With a rallying cry—”The Anywhere Enterprise^® is coming!”—the virtual desktop revolution is upon us, threatening to redefine the client computing experience for enterprise employees and challenge the status quo of existing corporate network, security and management infrastructures.

Virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) represents the future of enterprise desktop computing and brings with it the detachment of OSs and applications from physical endpoints—a compelling trend that promises greater flexibility, scalability, cost savings and security benefits. The movement also represents radical, and possibly painful, changes in market dynamics for providers of endpoint hardware, software and services.

Ealier today, Zeus Kerravala and I hosted a webinar where we discussed the future of VDI and what the technology has to offer enterprises today.

The webinar runs about an hour: audio (mp3) and slides (pdf).

When you’ve been a technology analyst for as long as I have, you either use or see all the hackneyed phrases that language has to offer.  My personal bugaboo, inherited from a mentor years ago, is the use of the word era to describe a period of just a few years. As in, “the smartphone era.” Dictionaries typically first define era as a geologic term characterizing a massive passing of time – e.g., the Mesozoic Era. I’m sure Apple hopes the iPhone and its offspring will be around for a long time – but it might be stretching things to suggest that long time might span 180 million years.

Mesozoic gastropods outlasted smartphones

Another overused tech industry term is “the Year of X”, where X is any technology that the analyst fervently believes will finally move from proof of concept and early adoption to mass deployment. I personally wrote a report in 1996 talking about the Year of Cable Modems. Which, if I’m being honest, was probably at least a year too soon.

Yet as the saying goes, “I may be paranoid — but someone could still be out to get me.”

Recent data from Yankee Group’s massive monthly surveys of U.S. enterprises — in which we hear from thousands of IT and line-of-business people about their companies’ connectivity activities and intentions — suggest that enterprise IT investment in the coming few years will be characterized by a heavy focus on mobile technologies.

Gee, that’s just not as fun as predicting “the age of enterprise mobility”, is it?

Anyway. Two recent Yankee Group reports, one looking at large enterprises and the second at the small-to-medium-business (SMB) arena, reach similar conclusions. Sheryl Kingstone highlights large enterprise intentions to go mobile in 2010; Steve Hilton shows that SMBs see it the same way. Combining reported priorities for mobile-enabled applications and smartphone deployments, 46% of large enterprises and 50% of SMBs put these at the tops of their investment lists over the next two years.

That’s good news for the enterprises themselves — which stand to reap measurable productivity gains by bringing company data and apps to their workers anywhere they are — and for the associated technology vendors.

(And it might not stop with the mobile devices and systems themselves. In a recent chat with Enterprise Mobile CEO Mort Rosenthal, he suggested that the iPhone may be Apple’s enterprise “starter drug”, causing businesses to progress from accepting Apple’s smartphone to having a more generous attitude about the company’s laptop and desktop computing platforms as well.)

Let’s hope that the caution that has accompanied all tech spending during the downturn follows re-expanding IT budgets in 2010, so that businesses don’t squander the mobile opportunity. The potential pitfalls that lie ahead include carrying existing application silos to the mobile device (versus integrating the experience to deliver the information the worker needs regardless of whatever apps use it on tethered platforms), trying to shoehorn too much functionality into a smaller screen (versus building from use cases that suggest what the worker really needs), and over-constraining the variety of mobile platforms (so that workers can’t use their own mobile devices).

But it can be done. Let the Enterprise Mobility Era begin! Oops — sorry.

The emergence of ubiquitous high-speed Internet access around the world, coupled with the portability of computing, is contributing to a permanent shift in how employees do their jobs. This shift is at the core of what Yankee Group calls the Anywhere Enterprise — our vision for how companies in the future will connect all their assets to employees and partners, anywhere and anytime.

The 20th century saw a massive shift in the nature of work, and thus in how a commercial enterprise approached that work. The size and shape of desks, for example, along with where they were placed and who filled them, changed completely from this 19th century office at left. Over the course of this century, change isn’t coming to desks but to the role of location in our work.  

In a short report just published called, “The Future of Work”, YG analyst Josh Holbrook points out that this change isn’t optional. YG’s 2008 Blended Lifestyle Survey shows that nearly three-quarters of U.S. workers believe that allowing employees to work from home benefits the company. In fact, employees said the single most important thing their company could do to improve their productivity — choosing from options that included getting new technology, using their own computers, and other appealing choices — was just enabling them to work from home.

But the increased productivity and lower costs that can result don’t come without effort. “Organizations that aspire to a remote workforce all too often craft a corporate memo and assume employees will be so pleased, that everything else will take care of itself, ” he said. Instead, Josh recommends a five-factor framework to creating a successful remote working environment in your enterprise, beginning with a comprehensive diagnosis of real employee needs and ending with managing a well-planned change process.

Great thinking, and just one consequence of the expansion of the network to every nook and cranny of the earth.

YG’s third Mobile Internet World event took place this past week. Despite increasing worry about the global economic outlook, attendance grew over last year and the conversations were energized and thoughtful. I asserted Wednesday that in the dam erected by the existing mobile power players, significant cracks are developing – ones that, as they grow, will cause either a catastrophic or planful unleashing of users into a more substantial mobile landscape.

Given the economic backdrop, it was all the more fitting that NEVCA (the New England Venture Capital Association) put together a track for Day 3 to examine the opportunities, funding resources, and liquidity prospects of mobile internet endeavors.  The final session brought together Chris Pasko of The Blackstone Group, Matt Rubins of M/C Venture Partners, and Joseph Sanborn of Rutberg & Co. to talk about the prospects for liquidity in the current market.

Chris wondered if tech-sector IPOs will ever recover to the levels we’ve seen in past times; certainly for now that avenue is closed. What of sales to strategic buyers? The threesome agreed that some key strategic buyers have both the appetite and the funds to take advantage of what might come onto the market. But with some public firms that would serve as comparables for the valuation range of a private transaction trading at unbelieveably low multiples, sellers not under pressure will likely prefer to wait. Will valuations begin to stabilize by the second quarter of next year, so that at least some deals can move forward? Matt suggested that VC firms will want to help their best portfolio firms hang tight for the time being.

Besides the well-circulated Sequoia Capital presentation (I’m not bothering with a link to it; it’s everywhere), what should mobile internet startup management teams do now? The panel’s advice:

• Focus. Now’s the time to pick the one thing that makes you special. Narrow is better than broad.
• Upgrade. Sadly, some good talent will hit the job market in 2009; now’s the time to make sure you have the best team.
• Align interests. Rounds of funding, M&A, and other events may have left your capital structure less effective for motivating the management team. To keep your team focused and to get the right new talent on board, make sure the options programs make sense.
• Keep talking. While it might seem like all your time should be spent on the path to profitability, you still need to build awareness of your venture.

Matt summed it up for us in exactly 10 succinct words:  “Cut the crap. Find a friend. Live for another day.”