OpenCompute – Facebook drives Data Center and Cloud evolution

Facebook (which had previously bought commodity servers and rented data center space) has opened up a whole new area of Open Source technology by publishing the full specification of both its new custom server and its new data center as “Open Source” at OpenCompute.org. Overall, Facebook claims that its new data centers are 38 per cent more efficient than its existing leased data centers, but the cost is about 20 per cent less. Published data (such as it exists) indicates that Facebook is at or ahead of rivals or peers such as Microsoft and Google. OpenCompute designs are released under new set of Open Source agreements. The intent seems to be to allow innovation within the published specification, but to ensure multiple providers of the technology. Facebook is clearly seeking to get multiple tier-1 third-party providers for both servers and data centers according to these designs, turning these Open Source specifications into a form of de-facto Standard, which could have broad impact by driving the marketplace away from shared storage models (such as Red Hat’s IAAS reference architecture) to local-storage-friendly IAAS architectures such as OpenStack or Eucalyptus.

Ericom’s HTML5 client for VMware View

I have to admit that it came as a bit of a surprise to see Ericom beating Citrix, VMware, et al to the punch last week by shipping the beta release of its HTML5-based RDP client, before any of the bigger vendors opened up their offerings to public scrutiny. I’ll being look at the operation of Ericom’s HTML5 client in more depth next week, but first we need to understand why anyone would be interested in deploying a HTML5-based remote desktop client at all.

Podio Released. Does the social work platform herald the beginning-of-the-end of desktops?

Podio offers a service that can be readily set-up, customised and deployed: with little IT knowledge – or IT service interaction. You create a workspace, you add applications to that workspace, you invite members of your team (regardless of the fact that your team may extend beyond your organisation) and you start working. if there were more Software as a Service (SaaS) offerings such as Podio available, would they negate the need for Desktop as a Service (DaaS)? Podio is likely a game changing environment for collaboration environments, but the rise of such services is likely to have a far wider impact in providing desktop services.

VMware View Client and Citirix Receiver for iPad – truly free of charge?

VMware View users along with Citirix XenDesktop and Quest vWorkspace have an iPad client for their respective solutions. Personal device use may seem appealing in reducing the demands on IT support – but to fully comply with the license agreements can incur additional license charges, and those charges are difficult to manage. Despite the advertising blurb attached to the free clients, the headaches for finance and IT are not over yet.

Virtual Computer collaborates with Lenovo-NxTop the industry's best enterprise-class type 1 client hypervisor?

Virtual Computer are to optimize their NxTop client virtualization and management solution to operate with select models of Lenovo laptops and desktops PC platforms. For their part, Lenovo will allow customers to have Virtual Computer’s NxTop client loaded onto their custom images, direct from the factory. There are a number of client hypervisor solutions that can be used by enterprises today. The focus for these have been on security. At moment, the only vendor offering an enterprise ready PC management solution based on client hypervisor is Virtual Computer. The partnership withLenovo is likely first in line of tie-ups. Nxtop is Enterprise ready, with such deals Enterprises will be better ready for NxTop.