Virtualized IT and hosting environments and applications that run in virtualized environments were the main agenda during the recent Parallels Summit 2009 in Las Vegas. The Parallels CEO Serguei Belousov explained that it company calls this type of environment - Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI). He also said that it offers more cost effective approach to businesses ir order to have optimized IT infrastructures, than traditional PC or traditional servers, when it comes to enterprise virtualization.

According to Parallels VDI allows end-users to see and interact with exactly the same OS and applications they used to use on their desktops. With the Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) however the users' OS and applications are hosted on centralized, remote storage solution.

Parallels underlines that VDI is also a virtualized application and it can be further optimized and consolidated in order high efficiency to be reached.

PCWorld magazine quotes Parallels sources, which say that typically, organizations can get up to 150 virtual desktops on a Dual CPU Quad Core server with 32GB RAM.

The virtuzlization producers claims that VDI removes many difficulties that businesses experience in the process of maintaining traditional desktop systems. The company says that within VDI applications and patches can be rolled out more efficiently, and there is greater control inside the IT environment, than anyone has within traditional desktop network.

The main benefit for businesses is that PC management will become easier and the cost of desktop computing will be reduced. Parallels says that any company takes advantage of data center licensing and saves money on buying, software licensing and also managing a large number of desktop PCs.

In its report "Energy Savings via Virtualization: Green IT on a Budget" the analytical agency Gartner says that an effective virtualization reduces server energy consumption by up to 82% and data center and floor space by up to 85%.

in his opening keynote at the Parallels Summit, the company's CEO Serguei Belousov said that virtualization is about to become a mainstream in IT. According to him large-scale corporates will be the first that will fully virtualiaze teir IT infrastructure within the next few years. SMBs will follow them, and within a decade consumers will also work in virtualized environments.