Patent ID: 8914730

Claim:
A method for accessing a virtual machine (VM) from a computer system, the method comprising: under control of a desktop portal, providing a user with a unified graphical interface to a VM regardless of whether the VM is accessed remotely or locally, the desktop portal comprising a VM player interface for accessing the VM when the VM is accessed locally and a remote desktop client for accessing the VM when the VM is accessed remotely, by: receiving user log-in information, the log-in information identifying a user and a corresponding VM, the corresponding VM having a local copy stored on the computer system and a remote copy stored on a separate server computer system; identifying a selected copy of the corresponding VM based on at least one of a policy and a user selection, the selected copy being one of the local copy and the remote copy of the corresponding VM; presenting a desktop generated by the selected copy of the corresponding VM to the user in the same unified graphical user interface, without regard as to whether the selected copy of the corresponding VM is the local copy accessed from the computer system or the remote copy accessed from the separate server computer system.