VDI

Ericom Adds VDI support for Parallels Virtuozzo Containers

September 11, 2008 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

After announcing support for Oracle VM last May, Ericom has now added VDI support for with its Parallels Virtuozzo with its PowerTerm WebConnect software solution.

Parallels Virtuozzo Containers is an OS-level server virtualization technology that partitions the underlying operating system into multiple isolated containers, so that many workloads or virtual desktops can be run simultaneously on the same physical box.

Ericom’s PowerTerm WebConnect enables organizations to centrally manage and deploy virtual desktops based on Parallels Virtuozzo Containers from within the datacenter and hosting facilities – reducing the cost and complexity of traditional desktop PC management. As a comprehensive solution for virtualized desktop environments, Ericom’s PowerTerm WebConnect increases security and desktop manageability, enables business continuity implementations, and provides a superior, customizable desktop experience.

For PowerTerm WebConnect licensing, Ericom offers both perpetual licensing for Parallels Virtuozzo Containers on-premise implementations and subscription licensing for Parallels Virtuozzo Containers based hosting environments.

Ericom Software

AppSense Teams Up With Enterprise Systems

August 21, 2008 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

AppSense today announced that it is partnering with Enterprise Systems to extend its VDI (virtual desktop infrastructure) offerings to customers throughout the U.S. Southwest, particularly those in the healthcare market.

AppSense (previous coverage) is the longstanding policy and personalization management leader in the healthcare market, with customers such as Utah Heartland Health, Wellpoint, Banner Health and Catholic Health Initiatives, among others.

While both AppSense and Enterprise Systems share a strong relationship with Citrix, Rob Piwowarczyk, founder and president of Enterprise Systems, says he wanted to establish a partnership that leverages AppSense’s user environment management expertise for VDI and other delivery mechanisms, as well as its extensive experience with healthcare IT organizations.

AppSense recently reported a 50 percent increase in U.S. revenue for the fiscal year ended June 30, 2008 and is aggressively focusing on the U.S. market. AppSense software facilitates enterprise-scale adoption of VDI by enabling organizations to significantly reduce VDI implementation costs and easily personalize standardized virtual desktops. By decoupling both corporate policy and personalization data from the desktop, managing them independently and applying them on-demand, AppSense’s solution lets IT departments use a combination of desktop and application delivery methods, and transparently migrate users from physical to virtual desktops.

vmSight Includes VDI User Activity Control In vmSight 3.5

August 21, 2008 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

vmSight today announced that its recently released vmSight 3.5 product suite now includes a user activity control feature for virtual desktops, in addition to its existing monitoring capabilities. This newly added capability allows virtual desktop administrators to block unauthorized user and application activity on virtual desktops for improved performance or security. The feature is available immediately in the vmSight virtual appliance that directly integrates into an organization’s virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) platform.

vmSight’s patented Connector ID technology facilitates the new activity control functionality in release 3.5. Similar to the caller ID capability prevalent in today’s phone networks, vmSight’s Connector ID enables virtual desktops and thin clients with a user identification and tracking capability. Using this technology, vmSight is the only solution of its kind with the ability to monitor users and prevent unauthorized application activity for performance or security purposes. Administrators can identify the specific virtual desktop and applications accessed by a user at any given time, and can track, control and optimize user activity and performance end-to-end.

As part of the company’s vmSight 3.5 product suite for virtual desktop deployments, user activity control integrates completely with the vmSight Center and Monitoring Stations. User activity is monitored in real-time, and unauthorized user or application activity can be blocked for improved performance or security. Integration with Active Directory and LDAP allows policy definition based on existing user groups. Combined with its other features, such as performance monitoring and service level management, vmSight 3.5 provides a complete virtual desktop management solution to help reduce problems and support costs.

Will Unidesk Bring Anything New to the VDI Table?

August 14, 2008 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

VMBlog is reporting that a new desktop virtualization management startup called Unidesk is about to break out of stealth mode. (note: the Unidesk website is still under construction as some titles and text snippets appear to be missing)

Founded in December of last year, Unidesk raised a total of $8.1 million this year from Matrix Partners and North Bridge Venture Partners. It has a strong management team, and recently opened up a second office in India next to their existing Marlborough offices. Their core offers are named “Composite Virtualization^“ and “Desktop Management 2.0” and they claim it will dramatically simplify desktop management for enterprise IT organizations.

“Building on a core invention called Composite Virtualization™, Unidesk will offer IT organizations the desktop control they’ve been seeking to reduce costs, improve service levels, and tighten security, while, at the same time, give lines of business the desktop freedom they require to maximize knowledge worker innovation and productivity. Unidesk’s family of “Desktop Management 2.0™” solutions will provide the highly efficient image management, application delivery, and personalization capabilities that are currently missing from Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) products from VMware and Citrix, and extend these same capabilities to non-VDI-based laptops and thick desktops so IT can easily support off-network computing. By eliminating the barriers to VDI adoption and enabling all desktops to be virtualized under a common management platform, Unidesk’s game-changing technology will accelerate the multi-billion dollar desktop virtualization market, and deliver significant returns to employees, investors, customers, and business partners.”

There’s not much else we can gather from the website, apart from the fact that the company is planning a free trial version, and that they’re hiring a bunch of people who will get – at least- a free mug (see here).

Unidesk

Symbio Adds Ericom’s Virtualization Solution To Boot Appliance and Boot Stick

August 13, 2008 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

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Symbio Technologies, provider of what they call “green” stateless computing, announced today that it has added Ericom’s PowerTerm WebConnect client to its Symbiont Boot Appliance and Symbiont Boot Stick after signing technology licensing and reseller agreements with Ericom Software.

Ericom’s PowerTerm WebConnect provides secure local and remote access to enterprise mission-critical applications running on a broad range of Microsoft Windows Terminal Servers, Virtual Desktops (VDI), Blade PCs, and legacy hosts. PowerTerm WebConnect is a platform and hypervisor agnostic solution that enables organizations to standardize on one solution for the management and delivery of server-based applications and virtual desktops.

Symbiont Boot Appliance and Symbiont Boot Stick users can deploy Ericom – or any other software loaded on their server. The Symbiont boot products, which are available from Symbio Technologies’ global network of value-added resellers, support virtually any type of computer, using their own operating system to power the hardware and connect users to terminal servers.

Symbio Technologies

Ericom Software

Quest Software Releases Provision Networks Virtual Access Suite 5.10

July 28, 2008 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

Patrick Rouse, Sales Engineer at Quest Software, wrote up a blog post to announce that their Provision Networks division has shipped the new version of the company’s cross-platform VDI connection broker, Virtual Access Suite (VAS) 5.10. The 5.9 version was released to the public in December of 2007, and had one service pack, so all the following features are new to version 5.10:

Web Portal – Web-IT:

Web-IT migrated to ASP.Net 1.1 to ASP.Net 2.0
Web-IT config files migrated from text to XML files to support future automation
Web-IT Integration With Juniper Secure Access
Smart Card login support

Clients:

Ticketing – Secure tickets will be issued per connection request, obviating the need to embed hashed user credentials inside .pit connection files
Enhanced Multi-monitor support
Updated Linux and Java Clients
PXE Boot Linux Client
LiveCD Linux Client
All AppPortal Client settings can be stored in a single configuration file
Java Client fully supported via Secure Gateway

Connection Broker & Management Console:

Support for Microsoft Hyper-V
Support for Virtual Iron 4.3.x
Dynamic Computer Group Auto-expansion – Auto Provisioning of new computers
Server Provisioning
Delete computers that have not been used in a specified number of days
Realtime enumeration of running processes on Managed Computers
Termination of running processes on Managed Computers.
Power Management of ACPI and WoL (Wake on LAN) capable computers and servers
MSI Package Deployment to Computer Groups or Managed Computers and servers
Disable/Enable Computer Groups or Managed Computers during maintenance cycles
Unique Computer names enforced across Desktop Groups and Data Centers
Display Realtime License Usage
Retrieval and display of VM Template Sizes
Wizard Driven Managed Desktop creation
Streamlined Softgrid Integration
Option to bypass proxy settings for Console to Broker communication
Verification of sufficient disk space on target storage when provisioning servers or desktops.

Task Automation for Power Management (multiple recurrence options or single instance):

Power Off
Power On
Reset
Resume – for VMware and Hyper-V
Standby – for ACPI & WoL Devices
Suspend -for VMware and Hyper-V
Wakeup – for ACPI & WoL Devices

Task Automation for Operating System operations (multiple recurrence options or single instance):

Log off user
Reset Session
Restart O/S
Shutdown O/S

Task Automation for Virtual machines (multiple recurrence options or single instance):

Delete VM
Delete VM not accessed in a specified number of days

Task Automation for Miscellaneous Tasks (multiple recurrence options or single instance):

Copy file to computer
Enable/Disable Computer
Initialize Computer
Run Program/Script on Computer

Task Automation for MSI Packages (multiple recurrence options or single instance):

Install MSI Package
Update MSI Package
Uninstall MSI Package

Setup Program:

Wizard-based setup program to automate database creation, upgrade, and management of VMware trust store and Virtual Iron jar libraries
Terminal Servers and Connection Brokers are automatically added to the Provision Farm in the Provision Management Console.

Experience Optimization Pack:

Bi-directional Audio – Microphone Redirection
Local Text Echo – Latency Masking for typing over latent networks
Multi-media Redirection – seamlessly redirects multi-media content to the client CODEC for local playback. – This will be released as a separate 5.10 update, as it has not been released from QA yet.