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Virtual Desktops Move to Devices

Keeping all your files and applications in one place on the Web means you're never without them as long as you're connected. Virtual desktop services provide a place where users can store their files, calendar, contact information, and e-mail, and run Web-enabled applications. Now a Tel Aviv-based virtual desktop service, BmyPC, is starting to offer some of this functionality to users of WAP-enabled mobile phones and Web TV systems, and is developing it for Palm handheld devices as well.

The year-old company has been providing the virtual desktop service since May, setting up co-branding deals with clients like ICICampus, a portal for French students that's expanding to other European countries. BmyPC is also setting up deals with World Network Services, an ISP, and with If and Then, a virtual CIO service that provides information technology support for small offices. BmyPC has already registered more than 30,000 users, according to CEO Yossi Cohen, and it's multilingual, with support for English, Spanish, French, Hebrew, and German.

BmyPC is currently free to individual users. The company plans to make money by charging its partners for each registered user per year.

With mobile devices, users can access their calendar and e-mail, forward files to another user from their virtual desktop, and print them out on a fax machine.

For users with a full Web interface on their computers or Web TV units, BmyPC offers a file viewer that converts remote files to HTML so they can be viewed. There's also an emulator for Microsoft Excel and PowerPoint to view and manipulate files and resave them in the original format. In the next few weeks, BmyPC also plans to add file synchronization for home and work environments.

"Right now, BmyPC is not used so much with handheld devices," commented Van Baker, vice president of consumer platforms at Dataquest. "It's more about making any PC out there usable as your PC. While in some ways it's useful having access via a handheld device, that's not as compelling as being able to access your files from any network-connected PC. The service is roughly equivalent to Visto's. They offer some good utility, but if they're going to be truly successful, they need to offer the equivalent of an office environment from any PC connected to the network. How fast they get from point A to point B will determine how successful they will be."

While only a few months old, the service is branching out and will show up on more Internet devices once the port to the Palm OS is complete.

Is having a virtual desktop a useful way to keep files and applications in sync, or does it make users wholly dependent on having Web connections? Drop us an e-mail at ieletters@iw.com and we'll include responses in next week's edition.

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