If potential cost savings are driving your desktop virtualization decision, beware the ROI killer: Over-provisioning. Over-provisioning is a nice way of saying you’re throwing money away. That could happen in a variety of forms, such as buying infrastructure that it better suited for a much larger company, planning for growth that doesn’t happen, or not doing your homework on what other technology you’ll need to support virtualization. But fear of wasteful spending shouldn’t stop you […]
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H&R Block’s virtualization project is putting thin clients in the tax preparer’s thousands of retail stores in an effort to simplify its operating environment and cut expenses. The change should also help it to better compete with chains such as Jackson Hewitt, as well as with independent tax preparers and software-only rivals such as TurboTax and Intuit (INTU). “Typical of any mature company, the competitive landscape is tough. You’re continually looking at ways to optimize,” […]
If two technology trends were ever made for each other, at least in vendor marketing materials and generically simple diagrams of IT infrastructure, they are the consumerization of IT and desktop virtualization. Analysts who study desktop virtualization say many of its use cases fit neatly into problem areas that their client companies face, such as the consumerization of IT. End users who insist on using non-standard or unapproved computing devices, such as tablets and iOS […]
Apple Inc yesterday announced the coming of its cloud based platform, aptly dubbed iCloud. According to news reports, the web service will synchronise and coordinate shared content across all devices – a key element being its ability to stream music; in other words an all-new iTunes. Following its hotly anticipated autumn launch, iCloud has the potential to revolutionise how music is acquired and distributed, offering a service to rival that of Google, Amazon, and Spotify […]
The last 24 months have brought an explosion of new devices, Web applications and social-media platforms. Chief information officers (CIOs) are under pressure from other employees, including senior executives, to open corporate networks to consumer devices and allow access to more of the Web. This migration of consumer devices like smart phones and tablets into enterprise computing is making CIOs very nervous. The risks to data security are obvious and real, and the loss of […]
In organizations’ mad rush to virtualize their IT infrastructure, some are running into unforeseen obstacles that cause them to put the brakes on virtualization deployments, sometimes indefinitely. This phenomenon, known as “virtualization stall,” has more to do with psychology than technology, but it could potentially erode confidence in virtualization and slow growth of cloud computing. According to solution providers, virtualization stall has several root causes: Some companies are unwilling or afraid to virtualize their tier […]
If you came here for the article with the title, “Is the Cloud Really Just the Return of Mainframe Computing?’, unfortunately, it has been removed at the request of the publisher of the website from which it was obtained. Asking me to remove it was within their rights, but I believe it was a shortsighted decision based on old media ideas about the copyright “protection” of assets and the imagined potential loss of ad revenue. […]
Despite years of marketing pressure and products that are simpler to use and more widely available, desktop virtualization hasn’t taken off to the extent that vendors and analysts expected even a few years ago. The bring-your-own-device movement among end users, on the other hand, has lit a fire under the market for mobile device virtualization. A survey released last month by telecommunications giant Mitel showed 90 percent of respondents expected virtualization to become more important […]
Cloud computing,” the hot new engine of the global IT industry, is revving up the Dallas technology community. Market research firm Gartner anticipates that globally, cloud services will generate $148.7 billion in revenue by 2014, with U.S. companies grabbing a 50 percent share of that success. That’s more than double the $68.3 billion that’s projected for 2010. Enterprises hungry for flexible computing options and lower upfront information-technology costs are expected to flock to three growing […]
The dominant desktop paradigm will finally wither and a thousand new personal computing models will bloom. Everyone knows the Windows desktop monolith is breaking into pieces. Yes, Microsoft is still making money, mainly from the big rollover to Windows 7 — but where does Redmond go from here? And which alternatives are truly viable? This is the year when we’ll start to find out. New, overlapping client computing paradigms are popping up all over the […]