News: Akamai Introduces Managed Internet Service for Delivery of Virtualized Applications and Desktops

Akamai Technologies, Inc. announce the industry’s first managed Internet service for optimizing delivery of virtualized applications and desktops. Based on Akamai’s IP Application Accelerator solution this new service is designed to help enterprises realize the cost efficiency, scalability and global reach inherent with the Internet to deliver VDI solutions offered by companies such as Citrix, Microsoft, and VMware.

Are Hypervisor Vendors welcoming ISVs?

There is a great debate on which hypervisor vendor works with ISVs and which do not. You have a number of ISVs working with VMware that are just now starting to work with Hyper-V. A number of ISVs that are struggling to catch up in the virtualization space. Hypervisor Vendors that are directly competing with ISVs as well as welcoming ISVs. This story is not about any of this, but about how easy is it to launch a new product for each of the hypervisors available with or without help from the hypervisor vendor. In essence, is there enough documentation, community, and code out there to be interpreted as welcoming ISVs.

Seven Deadly Sins When Deploying Thin Clients

The traditional Enterprise Desktop PC can be said to be on borrowed time. With marketing machines re-heralding the benefits of centralisation removing that Enterprise Desktop PC for Thin Client appears to be a far more prudent use of refresh budgets. While Thin Clients can, and do, replace Enterprise Desktops, there are major considerations to be made in their deployment. Multi-media, local device access, network access and mobile support, through to user acceptance and printing are often overlooked at the start of a project. Focus on understanding where where your costs are now and how you can best use the investment in deploying a Thin Client solution to reduce those costs in the coming years to realise savings on your enterprise workspace spend.

The Hypervisor Wars, a 2000-year old story

In the fog of the datacenter virtualization war, it is difficult to see clearly who will end up on top, and yet the outcome is almost certainly determined, and the victorious generals are even now moving on to fight new battles. Here at the Virtualization Practice we too would like to think we can see through the fog to work out who has won, so here are our thoughts, take account of them as you wish. They concern, primarily, the big four protagonists: Microsoft/Hyper-V, Citrix /Xen, VMware/vSphere and Red Hat/KVM.

KVM in RHEL 5.4 – Red Hat leaps out of the virtual shadows.

The Linux Kernel Virtual Machine (KVM) has been available for some time in, for example, Ubuntu 8.0.4 LTS (Released April 2008). KVM is widely used and stable and it is high time that Red Hat who acquired KVM when they purchased Qumranet in September 2008, started to move their customers onto it – at least to remove the uncertainty in the customer base.