Citrix claims that CIOs want to stop supplying their companies' employees with computers and make it a "bring-your-own" affair so they can shed the cost of the hardware and the headaches of support.

And Citrix says that its newfangled "Project Independence" will see that BYOC vision realized and radically change desktop economics, a move Microsoft will reportedly support.

Project Independence is the end result of Citrix' move to develop what it calls the first enterprise-class Xen-based client-side virtualization, image management and delivery scheme optimized for Intel's vPro virtualization technology, the stuff in Intel's current and future Core 2 desktop and Centrino 2 laptop chips.

Product availability is set for the second half of this year from PC OEMs and Citrix directly, and involves the creation of a bare metal hypervisor that's supposed to overcome the limitations of current so-called "Type-2" hypervisors and server-based streaming solutions.

The coming Citrix widgetry, described as a "small embedded component," is supposed to "dramatically" lower the cost of desktop management by offering users centralized desktop virtualization that doesn't chintz on rich, personalized performance, security, mobility or scalability and supports multiple OS images.

Citrix and Intel are supposed to have a collaboration agreement but their arrangement doesn't require Intel to do much of anything except make accommodations in its chipsets' firmware if and when it should be required. At this point Citrix is just piling on what exists in the marketplace - including machines that already have an operating system installed.

Anyway, getting back to this Project Independence business, Citrix, whose research found 75% of business PCs are used for personal reasons, imagines organizations offering employees a stipend toward their purchase of, say, a laptop - whichever one they want.

It imagines employees not having to buy a home computer because their business machine will support both an open, loosely managed personal image and a locked-down, tightly managed corporate image complements of its "Type-1" hypervisor.

The data center will stream down a policy-based corporate desktop, and all related applications, into a secure, "100%" isolated client-based virtual machine. The data will be on both the data center servers and the widget's local drive so the user can work offline and tap into the device's native performance and graphics.

The data will automatically update once a connection is restored and software upgrades, those corporate bogeymen, will be managed centrally. Since the user's personal settings are isolated from the OS and the apps they won't interfere, as they often do, with upgrades.

The corporate desktop will also be accessible from any device. Citrix calls it "desktop as a service," promising that laptops will "feel brand new everyday" and be instantly on.

Citrix claims that this scheme will have companies spending "more on coffee and office supplies than they do on desktop management" and has the Enterprise Strategy Group observe that it will "disrupt a traditional desktop management industry that is costing enterprises billions of dollars a year."

Citrix VP of product marketing Sumit Dhawan figures the cost of desktop management can be cut by up to 50%.

Intel's vPro technology is providing the large-scale manageability as well as near-native virtualization performance.

Project Independence builds on the XenDesktop virtualization solution Citrix introduced last year.

Citrix is also capitalizing on the Xen Client Initiative established last year by the Xen open source community as well as the image management widgetry it acquired in its Ardence acquisition, the source of its Provisioning Server, according to Dhawan.

Importantly, he says that Microsoft will provide first-line technical support for Project Independence PCs based on XP and Vista.

Citrix' stuff is supposed to be different from VMware's in its dynamic desktop assembly as opposed to its rival's check-in/check-out approach

It should have a technology demo available now on its web site and is planning previews later in the first half ahead of second-half availability.