Another juicy detail is that Desktone is financially backed by Citrix. They are not teaming with just Verizon but they've partnered with IBM as well. Initially the server platform supposedly will be just VMware ESX but Hyper-V and Xen are also slated to be supported. So whayt should such a service cost? Supposedly starting at $75 per user per month. Informationweek: "Desktone plans to sell "desktops as a service" through service providers with Desktone's Virtual-D Platform, starting with business customers. The service was designed mainly with business customers in mind. The premise is this: Even though virtualizing a company's desktops can save money, it can be still be labor intensive and expensive to implement virtual desktop infrastructures because such a strategy requires investment in storage and new servers as well as on-site management expertise via new staff or training. However, businesses could potentially outsource desktops to service providers on the cheap. Verizon hasn't set prices, but estimates it could cost roughly $75 per month per user, or about half of the cost of on-premise desktop virtualization according to Verizon's calculations.

In the Desktone model, all of a company's server-based apps like Active Directory and line-of-business software remain on-premise and communicate directly with the service providers' infrastructure via a secure Internet connection if needed to be accessed by an employee or referenced by another app. IT managers also get a Web-based console to manage virtual image libraries, monitor performance, and gain remote access into virtual machines for troubleshooting. And the connection broker technology that manages how client devices link up with virtual machines was built with the help of Merrill Lynch, which is using the connection broker for internal use but isn't testing the service.

Desktone and its early partners are still ironing out the wrinkles, and partners like Verizon won't likely be broadly selling desktops as a service until at least the end of this year. In interviews, Desktone and Verizon both promise high service levels, but since downtime means no access to computing resources, applications could be limited to non-mobile PCs.

Also, since the desktops as a service will be streamed over the Internet, some latency sensitive apps, like those heavy on video, may underperform. In order to make the V-Desktop Platform perform well as a service, Desktone CEO Harry Ruda says the company cobbled together some of the best pieces of SaaS architectures that deliver latency-sensitive data like streaming multimedia, and has done some tweaking of the Remote Desktop Protocol that's used to stream Windows, but says some work remains.

Ruda sees the use of re-purposed laptops as a stepping stone to a thin client architecture. Thin clients have been touted as desktop replacements for more than a decade, but have so far generally only caught on in niches. Until recently, they didn't support removable media like USB keys. And if thin clients aren't configured to behave like thick clients, users can become upset.

Verizon hopes that it can eventually sell Desktone's desktop virtualization in enterprise-wide deployments, but is starting small, so the successor to the old thin client model may remain in niche deployments for now. "The most obvious place to start is to focus on the rudimentary worker who's doing primarily Web browsing or who is working in the call center where three people use one computer over a 24-hour shift and there's not the use of extensive computing resources," says Verizon Business strategic director Kenny McBride."

It will be interesting to see how this goes.