Sphere 3D Corp. (ANY)

[blueblizzy]

Thanks for sharing ariadndndough. That's a very interesting article. In particular, the author mentioned:

The first phase is taking Windows desktop applications from the physical to datacenter.

The second phases is about disaggregation and then re-aggregation, which is much more complex since there are some real roadblocks that exist in terms of costs and tradeoffs. (Just look at all the arguments about persistent versus non-persistent images, layering, etc.)

The third phase is about refining the user experience across devices, including things like transforming apps so they make sense on whatever form factor the user has at that moment, breaking apps into micro apps that only expose what the user needs, developing new mobile apps from existing desktop apps, etc.

The first phase we know Glassware 2.0 does very well.

CloudVolumes focuses on the 2nd phase. What VMWare does out of the box is when you take a snapshot for a VM, it records all the transactions made to the VM (ie. registry settings, files created, memory, etc). So essentially when a snapshot is then subsequently deleted, the VM reverts back to a state just before the snapshot is taken.

CloudVolumes somehow taps into this and isolates the transactions from an application install to determine the changes made to the VM. Then it uses this log to replicate the installation/uninstallation of the app on any VM to give it a common and instant install/uninstall experience. Just like how you would one-click install an app on a mobile device, or delete the app icon to uninstall it.

I think Glassware has this functionality built in already with its microvisor method to app virtualization. CloudVolumes just does it on an solution that has a hypervisor which would work for a VDI-based solution.

Then there is the 3rd phase which, correct me if I'm wrong, Glassware doesn't address at this time. But PowWow does because according to their website, it says:

PowWow understands mobile device users’ needs are different. While PowWow’s workspace is the same across all platforms, the experience of the app is optimized for each device and each application. PowWow offers a user- configurable touch user interface (UI) optimization for every application and type of device. That means every application can have its own configured touch/gesture environment, keyboard and shortcuts. Custom keyboards by application also allows for setting of hot keys to streamline application productivity in addition to the touch adaptive UI.

As a result, windows applications feel native with the adaptive UI and configured keyboard.

Ie. What use would a mobile user have with the full version of lets say for example, Microsoft Excel or Photoshop. So there is a need to modify the user experience to reduce or change the user interface for that device, but not necessarily change the underlying application that is virtualized.