Virtualization has been a boon for multiuser systems, letting them run the Windows operating system and applications on servers. Each user’s state is saved as a virtual desktop that can be remotely accessed from PCs, laptops, netbooks, tablets, smartphones and even dumb “thin clients” (terminals costing as little as $200). The downside is that remote users of server-hosted virtualization need to be online to take advantage of the virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI)—a show-stopper for highly […]
virtualization
82 posts
People are only just starting to understand new technological trends such as virtualization and cloud computing, when along comes a phenomenon called “Big Data.” That trend doesn’t really focus on burgeoning content or data encouraged by all those cloud activities. Big Data is all about tools and processes that allow organizations to manage and analyze very large data sets that yield insights from which the business may profit. According to storage provider and cloud solution […]
Virtualization makes it possible to bring corporate desktops and applications to any mobile device that suits an employee’s fancy. This flies in the face of vendors that are positioning their tablet PCs as more “enterprise ready” than Apple’s iPad, the predominant device in desktop virtualization deployments. HP, RIM and Cisco vociferously insist that their tablets are more than just iPad clones and come with much stronger security and management capabilities. Which is understandable since these […]
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 […]
A quick look at the trends facing most CIOs should send anyone with a large IT budget into a state of worry. In every dimension, CIOs are facing an increased pace of change at the same time they are losing control over the computing environment. The number of assets they must manage is exploding. Consumerization, virtualization, cloud computing, software as a service, mobility are all increasing the complexity of the job of managing IT by […]
One of the topics most associated with cloud computing is its cost advantages, or lack thereof. One way the topic gets discussed is “capex vs. opex,” a simple formulation, but one fraught with meaning. At its simplest, capex vs. opex is how compute resource is paid for by the consumer of those resources. For example, if one uses Amazon Web Services, payment is made on a highly granular level for the use of the resources […]
Have you found yourself wondering what’s wrong with all of the marketing mavens out there in virtualization land? It seems that everything is virtualization and nothing is virtualization. Over the years, I’ve developed a tool or a model that has helped my clients better understand all of the layers of virtualization technology so that they could sort out what would be useful and what doesn’t fit in their world (or their network for that matter). […]
Flash memory is much faster than hard disks, but too expensive for most enterprises to place onboard servers. Startup FlashSoft on Tuesday announced software that aims to solve this problem by caching data in flash memory onboard servers, a technique that it claims can dramatically boost the performance of storage networks at little additional cost. The company is also launching itself, announcing a $3 million funding round and plans for future expansion. “We give you […]
Unified communications is entering its own hype cycle, like that of cloud computing, virtualization, and color TV before it, as vendors tout their “me-too” solutions in a familiar history repeating itself pattern. UC brings together such capabilities as voice, videoconferencing, instant messaging, email, document sharing, and more into one user interface so employees of one company, their partners, and even customers can collaborate with each other across the corporate campus or across oceans. A recently […]
Desktop virtualisation presents many technical choices but they could turn out to be the easy bit. Licensing the software is where it all gets difficult, especially when the software is Microsoft Windows. The problem is that Windows licensing is based on the assumption that you install software on hardware, but virtualisation abstracts the hardware away. “Microsoft does not sell a user licence for clients accessing or running Windows. Customers often want to license Windows based […]