Personally I am big fan of cloud applications delivery.It is the future of software industry. Pack zeros and ones into paper boxes and deliver it via mailbox sounds really archaic to me. From user point of view, I am tired of all the installations, updates, reinstallations, licensing setups, modules activations..and doing the same again and again because of new updates...
I just want to log in to my tool and use it. When I don’t need it, I don’t want to carry it on.
With respect to hardware virtualization, the performance factor can be very significant benefit for CAE analysis application. After couple of years using notebook for my work, I am considering to switch back to desktop, and keep my old notebook just for remote access using RDP.