Desktop virtualization requires a computing model known as Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI). VDI includes the hardware and software systems that are needed to support the virtualized environment. Desktop virtualization separates a personal computer desktop environment from a physical machine using the client-server model of computing.

The network environment has gone through several transformations over the years. The good old mainframes became dinosaurs with the proliferation of PCs, which ushered in the client-server model. The Internet led us to the web-based applications model which has since transitioned into cloud-based computing, thanks to the availability of reliable bandwidth, increased processing power and cheap storage.

Here are some advantages of desktop virtualization:

• Businesses can reduce the number of servers they need which translates to cost savings
• IT staff can reduce planned outages and greatly minimize unplanned downtime
• Maintenance, upgrades, updates and patches can be done efficiently by moving applications from impacted areas to other locations and restoring them back when maintenance activities are completed
• Users get to run multiple operating systems on their computers and access hosted desktops from any location and any device.

For people that worked with the dumb terminals of mainframes where they could get any colored font as long as it was green (akin to Henry Ford’s black Model Ts) desktop virtualization may seem like Déjà vu, but in reality, it combines the best of both the mainframe and the distributed computing models by enabling applications and user settings to be stored on a central server and accessed via any device that can support the virtual desktop application.

Desktop virtualization is not just for large enterprises. One-person firms and small businesses also have the option to take advantage of this technology.

Jan 8: Arizona Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords was shot at a supermarket in Tucson, AZ while she was having a public meeting with her constituents. Six people died in the shooting. After going through several surgeries and months of rehab, Ms. Giffords has recovered some of her ability to walk, speak and write.

Jan 14: Using the popular uprising in the Middle East called Arab Spring, the people of Tunisia ousted President Zine El Abdine Ben Ali’s after 23 years of autocratic rule.

Feb 6: The Green Bay Packers won the Super Bowl by defeating the Pittsburgh Steelers 31-25.

Feb 11: Pro-democracy protestors overthrew Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak after capturing his palaces.

Feb 20: Civil war breaks out in Libya after the military shoots and kills over 200 protesters in Benghazi

March 9: NASA’s space shuttle Discovery, the most flown spaceship, was retired after making its final touchdown at the Kenney Space Center. In its 27 years of service, it had completed 39 successful missions.

March 11: Japan’s Pacific coast of Tohoku was hit by a triple disaster. A massive 9.0 magnitude earthquake at an underwater depth of 20 miles triggered powerful tsunami waves that reached heights of up to 133 feet and traveled 6 miles inland. It wiped out entire towns and claimed the lives of 20,000 people in its path. The powerful quake which reportedly shifted the Earth on its axis by an estimated 4-10 inches caused a number of nuclear accidents in the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant complex. At an economic impact of$235 billion, the World Bank reports it as the most expensive natural disaster in world history.

April 6: Following Ireland and Greece, Portugal became the third debt-ridden European country to seek a bailout.

April 27: Hundreds of powerful tornadoes rocked the South and Midwest, killing over 300 and causing a wide swath of destruction. Tuscaloosa in Alabama was the hardest-hit town.

April 29: Britain’s royal celebrities Prince William and Kate Middleton had a well-attended and widely televised wedding at London’s Westminster Abbey.

May 2: The world’s most wanted terrorist Osama Bin Laden was captured and killed at his hideout in Pakistan by U.S. Special Forces in a well-executed operation and then quickly buried at sea, ending over ten years of search.

May 22: With winds reaching upwards of 250 miles, strong tornadoes ripped through the town of Joplin, MO causes over 160 deaths and destruction of over 8,000 homes and businesses.

May 25: The Oprah Winfrey Show aired its final broadcast after running for 25 years.

June 12: The Dallas Mavericks win their first NBA title by defeating the Miami Heat 105-95.

June 22: Boston’s crime boss James “Whitey” Bulger, one of FBI’s 10 most wanted was arrested in Santa Monica, California.

July 5: A jury in Orlando finds Casey Anthony not guilty of murder, manslaughter and child abuse in the 2008 disappearance and death of her 2-year old daughter, Caylee.

July 21: After its 135^th flight, space shuttle Atlantis landed in Cape Canaveral and brought the 30-year old space shuttle program to a close.

Aug 5: The credit rating agency Standard & Poor’s downgraded the stellar AAA rating of U.S. debt by one notch to AA+ citing the federal government’s ineffective and unstable policymaking to stimulate the prevailing anemic economy.

Aug 6: London and several parts of England were rocked by rioting, arson and looting by violent mobs, causing widespread damage to local businesses. The austerity measures taken by the United Kingdom apparently triggered these ugly riots.

Sept 11: A memorial plaza was inaugurated at ground zero in New York to mark the 10^th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the U.S.

Sept 17: A demonstration named Occupy Wall Street began at Wall Street in New York. Calling themselves the “99 percent,” protestors were voicing their unhappiness over their perceived economic unfairness. Within a few weeks similar protests started springing up around the U.S. and the world.

Oct 5: Apple’s icon and co-founder Steve Jobs succumbed to cancer after leaving his mark forever on the world as an unconventional and highly innovative entrepreneur.

Oct 20: Libya’s dictator Muammar Gaddfi was killed by revolutionary fighters after capturing his hometown Sirte.

Oct 31: The world’s population crossed 7 billion today according to the U.N.

Nov 7: Michael Jackson’s doctor Conrad Murray is convicted of involuntary manslaughter for supplying an anesthetic which allegedly caused the entertainer’s death in 2009.

Nov 9: After a record 409 victories and 46 seasons as the head coach of Penn State’s football program, Joe Paterno was fired over the handling of child sex abuse allegations against former assistant coach Jerry Sandusky.

Dec 13: Scientists claim they are close to a breakthrough in finding the subatomic particle “Higgs boson,” which if found would reveal how the universe’s building blocks work.

Dec 18: North Korea’s ruthless dictator Kim Jong II died after bullying the world with his rhetoric threats and nuclear ambitions for over a decade.

While Apple had diehard fans even for its bombed Newton – a tablet like personal digital assistant that was released way back in 1987, the company started getting worldwide visibility in 1998 with the launch of its iMac G3  – a brightly colored all-in-one eye candy personal computer, which forever disrupted the monotonous, beige box PC structure. But this was just the tip of the iceberg.

Apple instantly attained cult status with the release of its digital music player, the venerable iPod in November 2001. The rest as they say is history. Since then, Apple has had a Midas touch like no other enterprise in the world. Every product it has launched in the past decade has sold like hotcakes and become a must-have status symbol for geeks, teenagers, executives, soccer moms and everybody in between.

Let’s fast forward to the present, to today actually. The world had been waiting with bated breath for Apple’s long overdue announcement of its next generation iPhone, the iPhone 5. Just like the U.S. auto industry, Apple had been consistently releasing a new or updated iPhone in the second quarter of each year. But this time that was not the case. The third quarter had passed without any sign of a new or updated model.

All this uncertainty created an avalanche of rumor mills. The main stream media and even the likes of the Wall Street Journal were infected by the contagious iPhone 5 fever. The Internet was rife with stealth pictures, exclusive videos and debates about the likely features of the new phone. Some even went as far as touting drool-worthy features like a holographic display and a laser-projection virtual keyboard which would display the image of a keyboard on any surface for full-Qwerty typing experience! Other speculations included a curved glass 4.4 inch display, a teardrop shaped design, near field communication (NFC), 4G LTE and a Starbucks coffee dispenser to boot (never mind…that’s one of the expected features of iPhone 7).

It is no wonder that the euphoria, excitement, and nail-biting anxiety were reaching a crescendo just before Apple’s “Let’s Talk iPhone” event at its Cupertino campus this morning. The Internet was on fire from the numerous live blogs and millions of tweets that were zapping around at breakneck speeds. Many popular websites experienced crashes due to the constant refreshing of browsers by frenzied iPhone crack-heads.

It was not just about the iPhone 5’s expected announcement. It was also Tim Cook’s first event as Apple’s CEO and Apple’s first without their super hero Steve Jobs. After a 60-minute long and sometimes boring speech about the features of the new mobile operating system the iOS 5, Tim Cook finally woke up the crowd with the announcement of the iPhone 4S, an updated version of its current generation phone. As he was going through a long list of features many tweets and bloggers swore the best was yet to come. After all, this is Apple we are talking about. They won’t make us wait for more than 15 months for a measly update, would they? No way, they said. Some even speculated that Steve Jobs himself would magically appear from behind the curtains and say…wait there’s more…and erase the malaise of iPhoneAholics in a jiffy by flashing the latest and greatest iPhone 5.

However, before anybody had a chance to blink their eyes, Tim Cook thanked everyone and concluded the event. What? You can’t be serious. Is this some kind of lame joke? It was as if time had suddenly frozen. After a prolonged couple of minutes, which seemed like eternity, most iAddicts regained their consciousness and returned to reality. There was no iPhone 5 after all. For many people in the Apple universe, today’s announcement was a big letdown.

But was it really a letdown? Perhaps a lit bid for a lot of people who were expecting a bigger screen to fall in line with the latest Android phones and the faster  LTE 4G data speed instead of HSPA+, a speedier version of 3G. It was definitely a big blow for fashion-conscious consumers because there is literally no physical differentiator between the 4S and the previous version. A lot of these folks must be saying would it have killed Apple to change the design a little bit? What’s the point of buying one; let’s just hold off for iPhone 5.

While physical beauty is only skin deep, the real beauty of the iPhone 4S lies under the hood. Let’s take a quick inventory of what’s new. A faster dual-core A5 chip that doubles the CPU speed and increases the graphics speed by up to 7 times. The new iOS 5 and a free cloud service called what else…iCloud of course. A new 8-megapixel camera that’s also capable of recording video in 1080p HD quality. It is also a world-phone because of its combined GSM and CDMA radio. The hallmark of the new phone is a voice-to-text digital assistant called Siri. Because Siri understands context, you can ask questions like “Do I need an umbrella this weekend?” or “What time is it in Paris now?” It makes phone calls, sends messages, schedules meetings, sets reminders and a whole lot more.

It may not be the mythical iPhone 5 that everyone was clamoring for. But I bet it’s a damn good phone and the most advanced iPhone yet. Is it good enough to hold its own against the onslaught of Android phones? Let’s ask Siri, and while we are at it, let’s also ask when’s the iPhone 5 coming? Gee I wonder what the answer might be!

Instead of looking at this merger from the usual winners versus losers angle, let’s look at the good, bad and ugly side of this gigantic deal.

The Good

• The merger will increase the available data capacity for AT&T, which will somewhat help ease the anticipated 8-10 fold increase in data usage between now and 2015.
• It could potentially improve the experience of the combined company’s customers due to the increased cellular density in urban markets by about 30 percent.
• T-Mobile customers could get iPhones in the near future, hopefully with LTE technology.
• T-Mobile’s American customers have been enduring years of underinvestment in the company’s network. The merger would offer better non-metro coverage to its customers.
• T-Mobile customers will benefit from AT&T’s implementation of its dual 4G technologies (LTE and HSPA+).

The Bad

• T-Mobile was (and is still) considered customer-centric. Heck, they unlocked a quad-band GSM phone for one of my international travels barely 2 weeks into a one year contract with a single call to their customer support number, and that too 8 years back! It took two-class action lawsuits to force AT&T to unlock their phones, and this only happened less than a year back (LOL).
• T-Mobile was a fantastic partner for Google. The first Android phone was released on T-Mobile and Google sold its Nexus devices only on T-Mobile. AT&T may dictate and restrict the types of apps and services on Android smartphones. Google can only count on Sprint now.
• Verizon now has one less pesky competitor to worry about.
• Sprint, which often joined hands with T-Mobile to argue regulatory issues against AT&T and Verizon, would now have to fight on its own.
• Carrier consolidations are considered the worst nightmares for network infrastructure providers (Sprint-Nextel is a prime example). To make matters worse, these suppliers will now have one less customer which means lower profits.

The Ugly

• American consumers and businesses will essentially have a duopoly, which could eventually raise the fee structure for monthly plans and add-ons. Would we soon be signing 3 year contracts?
• With only three players, handset makers will be at the mercy of three giants (2.5 giants really) in terms of their flexibility to add new features and technologies. Also, consumers will have less handset choices and features. That would be a big backward step for U.S. consumers. The rest of the world continues to get new gizmos at a rapid pace.
• There will only be one GSM player in the country. Hey FCC, isn’t that a monopoly? GSM is the mobile standard of choice for over 80% of global cell phone users.
• Wireless innovation will go south. T-Mobile was quite innovative. They built their own handsets and tried new technologies like UMA. With one less competitor and a GSM monopoly, what’s the incentive for innovation?
• Say goodbye to T-Mobile’s unlimited data plans (unlimited to 5GB and then throttle controlled) and hello to higher fees for data usage past the 2GB AT&T cap.

Returning America’s economy to healthier grounds requires more competition, not less. Although technology-wise it wouldn’t have made any sense, a T-Mobile and Sprint merger would have almost leveled the playing field in the U.S. cell phone industry.

Now the billion dollar question is WWSD – What Would Sprint Do?The proposed merger presents the distant third carrier both an opportunity and a challenge. Will it implode under pressure from the big two and get bought by a global player or will it squeeze this monstrous lemon into refreshing lemonade? It can take advantage of its underdog status and transform into an agile niche player by making a few smart moves.

For starters it should consider ditching its life-sucking Nextel platform. A more radical idea would be for it to consider joining hands with low cost carriers such as metroPCS, Cricket and US Cellular and give AT&T and Verizon a run for their money by becoming a value leader. Technically, this is possible because they all use CDMA technology. Wait, here’s a not so outlandish idea: May be Google should buy Sprint!

Hey Google, are you listening? Given Android’s stupendous success, it would behoove Google to ensure that Sprint not only survives, but thrives. It can use Sprint as a virtual lab to market new Adroid smartphones, services and apps. May be the folks at Sprint and Google are already thinking about all this. Is it a coincidence that last week both companies suddenly made the announcement of offering Google Voice to Sprint customers? Sprint customers will be able to use their existing Sprint phone number as their Google Voice number, or if they already have a Google Voice number, they can replace their Sprint number with that number. The two companies also announced that Sprint would start selling Google’s latest Nexus-S phones on Sprint’s 4G network starting this spring.

Regardless of our likes or dislikes towards Sprint, I personally believe we must all root for its success to keep the spirit of America’s free enterprise alive, and most importantly, to prevent being bullied by the big blue and the big red. Come on Sprint, it’s time for you to become a strong, Big Yellow! Who knows, Google may really buy Sprint and pop the ATT&T T-Mobile merger balloon. That would be hunky-dory.