njohns78

Whilst the likes of VMWare View and Xenapp may claim they can virtualise any windows application the issue is more likely to be, if so 'is it a good user experience'? and 'what is the required infrastructure?'. If it's a graphically intense application students will get frustrated immediately at the slow response or to overcome that you'll need a huge backend infrastructure to handle it. If you're then in that situation it's almost whats the point of virtualising applications as you're simply moving the power from the pc to the server. The benefit of application virtaulisation is that the end machine is doing the work - so you don't need masses of backend infrastructure. There are Application Virtaulisation products out there which handle things differently, and remove the limitation that many perceive is common across all technologies in the market. AppV from Microsoft and ThinApp traditionally 'isolate' applications - so that prohibts many applications. However with a bit of investigation you will find products that offer 'integrated' (basically the bubble/sandbox is taken away). In this area probably about 95% of applications can be virtualised. Moving even further one vendor allows 'configurable' virtualisation (where at a file level you can decide which parts are isolated and which integrated). The latter means that you can virtualise any windows application, even those with plug-ins or those that require a specific version of say .net alongside it. I don't mind saying I have a vested interested in this area but I have tried to reply with useful information which helps provide a better learning environment, save instutions money and make peoples lives easier...... rather than give a sales pitch. Thanks Nick.