The logical progression of the thin-client cloud movement is that it comes to the masses. We’ve seen numerous advances in Virtualisation technology purchases from the Citrix mob with Xen, VMWare’s long pedigree, and the new entrant Sun’s VirtualBox. All these are great, but are missing the point of mainstream adoption outside the enterprise. This can only occur when virtualization is no longer about just server consolidation and cycle saving.

Apple is building a server-farm, can this be a prelude and foundation of what is to become the delivery mechanism for the VOS (Virtual OS) ? My prediction is that within 2 years, not only will there be a smaller device that you are able to take around in the form of a tablet, but more importantly is its integration with your persistent presence.

A simple scenario is you working on a document or watching a movie on your Mac at home, after which you must leave. Without turning anything off, you merely take your tablet/light-weight computing unit, and proceed on your trip. Once on a bus, you will be able to resume your document editing, movie watching experience exactly where you left off.

Current core strengths within Apple do not include OS abstraction and Virtualization (I’m not counting Rosetta, as that wasn’t developed inhouse), so Apple’s next purchase should be a player in Virtualization delivery, or at least see a partnership emerge – Citrix – wink*wink*nudge*