News

Devon IT has announced early traction with the general availability of the VDI Blaster software suite designed to extend the useful life of desktop computers.

Over 200 companies from around the world are said to have purchased and downloaded the VDI Blaster software suite, and are utilizing the novel approach to extending the useful life of PCs by transforming them into thin clients to save money, save management time and cut costs. Users download VDI Blaster to old PCs via a USB key or a network install. VDI Blaster deploys Devon IT’s thin client operating system, Devon Terminal Operating System (DeTOS), and Devon IT’s thin client management software, ThinManage, to help IT administrators manage enterprise-wide deployments from a central location. Once VDI Blaster is deployed, users can select to boot into their normal Windows operating system or into DeTOS.

VDI Blaster:

• Extends the useful life of aging PCs
• Uses virtual desktops, simply and cost effectively with no hardware replacement necessary
• Maintains Windows desktop experience
• Centrally manages converted PCs
• Allows Plug and play replacement of PC to a thin client when ready
• Converts back to Windows operating system as needed

Devon IT is working with customers and business partners such as IBM and VMware to make VDI Blaster available to IT administrators and executives worldwide.

VDI Blaster is currently available for an introductory price of USD $19.95 per device right here.

ScaleMP, a provider of virtualization solutions for high-end computing, today announced the appointment of Benjamin Baer as vice president of marketing.

A veteran marketing executive with more than 18 years of experience at both startup and Fortune 500 companies, Baer will be responsible for all aspects of marketing at ScaleMP, and brings extensive experience in the development and execution of programs for worldwide field, branding and demand generation.

Most recently, Baer was an independent marketing consultant for a number of high profile vendors in the cloud computing space. Prior to this role, Baer was the vice president of marketing for desktop virtualization startup Pano Logic. Previously, Baer held the position of senior director of OEM marketing at VMware and spent seven years at Sun Microsystems in a variety of roles including director of marketing for the Partner Operating System marketing group. During his tenure at Sun, Baer worked in a number of different business units including Enterprise Servers (ESPG), Netra telco solutions and Sun’s Volume Systems Products (VSP) group. Before Sun, he worked in a variety of marketing, operations and business development roles at Silicon Graphics, The Market Relations Group (A Regis McKenna Company) and independent PR agency, PRx, Inc. Baer holds a bachelor of arts in international relations from the University of California, Berkeley.

CRYPTOCard, a developer of two-factor authentication (2FA) technology, today announced that virtualisation and cloud computing specialist, Intercept, is the latest company to adopt its managed authentication service CRYPTO-MAS.

Bundling CRYPTO-MAS into its portfolio of virtual application and network services, Intercept is able to deliver added value and security to its customers’ IT infrastructures.

Intercept will be working closely with CRYPTOCard to educate customers on the benefits of access security when building virtual networks to support flexible working based around Citrix and Microsoft environments.

CRYPTO-MAS is a managed service which provides a flexible, affordable solution using two-factor authentication technology to positively identify individuals before giving them access to applications, data and networks. CRYPTO-MAS simply sits in front of a company’s access network – no hardware or software installation is required. High levels of security can be provided in a matter of minutes.

mindSHIFT Technologies, an industry leader in delivering managed IT services to businesses, today launched NextDesktop, an online service that provides small and mid-sized businesses (SMBs) with the first affordable hosted Windows desktop solution.

With prices starting at $39.99 per user per month — vs. more than $100 per user per month for competing hosted desktop solutions — NextDesktop extends mindSHIFT’s managed desktop line to provide a basic Windows desktop to budget-conscious organizations that don’t require the comprehensive 24-hour hardware, server, network, Help Desk and file restoration support of mindSHIFT’s fully-managed desktop solutions.

The NextDesktop hosted service provides an affordable option for budget-conscious organizations, especially:

• Start-ups
• SMBs needing to replace out-of-warranty PCs and laptops
• SMBs adding new employees or new offices
• SMBs with employees who do not use graphics or multimedia-intensive applications

Compared to traditional PCs and other hosted desktops, NextDesktop offers a more cost-effective and worry-free alternative to effectively address SMB IT needs:

1. Lower operational and capital expenditure costs, with the lowest price in the market and the ability to either utilize existing hardware or purchase less expensive thin client devices.
2. Reduced IT burden, eliminating the need to upgrade PCs and offloading administrative IT tasks, such as security, data backup, anti-virus and other patches, Help Desk services and software upgrades.
3. Better security, with real-time anti-virus and anti-spyware updates, ongoing Microsoft patches, and storage and backup of all of a business’s Windows desktop data, documents and applications inNextDesktop’s secure data center.

Because the data and applications are stored, or “hosted” in the secure data center, employees can access their desktop data and applications from any location using any PC, laptop, thin client or smartphone – as long as they have an Internet connection on their device.

In addition, NextDesktop offers online provisioning, based on mindSHIFT’s proprietary technology, allowing businesses to add and remove users within seconds, compared with hours or days required with other approaches. Furthermore, mindSHIFT uses Internap’s® Performance IP™ technology to provide stable, predictable Internet performance, which enhances employee productivity by preventing the lag time, or latency, which is typical of other hosted solutions. With this technology, emails and other data are routed via the fastest network based on a proactive, real-time analysis of Internet traffic and bottlenecks.

mindSHIFT manages nearly 80,000 mailboxes and 20,000 desktops for professional workers in small and mid-sized organizations. A team of 385 employees provides IT support and IT services to more than 10,000 organizations in more than 100 countries.

For $39.99 per user per month, NextDesktop includes the following features:

• Access to office desktop from everywhere, all the time
• Choice of Office applications for productivity options:
  • OpenOffice: Writer, Calc, Impress, Draw, and Base
  • Microsoft Office 2007: Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook (an additional $9.99/seat/month)
• Data and applications, including Windows, running in mindSHIFT’s 24x7x365 Tier 4 data center
• Effective management of lag time with Internap Performance IP to decrease latency
• Instant Office feature – Web-based control panel for immediate setup of new users and services by authorized administrative user
• PDF creator and Adobe Reader
• 1 GB of disk space for each user to store documents
• Daily backup of all data
• Real-time anti-virus and anti-spyware updates from Trend Micro
• Live U.S.-based Help Desk via telephone and email
• Timely, transparent software patches and updates
• Month-to-month contract

Available upgrades include Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 email; BlackBerry, iPhone and other smartphone synchronization to Outlook email, calendar and tasks; email archiving; SharePoint; and Microsoft Dynamics CRM.