DaaS

Release: MokaFive Suite 2.0

June 22, 2009 by Robin Wauters 2 Comments

MokaFive today announced the 2.0 version of its desktop virtualization technology in the form of MokaFive Suite, a Desktop-as-a-Service platform for the enterprise. MokaFive Suite extends the company’s existing cross-platform, self-healing hosted desktop service, giving organizations of any size the ability to host a secure desktop management solution within their premises.

MokaFive’s robust management capabilities make it easy for IT administrators to centrally create, deliver, secure and update a fully contained virtual desktop, called LivePC, to thousands of users. LivePC images run locally, so end users simply download their secure virtual desktop via a Web link, and run it on any computer (Macintosh, Linux or Windows). IT administrators apply updates and patches to the single golden image and MokaFive automatically distributes the differentials to each LivePC.

MokaFive Suite integrates with existing enterprise infrastructure such as Active Directory and software distribution for rapid set up and maximum leverage of current investments. Enterprise companies using MokaFive Suite experience a significantly lower total cost of ownership due to a small datacenter footprint, quick deployment, and simplified management.

Unlike any other desktop virtualization solution, MokaFive enables end users to customize their virtual corporate desktop with personalized data, settings and even applications. MokaFive’s proprietary layered management approach allows IT administrators to create, deliver, patch and update the corporate OS and applications while persisting the user specific customizations. This approach enables IT to define a single image that can be customized for groups and further personalized by individual users, providing all the benefits of central management with the power of mass customization.

MokaFive Suite provides a rich set of capabilities and policy controls, which allow IT administrators to define levels of lockdown based on targeted groups. Organizations are able to protect corporate assets and ensure compliance against regulatory and corporate guidelines, irrespective of where the user is accessing the corporate data from home, work or on the go. In addition to reducing the risk of non-compliance and data breaches, MokaFive can keep business running with instantaneous deployment of corporate environments in the case of a disaster.

Desktop management costs are reduced thanks to a unique self-healing feature that provides users with the ability to recover from failures by simply restarting their LivePC. This reverts the corporate operating system and applications to their original pristine state while persisting user applications, settings and data.

Desktone Virtual-D Platform for DaaS Gets An Upgrade

May 27, 2009 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

Desktone today announced significant new capabilities for its Desktone Virtual-D Platform. The enhancements enable service providers to more easily and cost-effectively scale their Desktone-powered desktops as a service (DaaS) offerings, while helping end-customers quickly benefit from virtual desktops.

Desktone’s Virtual-D Platform enables organizations to quickly realize the cost and flexibility benefits of virtual desktop computing without upfront CAPEX investments. Uniquely designed along two tiers (service provider and enterprise), it lets enterprises keep their data secure within their own network, and maintain ownership and control over their Windows OS images, applications and all relating licensing, while outsourcing the physical data center infrastructure powering their virtual desktops to service providers.

The new Virtual-D Platform capabilities enable Desktone partners to efficiently scale and operate their services at attractive price points. They include:

Multi-tenancy: Exposes all the previously-existing, rich multi-tenancy capabilities of the underlying platform, making it easier to create, manage and monitor multiple customers on the same shared infrastructure. It is designed to support tenant isolation across hosted and on-premises infrastructure, including environments with stringent security requirements.
Multi-data center: Enables service providers to leverage their global data center footprint to support widely distributed enterprise environments and deliver high availability/disaster recovery offerings. Enterprises benefit from improved user experiences over internally implemented VDI, since virtual desktops can be closer to users, and from reliable, continuous service.
Virtual-D Service Center: A single management web console for service operators to create, manage and monitor many customers on common network, storage, and virtualization infrastructure.
Improved hosting economics: Giving service providers the ability to choose the virtual desktop building block technologies best suited to their business is a fundamental tenet of the Desktone platform. Service providers now have the option to use a VMware ESX or ESXi environment, with or without Virtual Center, to lower their operational costs.

Enterprise customers can take advantage of the following enhancements to the Virtual-D Platform:

Rapid service on-boarding: Enterprise administrators can easily upload virtual desktop images to their service provider’s infrastructure to accelerate DaaS implementations and time-to-value.
Global language support: Multi-national organizations can more easily leverage the Desktone Virtual-D Portal—a self-service, browser-based tool that allows end-users to access and manage their hosted virtual desktops. The portal now includes support for twelve languages.
Delegated Administration: Roles and permissions can be assigned at different levels to desktop administration, helpdesk and management staff, and—at the end-customer’s sole discretion—back to the service provider. All desktop management and desktop access remains under the end-customer’s user authentication authority (e.g., Active Directory).

Desktone-powered DaaS solutions are available through select Desktone service provider partners.

MokaFive Releases Virtual Desktop Solution

May 20, 2008 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

MokaFive, a desktop virtualization company, has announced the general release of v.10 of its Virtual Desktop Solution, a cross-platform desktop-as-a-service (DaaS) product.

The company says its DaaS solution is already deployed in nearly 50 pilot programs and has been downloaded over 80,000 times. The virtual desktops, known as LivePCs, run on Windows, Macintosh, and MokaFive’s BareMetal Linux operating systems.

“The arrival of virtualization on the desktop will change the way desktops have been managed and promises greater flexibility for the user,” said Bill Demas, president and CEO, MokaFive. “We believe our MokaFive Virtual Desktop Solution is the first to bridge the chasm between what IT administrators need—centralized management—and what users want—freedom in their computing environment. By offering our virtual desktops as a service, MokaFive is making it easier for companies to get up and running quickly.”

MokaFive Virtual Desktop Solution is available in two versions. MokaFive Professional is for enterprise and workgroup deployments and will be sold via annual subscription. MokaFive Express, designed for home users and developers, is available as a free download. A library of LivePCs, created by MokaFive and the user community, is available at the MokaFive lab.

Also check out the GigaOM interview with MokaFive founder John Waley.

[Source: Dana Gardner ZDNet]

Desktone Introduces “Desktop Virtualization As A Service”

April 21, 2008 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

Desktone today announced the Desktone Virtual-D Platform, designed to enable service providers to offer hosted, subscription-based virtual desktops.

From the press release:

Desktone’s solution helps enterprises quickly realize the full benefits of centralized virtual desktops without having to build and deploy the infrastructure internally. It dramatically reduces desktop TCO, transforming computing costs from fixed CAPEX to variable OPEX. Service providers benefit from optimizing use of their data center assets while delivering a new highly scalable, value-added service to customers.

The Virtual-D Platform aims to simplify large-scale virtual desktop provisioning and management, enable greater protection of corporate desktop assets, and deliver more consistent and reliable desktop service levels – all while reducing desktop total cost of ownership by $300-$800/desktop/year.

Desktone’s DaaS model consists of two distinct tiers: enterprise and service provider. The Virtual-D Platform integrates all VDI functionality while separating the enterprise and service provider tiers. This allows enterprises to manage a virtual desktop environment supported by physical resources owned and maintained by a third-party, and that reside either at the enterprise or at a service provider.

The Virtual-D Platform is already available as part of a hosted service through authorized Desktone partners. Enterprises can click here for more information. Service Providers who are interested in delivering Desktone-enabled DaaS can click here.

[Source: InformationWeek]

MokaFive Moves Virtualization Solution From Desktop To Cloud

April 7, 2008 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

MokaFive, a 3-year-old company from Redwood City who previously went by the name moka5, is realigning its market strategy from desktop virtualization provider for consumers to desktop-as-a-service (DaaS) innovation Virtual Desktop Solution provider for SMBs.

In essence, this solution is a console to centralize the management of multiple LivePCs (their consumer product), which contain an entire desktop operating system and application stack. Available today as a preview, the MokaFive solution thus leverages the power of cloud computing to deliver centrally managed, locally run virtual desktops as a service. General availability is scheduled for Q2 2008.

From the press release:

Underpinning the MokaFive Virtual Desktop Solution is the company’s LivePC format, which contains an entire desktop operating system and application stack. Inspired by Sun Microsystems’ SunRay architecture, LivePCs allow users to pause and resume their computing state on different PCs by carrying a USB flash drive. LivePCs are virtual machines running directly on users’ desktops—there is no need for a data center. They can be run online or offline, boot quickly on a PC, fit easily and securely on a USB flash drive and update automatically over a network or the Internet. LivePCs are managed centrally and can be executed locally on any compatible x86 machine, giving users the flexibility and performance of a PC.

“The LivePC format represents the next-generation of desktop computing, easily leapfrogging today’s virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) solutions that require users to remotely connect to virtual machines hosted in data centers,” said Dr. Monica Lam, Professor of Computer Science at Stanford University and Co-founder and Chief Scientist of MokaFive. “Unlike VDI solutions, which require a server for each handful of users, LivePCs deliver dynamically updated, or ‘live,’ images that can be used by thousands of users with a single server.”

[Source: Dana Gardner]