Currently, a lot of virtualization and software deployment technologies exist in the IT world.
There are Fat (or how Microsoft calls it now) Rich Clients, Thin Clients with application or desktop virtualization, server virtualization (like in Virtuozzo), hardware virtualization (Virtual PC, Xen, VMWare infrastructure), document virtualization (Electronic Content Management systems like sharepoint or OpenText), Web 2.0, Java, and so further and so on.

Most of the techniques I mentioned above are about reducing the amount of money a company has to spend for hardware and administration support (and in the meantime also for energy costs). At the same time, IT tries to bring Software most efficiently to the user, with a minimum risk that a new software version does not work and the user is interrupted in his/her daily work (that's where e.g. SVS comes into play).

So, while in the past, the customers formulated their requirements and IT had to fullfill them (with the effect, that each and every user "needed" his/her own full blown desktop PC), it now seems, that IT strikes back in a way that they return to a centralized hardware, software deployment, IT management (like they had it back in the 1970s, when IT was mainly "mainframed". And the reason for this is simply that it is cheaper than supporting a heterogeneous infrastructure.

It is easy to see, that IT is nowadays very early involved in the software purchase process and that the above mentioned IT criteria play an important role in the decision process, which software product should be bought.
A software solution today needs to fit into an IT infrastructure strategy as well as solve business problems.

Although I have a clear understanding of what is going on and I see the pros and cons of the different techniques, it is not yet clear, how the story will continue in future.

Will one virtualization and/or deployment solution win (not very likely)?
Is there a "best mix" of the solutions that are already currently available?
What are the main factors for deciding for one or the other technique?
Who are the main players in the virtualization and software deployment game (user, IT, CIO, etc.)?
Is there anything completely new at the horizon?

I am searching for interested people to discuss this with me and maybe shed a bit more light on the issues I mentioned above.

So, novices, experts, whoever, what's your opinion?
Any answer is welcome...