virtual desktops

Desktone Partners With VMware To Deliver Desktop-as-a-Service Offering

October 17, 2011 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

Desktone, provider of Desktops-as-a-Service (DaaS), today announced it is partnering with VMware to deliver a new desktop-as-a-service solution.

The solution will make it easy for service providers to offer full-featured, highly cost-effective virtual desktops.

The joint VMware-Desktone roadmap includes:

– Desktone DaaS Platform: Launched more than four years ago for delivering cloud-hosted DaaS. Features such as multi-tenancy, grid architecture, role separation, and cloud economics achieved through substantial use of open source, are what make the Desktone offering attractive.

– VMware View 5 with PCoIP display protocol: Enables service providers to enhance their Desktone-powered DaaS solutions by providing an end-user experience that is comparable to that available with a physical PC.

– VMware vSphere 5 and cloud infrastructure suite: Enables service providers to leverage the industry’s leading cloud infrastructure platform providing security, reliability, high availability, reduced cost and optimal performance for cloud-hosted desktops.

– VMware vCloud technology: Enables service providers to take advantage of common orchestration and automation by integrating the Desktone Platform directly with a hypervisor.

The VMware View-based DaaS offering will be available to service providers later this year.

Cisco, Citrix Join Forces To Deliver Rich Media-Enabled Virtual Desktops

October 17, 2011 by Robin Wauters 1 Comment

Cisco and Citrix Systems have announced that they have entered into a strategic alliance to develop and deliver solutions that help customers simplify and accelerate large-scale desktop virtualization deployments.

Through this alliance, Cisco and Citrix will drive innovations that simplify the deployment of high-definition virtual desktops and applications and improve end-user experiences over a Citrix HDX-enabled Cisco network.

The companies will also continue to enhance and build upon their data center solutions and cloud technologies to help accelerate deployment of cloud services.

In addition, the two companies will invest in joint go-to-market activities that will focus on driving primary product and services demand in high growth market areas such as desktop virtualization and cloud markets.

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.

Former Vizioncore CEO David Bieneman Is Back With A New Startup

May 20, 2009 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

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.

Vucci Emerges As Virtual Utility Computing Services Company

February 6, 2009 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

Utah-based Vucci Technology Solutions is working to change the way businesses interact with IT. Offering virtual utility computing services, managed service applications and virtual desktops, Vucci takes the traditionally cost-inefficient sector of IT and turns it into a profit center.

Vucci is an IT solutions provider that offers innovative technology services for enterprise-level businesses, healthcare, education and government. Vucci’s solutions allow businesses to consolidate, virtualize, and assess IT needs in a more cost effective way turning IT into a profit center for stronger return on investment (ROI).

With a strong list of clients that include The Generations Network, J.P. Morgan, University Health Care and Utah Valley University (UVU), Vucci leverages its IT expertise to enterprise-level businesses by providing virtualization technology designed to simplify IT.

Vucci services include:

Virtualization
Architecture Design & Implementation
Data Center Transformation
Capacity Planning & Server Consolidation
Business Continuity & Availability

Vucci provides the experience and the proven expertise to train its customers on how to be more efficient with consolidated information technology resources to drive overall productivity and increase revenue and agility within an organization.

NComputing Wins Massive Contract in India

October 13, 2008 by Robin Wauters 1 Comment

NComputing, provider of low-cost computing solutions, today announced that it was chosen to supply a massive 5,000-school educational computing initiative in the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh, per VentureBeat. The initiative will provide computing access to 1.8 million children throughout the state. The win marks the largest single deployment of NComputing’s solution in India.

By leveraging NComputing, the government expects to save $20 million in up-front and ongoing costs. The government will also use 90% less electricity compared to a traditional all-PC solution.

The NComputing solution is based on a simple fact: today’s PCs are so powerful that the vast majority of applications only use a small fraction of the computer’s capacity. NComputing technology creates multiple virtual desktops on a single PC so that many users can tap the unused capacity and share it as if each person had their own computer. Andhra Pradesh chose the NComputing X300 solution, which enables up to seven users to simultaneously share one PC.

The computing labs will be used to teach computer skills and office productivity (spreadsheets, word processing) as well as subjects like reading and math. The entire system will run on the Microsoft Windows Server operating system and use Microsoft Office Suite.

The project is based on an innovative outsourcing model. The Andhra Pradesh government will outsource the entire project for five years to leading educational IT companies, including Educomp, Everonn, NIIT, and Social Computers. The model is referred to as Build, Operate, and Transfer (BOT) and requires the companies to install, staff, and manage the labs. This arrangement helps ensure that the labs are installed quickly and performance benchmarks are met. The five-year period also enables school staff to develop their own competencies in managing the labs and computer-aided teaching.

NComputing’s technology is used by 20,000 organizations in more than 90 countries. In the United States, NComputing has been deployed by over 4,000 school districts in classrooms, computer labs, and libraries. Although smaller in scale than Andhra Pradesh, school districts in North America face many of the same challenges including tight budgets, demand for wider computing access, limited IT support staff, and a desire to use “green” technology.

NComputing