Sun Microsystems has announced new software to provide a more secure and manageable virtual desktop environment. Sun Virtual Desktop Infrastructure Software 1.0, installed on the Solaris OS, helps enable organizations to move applications and operating systems off personal computers, consolidate them in the datacenter, and present them to end users on a wide array of devices through high-performance display protocols.
Sun VDI Software offers a highly-secure platform for accessing virtualized Microsoft Windows desktop environments from a wide variety of client devices. When Sun VDI Software is coupled with VMware Infrastructure software, desktops can be consolidated onto servers in the datacenter, with each user enjoying a dedicated virtual machine that is isolated from other users and customized to individual needs.
Utilizing Sun Fire x64 systems and VMware ESX Server, multiple desktop environments can be hosted on a single server, to allow users to access their desktop environments from traditional clients such as Windows and Mac OS X computers, as well as thin clients. Each virtual desktop functions as though it were running directly on the user's computer, but critical data is kept in the datacenter where it can be more easily managed by IT and is less susceptible to loss or theft. Sun VDI software helps enable IT managers to set up new users, workgroups, or departments in minutes, controlling and managing desktops and updates centrally, reducing costs normally associated with a traditional distributed desktop model. Through this approach, users can seamlessly shift a desktop session between any supported device.
Planned for availability in early 2008 as a component of Sun Virtual Desktop Solutions, the initial release of this VDI connector will support VMware Infrastructure deployments, with future versions planned to support other popular virtualization solutions. Sun VDI Software will be available in October 2007, priced at $149 per user, and will support Solaris and Linux.
The virtual desktop is bound to accelerate in popularity as more organizations move to a point where they have to make a decision about migration to the Windows Vista environment. While this decision may be in the offing, the window for making significant technology decisions has a way of accelerating. There also appears to be a subtle, yet clear, movement of leading edge technology users to Mac laptops and over time the population of Macs at high-tech and security-sensitive companies in particular is likely to increase.
Globalization trends and concerns about proprietary applications are additional factors inducing organizations to centralize their applications off local PCs. We believe that Sun is correctly reading the technology work pattern tealeaves and that fortune for this class of infrastructure is bright.
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9th October 2007: 'Alan Runfeldt' said:
I think that Mr. Dietz has hit the nail squarely on the head. As Mac integrates more Unix features into its OS and Microsoft repeatedly shoots itself in the foot with more resource-intensive and downright unreliable and readily hackable and generally troublesome versions of Windows, while Unix (specifically Linux) support grows universally, Sun's Solaris OR Linux-based 'thin client' approach is a concept whose time has come (again).
This is not a new concept, but the timing is the thing. It was a good idea ten years ago, but that was when Microsoft's promises were trusted. Repeated failures and escalating costs (not to mention the bad press of their legal battles) have eroded that trust internationally. European governments shun Microsoft. Now the international and domestic corporate markets are ready to listen.
While the per-work-station cost of maintaining PC's has grown, the efficiency of the network has grown as well. Bluetooth and other wireless technologies make integration of everything from the work station to the PDA to the cell phone not only practical, but increasingly more efficient and totally user-friendly.
"Walk in, log on and go to work."
With the integration of Java, Javascript and Flex/Flash technologies into the common web browser, that 'browser' is no longer simply a means of interpreting html-encoded pages. It IS the workspace.
Supporting one 'desktop' application - the 'browser', eliminates 90% of the IT support requirements of the current PC-based Windows network environment.
The hardware cost savings alone make this appealing to the corporate IT analyst. When you centralize the applications software *source* to a network server, yet let it run independently in a local workstation, software upgrades are not only easier to supervise and maintain, but the hardware requirements are eased as well.
We are not talking about a return to the 1970's client-server relationship, where all of the processing relied upon a monster server connected via miles of cable and workstations were 'dumb terminals'. We will be seeing 'thin clients' - although they are not weak clients.
And, we are not looking forward to more of the MS brand of peer-to-peer networking. After ten years of universal acceptance and very hard use, the technologies which support and have enhanced the capabilities of this new client-server relationship - The Internet - and have made 'to google' a verb, have proven themselves not only to the IT community, but to the general public as well.
And, one last point. At a time when there is a major world-wide initiative to produce and put in place millions of "One hundred dollar" (well, actually $200) portable computers into the hands of children around the world, and when cellular technology is the new telecommunications choice for the entire world - including the rapidly integrating 'third world', the *concept* of universal connectivity is no longer science fiction. It is today's fact.
Yes. I think that Sun's new initiative will strongly erode Microsoft's tenuous hold on the work place and that will be a good thing for everyone except for those soon-ready-to-retire millionaire Microsoft executives and the foolish IT people who bought into the MS song and dance and learned how to push buttons like Pavlov's dogs, but missed out on gaining a firm foundation and understanding of how computing and networking really works as the technologies evolve and make our lives better.
Alan Runfeldt
No Deadlines Networks
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