MokaFive morphs SaaS into DaaS

Desktops as a service may be the next catchy buzzphrase if a new virtualization technology from MokaFive Inc. works as advertised. Bill Demas, CEO for the Redwood City, Calif. startup, says the MokaFive service lets you store your company's desktop images -- operating system, applications and data -- as a tenant "in the cloud."

When a user wants to start working he connects to the Internet and the service immediately starts streaming the virtual desktop image to his machine. Demas says IT can create, deploy, manage and monitor all the virtual desktops centrally through the MokaService.

According to John Whaley, principle engineer, the company's compression tools can pack a full Windows, Office 2007 and data package into about one GByte, streaming the bits fast enough so the user can start working quickly. He says the image also can be stored onto a USB and booted from there on any x86-class PC. Desktop images on USB drives will be updated as needed when the PC goes online.

MokaFive supports Windows, Mac OS X and the company's own version of Linux. The "release candidate" of the service is available this week with general availability later in Q2 at which time pricing will be set. You can also tinker with an "express version" of the MokaService on the company's site, but not deploy the virtual desktop to PCs or USB sticks. For those of you with desktop management concerns, MokaFive could be worth a look.