1. Virtualization touches many, many areas of technology, from storage to servers to desktops. For ClearCube, we see it making our customers’ lives easier by enabling them to get the most out of multicore technology while lessening management overhead at essentially no cost to the user experience.
2. Centralized computing might be an old idea, but the way that idea is implemented keeps changing. Dumb terminals, thin clients, network computers — they all separate processing from user devices. ClearCube is different because, unlike the others, the user experience is virtually indistinguishable from that of a regular PC. Quick response times, enhanced graphics, and now multimonitor capabilities — who would want multiple box PCs cluttering their work area when they can get the same experience with a PC blade?
3. Enterprises must find new ways to deal with remote and mobile workers. The old monolithic headquarters where everybody worked for the same eight hours in the same place every day is a thing of the past. Whether you’re dealing with outsourced development teams, traveling consultants, satellite offices, or employees who work from home, your business depends on providing people access to information through the devices they prefer and on their schedule.
Flexibility is the name of the game these days, and ironically enough, centralized computing — once though inflexible by its very nature — now offers one of the most flexible ways for companies to meet the growing and ever-changing needs of its user base. .
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[Daily Post from ClearCube] PC Blade Daily: The Best of PC Blade Daily
“PC Blade Daily has been publishing for over six months now. Listed below are our top 5 most popular posts.”
Computerworld: Mergers go smoother with a well-prepped data center
“Nemertes’ Burke suggests that one major step to M&A success is to make sure your data center has virtualization tools running on both servers and storage.”
San Jose Mercury News: VMWare IPO shows virtualization market is emerging as a reality
“‘Some of the technology has been around for years. What’s new is server virtualization, and how it’s being used not just for consolidation but for disaster recovery and higher availability,’ Humphries said.”
Yahoo: Independent Research Analysis From virtualization.info Details Challenges of Virtualization Technology
“Virtualization Industry Challenges is an up-to-date research analysis detailing major challenges that companies usually have to face once they decide to adopt virtualization technologies.”
Blade Watch: Interview with an IT Manager
“We conducted the conversation over lunch last Friday and here are the results, it was informal and apologies to ‘Mike’ if I have missed anything we discussed.”
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PC Blade Daily has been publishing for over six months now. Listed below are our top 5 most popular posts:
1. Centralized Computing Means Happier IT Staff. It’s the best gift you can give desktop support (short of a raise).
2. Virtualization and Security. We have nothing to fear but fear itself, and also patch cycles and potentially vulnerable hypervisors.
3. The IT Manager’s Lament. Long hours, wide-ranging responsibilities, capricious regulatory oversight, and bosses who don’t know how to plug in a USB cord. If this sounds like a dream job, you might have a future in IT management.
4. Moving Away from Box PCs. A PC blade is not a thin client, and a thin client is not a PC blade. End of story.
5. Blades Go Hollywood. Lights! Camera! (PC Blade-related) action!
Do you have a favorite post? Tell us about it in the comments below.
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[Daily Post from ClearCube] PC Blade Daily: To Secure Laptops, Virtualize Them
“At this point, laptops have proven themselves too valuable to worker productivity for businesses to ever consider eliminating them simply because they present certain security vulnerabilities.”
p2vd.com: Guide to installing VMware ESX3 on Workstation 6
“Xtravirt.com has created a white paper to do something that most people have wished for sometime now…run ESX in a VM (on VMware Workstation 6), with full functionality.”
Computerworld.com: First American Corp. uses virtualization, quake technology to bolster business
“Virtualization for First American has resulted from a comprehensive $100 million IT upgrade first planned in 2004, which began with a data center consolidation and has led to voice-over-IP technology and other changes…”
Windows Virtualization Blog: Webcast: Microsoft Server Virtualization Licensing with Coffee Cups!
“Jump to 18:24 to see an interesting analogy using coffee cups and moving VM instances between hosts, aka VMware VMotion or Microsoft Quick Migration.”
Scott Lowe: Cisco Switches on VMware
“I’m not a Cisco expert, but I’d love to have the ability to run Cisco-based switches on ESX Server (assuming the overhead isn’t too significant).”
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When it comes to user support, enterprise IT’s role is rapidly evolving from a top-down, one-size-fits-all model of management and enforcement to a bottom-up, customized model where both hardware and software accommodate individual user needs.
Take, for example, the necessity for IT to accommodate the rise of what Thomas Jankowski calls the neo-nomad: in other words, the mobile worker. These users require greater connectivity and cheaper, lighter laptops so that they can work from the road. They also require the same corporate-level security they’d enjoy from their home office. Jankowski observes that virtualization can make that possible:
“Almost any setup, be it a laptop, a desktop, or even a server, can be packaged into a virtual image and then redeployed on a machine of one’s choice without disrupting the host system. In effect, my protected company laptop can be made to run ‘inside’ of my own laptop.”
Foster’s EMEA uses the virtual desktop principle in its disaster recovery strategy. According to this article on ZDNet, mobile workers can access “an up-to-date virtual replica of their lost laptop” from any of Foster’s European offices in the event of theft or malfunction.
At this point, laptops have proven themselves too valuable to worker productivity for businesses to ever consider eliminating them simply because they present certain security vulnerabilities. That said, it would be foolish for companies not to take measures to protect their physical assets and their data as effectively as they can.
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[Daily Post from ClearCube] PC Blade Daily: PC Blades Contain Multitudes
“Whether your business is in Ho Chi Minh City or a highly fortified bunker, you might think about using PC blades for everything from user equipment to grid computing.”
Byte and Switch: School Board Teaches Katrina Lesson
“The Parish’s most critical data was held within its data center, which also needed to be retrieved in the aftermath of the storm.”
David Ziembicki on Infrastructure Architecture: TechReady Day 2: BillG and Virtualization
“Consumers are driving a big portion of the tech industry today and that makes its way eventually into the corporate market. Both are extremely important to Microsoft for obvious reasons.”
Virtually Speaking: Virtualization’s impact on Market Research
“Each layer of virtualization technology has a different impact on the counting process. Some of the layers easily could change the perception of shipments and market share.”
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Hundreds of organizations from Bangalore to Boston are using blades, virtualization, and multicore technology to get more performance out of their equipment and deliver greater benefits to the business at lower cost. However, hundreds of organizations aren’t there yet. And that’s a shame, because centralized computing and its companion technologies have something to offer nearly everybody.
For example, Fosters uses virtualized desktops to provide disaster recovery for remote and mobile employees. Hollywood effects studios, from Industrial Light and Magic to Pixar, rely on blades and blade-compatible technologies (like multicore processors) to render stellar special effects.
ClearCube itself has helped a wide variety of organizations accomplish some very different things with PC blades. We’ve helped GMP Securities, an investment bank, to support complicated banking industry regulations and security mandates. We’ve also helped National Car Parks, a parking lot operator in the UK, to improve systems availablity and IT management. And we helped NORAD overcome some pretty significant — and unique — spacial constraints when they were looking for a high-availability computing solution.
Furthermore, PC blades have demonstrated the potential for great success in education, government, and hospitals. We would particularly recommend them to the IRS.
Whether your business is in Ho Chi Minh City or a highly fortified bunker, you might think about using PC blades for everything from user equipment to grid computing. As we’ve shown, blades are surprisingly flexible.
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