Is Your Smartphone a Thin Client?

Since it's 2010, the future was supposed to be here by now. Years ago, we were promised jet packs and moon colonies by now (Look Ma, no gravity). Instead, most people still use landline phones. We get around town thanks to old fashioned petroleum products.

There is, however, one area that's living up to the Future Shock hype: the ever-expanding capabilities of smartphones. Still in their infancy, it doesn't take much imagination to see them as all-powerful tiny supercomputers. 

How long will it be before IT managers and other techies are running datacenters using their pocket device? 

I've already heard talk of tech managers doing this to a very limited extent. I've also heard the idea dismissed as a minor form of lunacy. Granted, the problems start with security and get hairier from there. 

Yet Citrix, in partnership with mobile virtualization software vendor Open Kernel Labs, is pushing the Nirvana Phone. The futuristically named phone aims to make your lowly handheld into a full-fledged thin client. (Here's a YouTube video demo of the thin client idea.) 

Extend the idea far enough -- and add more competition from more vendors, which is surely coming -- and it's clear that smartphones are just about ready to rule the world. 

Citrix imagines the Nirvana Phone as extending the enterprise virtualization platform out to mobile devices. As smartphones continue to bulk up, your muscular Blackberry (or iPhone or Andriod) could tap into virtualized apps or virtual desktops. Plug it into a full-sized monitor and -- voila! -- you'll see your data infrastructure in vivid color. 

At this point, Citrix Reciever, which is mobile client software, streams apps and virtual PCs to smart phones via its ICA or HDX protocols. The effort is to be platform agnostic. So don't get concerned that some staffers run Andriod and some run Windows Mobile. 

Citrix brags: "As long as employees have Citrix Receiver installed, IT no longer has to worry about whether they are delivering to a PC in the office, a Mac at home, or an iPhone on the road." 

An iPhone on the road? I thought enterprise IT departments were horrified at the thought of iPhones interacting with corporate firewalls. 

But that worry is so 2009. Now in 2010, the future is here. Your data center is (almost) in your pocket.