence' to isolate PC work and play

Stephen Withers
Thursday, 22 January 2009 11:46

Business IT - Technology

Based on Xen, the hypervisor will allow the use of a centrally managed corporate desktop and associated applications to be streamed into a secure virtual machine.

Since the software will execute on the PC, users will get the full performance they are used to, as opposed to the sluggishness associated with using a server-based virtual desktop over a relatively low-bandwidth connection.

At the same time, administrators reap the benefits of centrally-managed desktops.

Developed in association with Intel, the hypervisor will take advantage of Intel Virtualization and Intel vPro technologies.

The plan is that the hypervisor will be preinstalled by PC manufacturers on their Core2 and Centrino 2 based corporate desktops and notebooks.

Citrix suggests this arrangement will impact corporate computing in five ways.

• Instead of being issued with a notebook, employees will be given a subsidy to pick whatever model they wish, with the corporate environment being delivered by Project Independence.

The rest of the list is on page 3.