While everyone contemplates the place that Android will hold on the mobile device, in home entertainment and on the netbook, there is another interesting use-case for Android that's not yet been talked about. There's no reason that Android, as a complete OS, application stack and ecosystem (including the app market), has to be run on the client side. In environments where multiple users might want to use the same client hardware (monitor, keyboard, mouse, etc), such as at the office, the thin-client model could be a very useful way to access any given user's Android session. This way, the Android session can be displayed at any end-point, be it a desktop, notebook, meeting-room projector, or even smartphone device. Using a VPN or even SSL protected web browser session from home, a user could also bring up their work Android session.

And of course, as soon as one contemplates serving Android sessions from a server farm, virtualization springs to mind. While one could put each Android in its own VM, Android is ripe for an application style of virtualization, having only one kernel and multiple application group boundaries. One can achieve much higher consolidation ratios that way. With whatever choice of virtualization style, one can then imagine that the Android sessions are not necessarily constrained to any one company's private datacenter/cloud, but could also be served from a public cloud. If a public cloud provider can put sessions close enough to a given user's current location (networking latency wise), this proposition gets really interesting. For one, because Android could work its way into the consumer and enterprise VDI spaces. And two, because Google (GOOG) owns a lot of datacenters and could potentially go beyond the OS/application stack space, and into owning the execution of user sessions as well as maintain all their data. This would be likely be a reoccurring revenue (rental) type of service, and open the door to some premium options such as backups, latency/bandwidth QoS, execution locality zones, etc. Kind of the Android desktop version of Amazon's (AMZN) EC2/S3 web services.

VM migration has been a key feature and enabling technology which has differentiated VMware (VMW) from Microsoft's (MSFT) Hyper-V. Though as you may know, Windows Server 2008 R2 is slated for broad availability on or before October 22, 2009 (also the Windows 7 GA date), and Hyper-V will then support VM migration. So you may be wondering, what key new high-tech features will constitute the next battleground for differentiation amongst the virtualization players?

Five-Nines (99.999%) Meets Commodity Hardware

Yahoo (YHOO) uses a Java-based MapReduce infrastructure called Hadoop. This article demonstrates why Java performance does not scale well for large scale compute settings, relative to C++, which is what Google (GOOG) uses for their MapReduce infrastructure.

A couple months ago, I wrote an article about how Hadoop infrastructure should use C++/LLVM, not Java, to be as scalable and efficient as possible. And to be competitive with Google infrastructure. Discussions surrounding Java vs C++ performance often seem to morph into something bordering on religion, are muddled with arguments about various tweaks that can be done in one language or the other, and then dissipate into the abyss of non-action. Very few discussions focus on the real issue.

This year's Finovate Startup 09 Conference in San Francisco hosted some 56 financial oriented startups. Attending as a blogger from Seeking Alpha (a conference sponsor) and a serial startup guy, it's hard to beat merging the best of two worlds. If you didn't have a chance to attend, a great way to summarize the big picture painted by Finovate Startup '09 was encapsulated by a remark from a fellow Seeking Alpha blogger and hedge fund manager; there are no areas of finance left which will not be heavily disrupted. Some of these startups represent such disruptions to current financial business models. If you're in the biz, I heavily recommend attending the flagship Finovate in NYC on September 29, 2009. Your life is about to change.

My runner-up favorite theme at Finovate was peer-to-peer lending. This has a lot of potential in that it creates a new asset class which takes banks out of the equation, allowing (pools of) borrowers to directly borrow from (pools of) lenders. And as a general rule, startups in this space tend to tout more transparency to the process. There was a great wrap-up of related startups here. If I were a bank, I'd think about buying into these startups early. And note that transparency is the new trend.

I'd imagine Microsoft (MSFT) is still stinging, years after letting the Google (GOOG) opportunity slip through their fingers. That's always an unfortunate possibility for companies who adopt the wait-and-follow approach to innovation. Although Microsoft did switch gears significantly and invested in Facebook in October 2007 before it ran away too. Based on the deal terms (a 1.6% stake of $240 million), it would appear there was more value to Microsoft than just the equity position. But I've come up with a strategy for Microsoft to get ahead of the curve this time, one that could return it to it's World domination position.

It's no secret that Facebook's growth is stellar, projected Worldwide at 5 million new users every week! Facebook is in some ways becoming to social networking what Google is to search. And that is what makes a phenomenal opportunity to Microsoft if they get ahead of this one. Less than 25% of the World's population are Internet users. For many of those users, Microsoft could service using their current roadmap. But what about the remaining 75%? Several trends taken together paint a pretty clear picture of how to capitalize on this massive wave of Internet newbies.

We've entered the phase where M&A of technology companies gets interesting. Oddly, while the economics are less than stellar, and cut backs and lay-offs run rampant, a number of major companies sit on mountains of cash. Recent M&A activities and rumors thereof, will knee-jerk companies into the buying frenzy that accompanies this phase. But beyond that, there is a new trend of Unified Computing, written indelibly in ink by the recent Cisco (CSCO) move into the server market. This will focus the M&A urgency on a few specific areas, and light up the war rooms at many corporate headquarters. So I'm offering some related ideas.

Hypervisors

We're at the native Linux desktop, moving towards the Android desktop (netbooks coming soon). What would bridge those two environments, is to offer a second Linux sandbox which runs along with Android.

Android has a very specific architecture, with its own libraries and non-X based GUI, which are not conducive to running standard Linux/X applications. Even its libc version (bionic) omits certain POSIX features, making it not fully compatible. Android apps have to be targeted for and compiled against Android.

We have just entered a new era in interoperability between Linux and Windows.

The Desktop

A week ago, Google (GOOG) announced that they licensed Microsoft's Exchange ActiveSync protocol technology, and released a beta of the Google Sync service. Google Sync is a new push technology that allows over-the-air sync of Google calendar appointments and email contacts, across a number of handset environments including Windows Mobile devices. This was a wise move and one with a desktop component best described in a related quote I found:

Owning and operating data centers is an extremely complex and expensive proposition. The result, data center complexes often in multiple fixed locations, each with a life span of 15 years or so. And thus tied to locality considerations of power generation, labor pools, real estate, taxes and many others. This is not the epitome of a grand dynamic computer and storage fabric vision whereby capacity can be added, subtracted or moved around as needed. The fact that so many organizations throughout the world have to roll out their own data centers, ought to be the first clue that a huge amount of inefficiencies exist in organizations owning and running their own data centers.

However, wherever significant inefficiencies exist, opportunities are created. It's an unsustainable notion, having each organization build its own data center, even for smaller versions with only a handful of machines. Besides being tied to the locality issues already enumerated, one just can not come close to tapping economies of scale of a large virtualization provider, nor utilize the same level of statistical usage. Which is why I see the future of data centers will move towards outsourcing to larger data center providers, who house workloads and data for many many companies at once.

There's been a recent spate of predictions that Windows 7 will kill off the Linux desktop, especially on netbooks. My favorite title so far is Windows kicks Linux to the curb, which provides a nice visual. Well, I'm not actually going to disagree, at least as far as traditional desktop Linux and netbooks go.

But first, a question to drive a point home. Have you ever used a version of OpenOffice Cloud? Neither have I, because it doesn't exist. The closest you can come is to use Ulteo, a virtualized Linux provider service, started by a previous Mandriva founder -- then everything is running on a VM in the cloud including OpenOffice. If you want to go cloud, you have to use something like Google (GOOG) Docs. And isn't a netbook about the cloud?

There are a lot of rumblings of recent about a possible Google Web Drive (GOOG) offering. Of course, Microsoft (MSFT) has its cloud storage counterpart SkyDrive, and there are a whole panoply of companies with existing offerings with a bias from online file sharing to storage to backups. Just to name a few, there is Box.net, IBackup, Mozy, Iron Mountain’s Connected Backup for PC, and many others.

For consumers, online storage is a lot about convenience -- one of the key values which consumers will pay for, and in this case quite possibly on a reoccurring basis. There's the convenience to access files from anywhere. And to share files with others groups or even with the public. And to have someone else deal with back-ups. Forget buying a NAS box for backups -- backup to a service. What enables this trend to occur is simply network bandwidth availability. It certainly wouldn't have been feasible with a modem dial-up ISP.

Volunteer distributed computing projects have been around for a while. You've probably heard of for example, SETI@home, a Berkeley project launched in 1999 to listen for radio signals from ET. Hey, maybe you even run the work manager as your screensaver. Another example would be the Stanford protein folding study project, Folding@home. I call this whole class, HPC@home (High Performance Computing).

These are very cool projects which can tap vast volunteer resources. But it's hard to scale this model to commercial projects which have sensitive data computations. Essentially, there is no guaranteed isolation between a user's general purpose environment, and the sensitive computation.

Generally when something gets pushed to "the cloud", it seems the user experience gets depreciated or new limitations arise. Adobe (ADBE) Flash based games have been a step in the direction of the cloud, being at least delivered from the cloud but run locally. Quality of Flash games have gotten better, although I wouldn't equate them with high intensity DirectX PC games. And in any case, you need a platform which supports Flash.

Then along comes this idea of server-side rendering, using the browser as the canvas. This opens a whole new dimension for cloud gaming, virtual environments and other interactive 3D usage, whereby the rendering computation cannot be done ahead of time. Check out, for example, this excellent article about OTOY. What makes server-side rendering very interesting, is that it can unleash rendering capacity far greater than the CPU and GPU capabilities on the consumer device. So for example, if you're enjoying a game on a smartphone, the rendering might be parallelized across an array of servers and high-end graphics cards, giving resolution and effects quality not even remotely attainable otherwise on the smartphone (and certainly not within it's power envelope).

Intel (INTC) created and is a large contributor to Moblin, a "Linux-based software platform for building visually rich, dynamic, and connected applications that run on devices based on Intel® Atom™ processor technology", to enhance sales of MIDs and Netbooks. Moblin 1.0, based on Ubuntu Linux, was announced in July 2007, but didn't get much traction. Around July 2008, it was reported that Moblin 2.0 was switching to a Fedora base and would be announced at the Fall 2008 IDF. Then the Intel Developer Forum [IDF] came and went without a related announcement. In October, it was reported that Moblin 2.0 was pushed to the 1st half of 2009.

Aside from the timeline, it's interesting to look at Moblin from the perspective of what it seeks to achieve, which is essentially an Open Source application stack and GUI optimized for mobile devices, and an associated ecosystem of software and hardware vendors to help drive adoption. Those goals are quite similar in nature to what Google's (GOOG) Android platform aims for, and Android is from all reports rapidly picking up steam. There's already an Android Market to deliver 3rd party apps, and with nearly 50 OHA members backing Android, 2009 is likely to replete with many new Android devices. Note that Intel is one of the OHA members, and there's now an x86 Android port which has been shown on a netbook.

In the last year, drive vendors such as Seagate (STX), Hitachi (HIT) and Fujitsu (FJTSY.PK) announced self-encrypting drives. The general scheme is that you type in a password during the BIOS boot-up phase, and the password is authenticated by the drive. The drive then decrypts disk reads and encrypts disk writes at native speed, all internal to the drive. So to Windows, Linux or other software, the drive appears as a normal unencrypted drive, as all such software is booted after unlocking the drive.

It occurs to me, if self-encryption becomes a common feature in drives, perhaps one of the banes of a quick boot-up (anti-virus checks) could be eliminated during some or all of the boot-up phase? TPMs are also working their way into popularity (IDC figures a 90% attachment rate by 2010), which would offer a more complete chain of trust to complement self-encrypting drives. If it could be trusted that no modifications have occurred to the drive since the last boot, couldn't a lot of scanning be eliminated, with a focus only on newly added content?

I've been involved in Linux since the early 1990's, worked at one of the mainline Linux distros some years ago and have been an Open Source author of two projects. Over the years, the Linux environment has made great functional progress, yet mainline Linux vendors have struggled continuously to create a profitable desktop business around it. Many have tried, some have just given up on the desktop.

Given much of the software in the Linux environment is free, it seems a natural corollary that a Linux desktop would not be a profitable proposition. But I contend that not only can Linux be a profitable business, but it will be. Making money selling a shrink-wrapped Linux OS, or ISV apps, I'd agree is a very tough gig. But a number of factors are aligning to make an entirely different kind of Linux desktop business a very viable proposition. The equation:

There is much chatter about the hyper-commoditization of computer devices causing a "race to the bottom." Additionally, the confluence of smartphone and mobile PC markets has not only the potential to disrupt either market, but also adds new hardware requirements to the traditional mobile PC market which are influenced from smartphones. One doesn't have too look far to see new netbook/notebook devices announced which include 3G, GPS, and touch screen. Intel's (INTC) Classmate design even has an accelerometer, which could open up some really interesting usage.

But then the classic question is, if high-volume low-price devices need to be ever increasingly equipped with hardware features, how to device OEMs and chip vendors make money, especially given the disruption to higher margin devices which used to sit higher on the food chain?

Whether or not you believe the rumors of the coming large-form iPod Touch, the larger story is that there's an obvious amount of pent-up demand for such a device. While I'm sure Apple (AAPL) delivering it would create quite a stir, it's worth noting in the Android realm, there are heavy hitters who span from vending everything from handsets to notebooks. If they weren't thinking about building a "smart tablet" before, they likely are now. And thus Apple will be compelled to as well.

This form factor is perfectly sized to slip into a purse. As I've noticed anecdotally, users of netbooks in coffee shops tend to be skewed towards the female persuasion. But smart tablets will slip into any kind of bag, so they could be popular with either gender.

With all the buzz in the netbook space, Qualcomm (QCOM)'s November announcement - the one for its QSD8672 1.5GHz dual-CPU Snapdragon single-chip solution, may have gotten lost. Why this announcement is particularly noteworthy is that it's the first ARM (ARMH) based solution for netbooks which has comparable specs to Intel (INTC) Atom chipsets, and for some features arguably better.

While the current Qualcomm Snapdragon generation runs at 1GHz, the newly announced chipset is a dual-CPU 1.5GHz single-chip solution, manufactured at 45nm by TSMC (TSM). Those are specs that bring the ARM architecture well into the Intel Atom wheel-house, albeit with better battery life and a highly integrated single chip solution.

According to reports from Nokia (NOK), IDC and iSuppli, the mobile phone market will shrink in 2009. Shipments aren't predicted to surpass the levels of 2008 until 2011, according to iSuppli. This phenomena has occurred only once before in 2001, year of the tech bubble bursting. This change can't be assigned only to an economic slowdown. With a current world handset market of 1.22 billion per year and an estimated 6.7 billion world population, the mobile phone market is becoming saturated.

Going forward, attracting customers to replace mobile phones is key, and requires more capable and feature-rich phones. This will accelerate the trend towards smartphones, which have the capacity to offer users more and more of the internet and media experiences that PCs are currently used for.