IBM Virtual Desktop for Smart Business

Earlier this year, IBM announced their Virtual Desktop for Smart Business, a new workforce mobility offering that provides anytime, anywhere access to personal desktops from mobile devices -- including tablets, netbooks, laptops and thin clients.

The IBM Virtual Desktop allows Windows or Linux desktops to be hosted and managed centrally, thus lowering the cost and complexity of managing PC environments through rapid deployment of new applications, automatic software updates and reducing the need for help desk requests. The Virtual Desktop, which includes VERDE software from Virtual Bridges, can be deployed on a customer's own infrastructure or through a "private cloud" hosted environment like Lexcom.  

"As IBM's latest smarter work offering, the Virtual Desktop expands the time and place where people can access information, contribute ideas and support customers," said Dan Cerutti, general manager, IBM Smart Business. "We're bringing the power of virtual computing to smaller companies seeking greater agility while freeing up critical IT resources."

The IBM Virtual Desktop has self-configuring, self-managing and self-protecting features that enable easy installation and management, plus continuous backup and recovery. Whether visiting clients, checking inventory or making patient rounds at a hospital, the solution provides instant access to information, helping employees solve problems and speed decision-making.

This new IBM solution is offered as a pre-integrated, ready-to-run software package priced at $150.00 per user per year for a one year contract. IBM Virtual Desktop will be delivered through IBM Business Partners who will provide local consulting, networking and software infrastructure skills to ensure smooth installation. 

Download a IBM Virtual Desktop Brochure here.

vFoglight Illuminates Physical Storage in a Virtual Environment

Many clients ask us for recommendations on how to better manage physical storage in a virtual enviornment. Quest's vFoglight Storage is a great solution for this need. It monitors virtual infrastructures and provides performance metrics to help optimize the physical storage shared throughout a virtual environment. vFoglight Storage also monitors virtual storage utilization enabling administrators to intelligently project storage capacity requirements. You’ll have the information you need to optimize virtual storage performance ensuring you meet SLAs and retain cost savings you've achieved through virtualization.

See the demo here:

Lexcom is a Quest partner. Contact us for more information or to arrange a demo.

Cisco UCS Express for Branch Virtualization

Great overview video of the new Cisco UCS Express Modules that extend datacenter virtualization to the branch office. UCS Express is a converged network, computing, and virtualization platform for hosting essential services and business applications.

Hello my name is Betty and I love VDI

I know the title sounds like the beginning of some sort of VDI anonymous or support group but it’s not.  I am proud to say “I LOVE MY VIEW VM!”  I access my corporate workspace from my zero client, laptop, home PC, other people’s computers, iPhone and soon iPad.  Currently I am writing this post from my home office via my View 4.5 virtual machine.

And no I’m not a call center agent.  I am what you would classify as a “knowledge worker/road warrior” and I travel frequently for my awesome job.  So I am on a plane, on the road about 1-2 times a month.  AND I STILL USE VDI.

The reality is, most of us are a good fit for VDI.  My opinion is that people are scared of change so that keeps them from adopting a model that is really better than the one they are used to

My relationship with my VM is a long one… We first met about 3 years ago and it made me suffer through RDP.  But the greater value of being able to have MY workspace follow me across a variety of devices changed the way I worked.  Experiencing almost no downtime from several different hardware failures made me commit to VDI.  The only downtime I had was the time it took me to walk over to another device and log in.  No need to try and extract my documents from a hard drive or reinstall a bunch of apps.  The only thing standing between me and my workspace was a little login screen (which you can carry around on a USB stick).

PCoIP took our relationship to a whole new level.  It’s a whole new experience – I almost cannot describe how awesome it is.  Sometimes the WAN is slow but that only means the screen goes out of focus, but it doesn’t impact my ability to interact with the applications (aka, no more screen painting and no more waiting).  Who cares if the picture is fuzzy if everything else is still in real time?  For most workers out there, if having the occasional fuzzy picture defines your inability to use VDI means you’re just looking for an excuse to avoid change.

Yes change is scary and difficult in the beginning but is often beneficial.  And VDI isn’t a complete departure from what you already know. VDI is an evolution of the desktop – taking what you need from the traditional PC and giving you a workspace accessible from whatever and wherever you need it.

By the way - Wifi on planes is sufficient to access VDI, hotel internet - also fine and so is 3G.  Besides, how much work are you really doing on a plane?  The best thing about VDI is that my workspace state is always as I last left it when I disconnected – saving me a ton of time.  Most workers when they are "offline" it's because they are 1)in a meeting, 2)driving or flying or 3)wouldn't be using the computer anyways so it's a bit misleading to think that every second you are offline you actually need an environment to work in.  Plus, most road warriors know where all the free wifi spots are or have a laptop internet card which are both sufficient to access your VM.  And with more client support coming in View, why even bother with your laptop when on the road?  Just use your iPad or other fancy tablet...

So what are you waiting for?  Go get yourself one.

Repost from VMware View Blog 

Cisco Unified Computing Rapid Provisioning @ VMworld

Jason Shaw, Technical Marketing Engineer @ Cisco for Server Access & Virtualization BU demonstrates Unified Computing System B-Series at VMworld 2010