Don't Isolate Us, Apps Have Feelings, Too

In the spirit of the holiday season I would like to take the opportunity to discuss something very serious: local conflict - that terrible war we have on our desktops with inter-application relations. Those installation .EXEs constantly battling for registry settings and .DLLs, and programs running on incompatible versions of the JVM.

Sure, some of us use application virtualization to isolate the applications that don’t play nicely with each other, and force them to live in small bubbles. The lucky bubbled ones are able to talk to a few other applications. But, through this forced isolation, are we really addressing the issue? Or are we just enabling their terrible behavior, and working around the issue to keep the peace? And, as enablers, does this make us part of the problem?

I mean really, when you look at the situation from a distance, they are all just 1s and 0s, why is it they have such a hard time all living on the same file system? Can't we just ignore their differences, and have them work together to form a cohesive desktop environment?

We should take a lesson from the Grinch, who learned that isolating himself from all the Whos down in Whoville wasn't the best way to exist. In a perfect world, our applications, like the Grinch, would find a way to resolve their differences, and all live together in Who-harmony. So, this holiday, while we are seated around the Who-pudding and rare Who-roast-beast, I will be wishing for bits in peace.

Until that day comes (which won't be anytime soon), Unidesk will be there to encapsulate, update, and deliver those isolated virtual applications for all your desktops, notebooks, and thin clients, peacefully from a single central location. And we'll be offering something new in application entitlement, assignment, and delivery that the market hasn't seen.

Happy Holidays!

-Nicole "Cindy Lou Who" Reineke
Director, Product Management, Unidesk