The best breakout session of VMworld 2008 – by far, in our opinion – was “VDI versus Terminal Services” with Brian Madden, who describes himself on his website as “an independent technology analyst, author, and thinker.” Sounds good to us; his posts will be a GCG must-read from now on!

So what did he say?

VDI has been acclaimed as the new direction, and it’s certainly more hip than stodgy old Terminal Services, but there’s still a place for both. (Photos of a “hip dude” and “stodgy guy” illustrated this point, to the amusement of the audience.) Five thousand centralized desktop images still add up to 5,000, and they’re still a nightmare on, say, Patch Tuesday. (Beacon of hope: cloned desktop images, a subject of discussion here at VMworld. We saw a cool demo of multiple cloned client images being simultaneously updated via an update of just the single master image.) Brian’s advice: don’t move everything over to VDI now because you are convinced that a particular vendor will have just the solution you need by 2010. Use the technology that fits your needs now.

Slides of all VMworld 2008 presentations should be available on the site by the end of September; we highly recommend that you check out Brian Madden’s presentation. Great info served up with good humor!