At the end of August, IBM announced it was introducing what it called “the industry’s first public desktop cloud service”. http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/28292.wss

After the usual PR guff about the benefits to Mankind of cloud computing, the announcement gave a view of what is on offer. It will be a subscription service that offers virtual desktop services. It will provide “a logical, rather than a physical, method of access to data, computing power, storage capacity and other resources”. Does this phrase simply provide naïve users with a definition of virtualisation or is there an alternative interpretation?

Apparently there will be three standard cloud-based offerings although whether all three will be available from the launch in Europe and North America, scheduled for October, is unclear. The service is being developed in association with four partners along with a host of IBM supporting tools.

Citrix (http://www.citrix.co.uk/lang/English/home.asp) has its high definition virtual desktop. In its proprietary offering this is marketed as HDX Technology.

VMware (http://www.vmware.com/) is the standard bearer for virtualisation – one might say the doyen of the industry. For the desktop its leading product is VMware View.

Wyse (http://www.wyse.com/) confidently describes itself as the global leader in thin computing and few would dispute this. It offers desktop appliances, for example the Viance. It also has its own virtualisation software of which Virtual Desktop Accelerator – part of the TCX suite – is probably most relevant.

Desktone (http://www.desktone.com/) is the surprise in the line-up. Only formed 3 years ago, its CEO Harry Ruda is naturally cock-a-hoop about clinching this deal. “We’re thrilled that IBM recognizes Desktone’s pioneering work in desktops as a service® (DaaS®)”, he says. “[It] is the first and only virtual desktop hosting platform designed specifically for the cloud era…”

How will each of these offerings fit into the overall IBM offering? It’s not obvious at present.

How will the service be marketed and distributed? Again, not specified at present but presumably through IBM channel partners.

At which market segments will it be aimed? IBM says it will “address PC replacement dilemmas, deliver resilience and reliability for critical information, and resolve Internet access parity problems, all at competitive subscription service pricing”. The inference is the SME sector particularly as the project name is ‘IBM Smart Business Desktop’.

At the lower end of the market, IBM would have to consider the pricing implications of the free software-as-a-service offerings from Google Docs. (http://docs.google.com) This has all the key bits equivalent to Office plus collaboration, lots of storage and a mobile browser.

There are interesting times ahead as cloud computing grows up.