Robin Wauters

Virtual Bridges Launches Teacher’s Pet Program, A Free Virtual Desktop Offering

May 20, 2011 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

Virtual Bridges has announced the launch of the Teacher’s Pet Program, an exclusive opportunity for K-12 school districts to receive complimentary desktop virtualization licenses.

The program is designed to support educators facing severely reduced budgets by providing technology that eases desktop management, reduces labor costs, extends PC lifecycles and reduces security risks.

The Teacher’s Pet Program is open to K-12 organizations at accredited institutions in the United States. In addition to 50 free licenses of VERDE VDI Gen2, the program offers:

– Single server deployment
– Remote install and troubleshooting
– E-mail support 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. CT, Monday through Friday
– Annual maintenance of only $2,000 for all 50 seats
– A 50 percent discount on additional licenses purchased within 60 days

VERDE eliminates the need to track, maintain, upgrade, repair and keep virus-free all desktop and notebook computers scattered across the district. Additionally, VERDE provides flexibility, allowing teachers and students to securely access desktops regardless of whether they are in the class room, working from home or studying in the library.

The Teacher’s Pet program is running through June 30, 2011.

Release: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.1

May 20, 2011 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

Red Hat has announced the general, worldwide availability of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.1, the first update to the platform since the delivery of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 in November 2010.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.1 enhancements provide customers with improvements in system reliability, scalability and performance, coupled with support for upcoming system hardware. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.1 also delivers patches and security updates, while maintaining application compatibility and OEM/ISV certifications.

In addition to performance improvements, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.1 also provides numerous technology updates, including:

– Additional configuration options for advanced storage configurations with improvements in FCoE, Datacenter Bridging and iSCSI offload, which allow networked storage to deliver the quality of service commonly associated with directly connected storage

– Enhancements in virtualization, file systems, scheduler, resource management and high availability

– New technologies that enable smoother enterprise deployments and tighter integration with heterogeneous systems

– A technology preview of Red Hat Enterprise Identity (IPA) services, based on the open source FreeIPA project

– Support for automatic failover for virtual machines and applications using the Red Hat High Availability Add-On

– Integrated developer tools that provide the ability to write, debug, profile and deploy applications without leaving the graphical environment

– Improvements to network traffic processing to leverage multi-processor servers that are getting increasingly common

Wyse Launches T50, A Linux-based Thin Client For Cloud Client Computing Deployments

May 20, 2011 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

Wyse Technology has announced the Wyse T50 thin client, which delivers Web, Citrix, Microsoft, and VMware VDI user experience, all through a single, intuitive user interface.

Wyse T50 is powered by Wyse-enhanced Linux, delivering a simpler user interface and a “plug and display” start-up of less than 20 seconds. The ENERGY STAR Version 5.0, and EPEAT-compliant Wyse T50 thin client also creates a rich user experience displaying vibrant multimedia and Flash in VDI and the local browser.

The Wyse T50 also includes the same automatic configuration and management used in Wyse’s premium thin and zero clients, eliminating the need for manual utilities and wizards.

With Wyse T50, users have the DVI-I display option to connect to two monitors for optimum viewing versatility. Wyse T50 also includes networking capabilities, with gigabit Ethernet and optional integrated B/G/N Wi-Fi. Wyse T50 also supports the RDP7 protocol and offers such advanced features as Wyse Collaborative Processing Architecture media redirection and bitmap compression.

At the heart of the Wyse T50 lies the Marvell ARMADA PXA 510 application processor and an ARMv7 CPU running at 1GHz frequency.

The Wyse-enhanced Linux firmware is verified Citrix Ready for Citrix Receiver with HDX, and features certification with VMware View Open Client, and support for Wyse TCX and VDA.

RingCube Announces General Availability Of vDesk v4.0

May 18, 2011 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

RingCube Technologies, provider of personalization solutions for virtual desktops, today announced the general availability of vDesk v 4.0, a new enterprise desktop virtualization solution that expands an organization’s VDI user base, enables faster and more efficient VDI rollouts, reduces VDI infrastructure costs, and increases VDI’s return on investment.

RingCube will publicly unveil vDesk v4.0 at the Citrix Synergy 2011 event in San Francisco next week.

RingCube’s vDesk is a complementary offering to VMware View and Citrix XenDesktop that offers personalized user desktops without adding any additional management overhead. It also supports virtualizing the entire desktop, including department-level and user-installed applications.

By broadening the VDI rollout to a larger percentage of employees, organizations lower the overall cost of their VDI projects and improve user productivity, which results in a higher return on investment. With vDesk v4.0, organizations can now realize the promised productivity and cost-saving benefits from their VMware View and Citrix XenDesktop investments.

vDesk for VMware View and Citrix XenDesktop is generally available today. Pricing starts at $95 per user.

Virtustream Teams Up With VMware To Run SAP Applications On The xStream Enterprise Cloud Platform

May 18, 2011 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

Virtustream, a provider of cloud services and infrastructure solutions, today announced a partnership with VMware to demonstrate the viability and efficiency of running SAP applications in a secure, multi-tenanted enterprise cloud environment.

Through a new program offered by Virtustream, qualified SAP customers can test drive running their SAP applications on Virtustream’s enterprise cloud platform, xStream, with resources optimized by VMware vSphere.