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Propalms Plots A New Virtual Desktop Solution

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Propalms has announced some details of its current development project which is due to be completed in Q3 of 2009.

Building on years of delivering applications in the Terminal Services arena, Propalms are due to release a new product to the market, Propalms VDI. Propalms VDI is a highly scalable Virtual Desktop solution capable of provisioning, managing, and brokering connections to virtual and physical machines running various client operating systems.

“With our Terminal Services and VDI solutions we feel that we are ideally placed to offer customers the right solution for their application delivery requirements, and we see the VDI market an ideal growth area for Propalms.” Stated Owen Dukes CEO, Propalms Inc.

Liquidware Labs Introduces Stratusphere 4.2

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Liquidware Labs recently announced the availability of Stratusphere 4.2, a software solution delivering focused visibility into network, user, application, and desktop activity dramatically reducing the technical and financial risks associated with migrating to VDI.

Adding Stratusphere to your environment provides physical and virtual desktop visibility, much like Layer 7 deep packet inspection, without the overhead, cost and complexity – while being easily deployed as an open format virtual appliance. The solution is compatible with all leading VDI platforms including those from VMware, Citrix and Microsoft.

Stratusphere and Connector ID deliver network, user and, application visibility inside desktops, networks, and storage systems. Patented technology automatically inventories and tracks network connections, users, applications and devices, gathering critical metrics for assessment and diagnostics. Fingerprints placed into the header of each TCP/IP packet allow measurement of the network and application response times associated with each user and desktop for deep visibility, including RDP, ICA, PCoIP and other VDI streaming protocols. Within minutes Stratusphere’s patented process, combined with service level policies, delivers real-time visibility in a virtual desktop and datacenter environment and begins to deliver user experience focused metrics for physical machines, virtual machines and related infrastructure and endpoints.

The key features of Stratusphere include:

  • VDI and Physical Machine, Network, Infrastructure, and Application Assessments – move swiftly from proof of concept to production – while ensuring end user experience
  • User Tracking and Problem Solving – once virtualized identify users experiencing or contributing to unexplained systems slow down
  • Virtual Application Compatibility – assess application activity and profile application resource footprint
  • Support Physical Desktops and Servers – provides application and user visibility and detailed configuration information from the desktop to the SAN
  • ART/NRT Interdependency Maps – gain visibility into application response times (ART) and network response times (NRT), application network traffic, Resources Provisioned vs. Resources Consumed – visibility to fine tune your TCO and ROI
  • Proactive Trending and Capacity Planning – allowing projects to be successfully extended to scale
  • VDI FIT and VDI UX (User Experience) Ratings – identify which users should be considered for VDI and ensure a consistent and acceptable desktop SLA

Stratusphere is available now from a select group of virtualization partners and is priced at $49 per user. A desktop enterprise licensing agreement is available.

Industry Moves: IT Veteran Don Bules Appointed CEO At Unidesk

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Virtual desktop management software maker Unidesk today announced that Don Bulens has joined the company as President and CEO.

Bulens is known for building and scaling IT infrastructure companies, as demonstrated most recently at EqualLogic, where he led the company to success in the networked data storage market and its $1.4 billion acquisition by Dell, and, earlier, at Lotus, where his channel development leadership was instrumental in the success of Lotus Notes. Bulens’ expertise in guiding companies and bringing transformational products to the global market is ideally suited for Unidesk as it begins to build its leadership position in the desktop virtualization and PC life cycle management software categories.

Bulens fortifies an executive team that has an impressive track record of delivering innovative IT infrastructure management solutions. His appointment enables Unidesk Founder Chris Midgley, who had been the company’s acting CEO, to focus full-time on his CTO role leading the company’s technical strategy and product vision. Bulens has also joined Midgley on Unidesk’s Board of Directors.

Bulens was most recently President and CEO of EqualLogic, provider of networked data storage systems that simplify how IT organizations store and protect information. Under his leadership, EqualLogic achieved stellar growth, doubling revenue each year and achieving the second largest market share in the fastest growing segment of the storage industry. In November 2007, while in the final stages of filing for an IPO, EqualLogic was acquired by Dell.

Bulens arrived at EqualLogic with extensive experience in early-stage and industry-leading companies. He was CEO of Trellix, a leading provider of web site publishing tools, through its sale to Interland, the largest provider of web hosting for small businesses. Earlier, at Lotus, Bulens led the creation of the channel and developer community that contributed to the extraordinary market growth of Lotus Notes.

Former Vizioncore CEO David Bieneman Is Back With A New Startup

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Founder and former CEO of Vizioncore, David Bieneman, is back after selling the company he started to Quest Software in January 2008. According to his LinkedIn profile, he’s now the CEO of a startup called Liquidware Labs.

Alessandro guesses the company will be doing something in the desktop virtualization sphere:

The company tagline, The Art & Science of the Desktop, and the Roher profile on LinkedIn unveil that Liquidware Labs will be active in the VDI space, will address the PSO organizations, and that will leverage the technology of vmSight, recently acquired while in stealth mode for an undisclosed sum.

vmSight is a startup that offers a solution to track how the users work on the virtual desktops, through the analysis of their network activity. Think about it as a network sniffer that re-assembles the snooped packets to understand the history and the performance of a VDI session and make it easier to troubleshoot.

What Liquidware Labs will do with this technology which is covered by 13 patents?

Time will tell.

ICC Global Hosting Joins VMware Service Provider Program

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ICC Global Hosting today announced its membership in the VMware Service Provider Program (VSPP) to extend its relationship with VMware in delivering hosted virtual desktops in the Cloud.

As both a VSPP and VMware VIP Partner Program member, ICC Global Hosting augments its relationship with VMware and supports the VMware vCloud and VMware vClient Initiatives with ICC Global Hosting’s desktop-as-a-service offering.

ICC Global Hosting’s proven methodology teamed with VMware’s leadership in desktop virtualization delivers a robust virtual desktop as a service that reduces cost and management associated with desktop support.  These hosted desktops help assure a consistent end user experience with the most current software and patches while increasing the client’s data security.  Desktops as a service allows customers to move their desktop expense from a CapEx to OpEx expenditure which more accurately reflects desktop support as an expense.

“VMware is helping our service provider partners build the eco-structure to host customers in the Cloud by leveraging our industry-leading virtualization platform,” said Geoffrey Waters, director, VMware Service Provider Program, VMware. “For those enterprises considering desktop virtualization, ICC Global Hosting can provide all the benefits of virtual desktops combined with the benefits of cloud computing.”

Unidesk Files Patent On Composite Virtualization Desktop Management Technology

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Unidesk earlier this week announced the filing of a patent application with the US Patent and Trademark Office on its technology for simplifying the management of hosted virtual desktops and virtualized notebooks and PCs in corporate computing environments.

Unidesk Composite Virtualization technology, the centerpiece of the company’s first patent for a “Managed Desktop System,” will dramatically reduce the operational costs of desktop management and support for enterprise IT organizations, while providing unprecedented customization, personalization, and mobility benefits for desktop users.

Unidesk’s patent application consists of 42 distinct claims that describe the company’s unique ability to disaggregate desktops into separately manageable containers. With Unidesk Composite Virtualization technology, IT can provision, patch, package, version, and rollback operating system images such as Microsoft Windows; IT-delivered applications; and, user-installed applications and data independent of each other. By dynamically synthesizing these containers into completely personal desktops whenever users demand, Unidesk’s patent-pending technology will greatly simplify the management of hosted virtual desktop solutions such as Citrix XenDesktop and VMware View, as well as PCs and notebooks virtualized with Type 1 and Type 2 client hypervisors, while satisfying even the most demanding desktop use cases.

Additional information on how Unidesk will reduce the cost of desktop operations, maximize worker productivity, improve edge security, increase data availability, and facilitate compliance will be available when the company launches its first product based on Composite Virtualization later this year.