Cisco Takes Aim at the Virtual Desktop
As enterprise servers move to virtualized cloud infrastructure, Cisco sees a large market opportunity for delivering a virtual desktop to enterprises.
Cisco today announced a new effort called the Virtualization Experience Infrastructure (VXI), which leverages existing and new Cisco hardware and services to enable a fresh generation of endpoints for virtual desktop delivery. As part of the launch, Cisco announced a series of new Virtualization Experience Clients (VXC) that enable virtual desktop delivery on IP phones and mobile devices.
EMC, VMware Build Private Cloud for New York Hospital
How Cloud Computing Could Transform the Travel and Hospitality Industry
Every now and again a set of technologies comes together that could transform an industry. In terms of profitability, we all know that the airline industry has had more than its fair share of troubles. But the question that may need to be asked is whether these companies actually know what business they are in. Most of them operate under the assumption that they are in the business of flying people around the globe. In reality, they are part of the travel and hospitality industry, so maybe it’s time to rethink their entire business model.
Cloud computing ‘should be part of IT strategy’
The use of cloud computing offerings should be an important part of a company’s overall strategy for IT, it has been suggested.
This is according to Douglas Menefee, chief information officer of the Schumacher Group, who said that businesses should not make the mistake of viewing cloud computing as a separate entity to other IT operations.
"Develop your IT strategy – cloud is just part of it," he stated in comments reported by Forbes.
Cloud Computing Impact Debated At XTI Conference
Ask four different solution providers about their approach to such issues as cloud computing, and you’ll get four different answers.
That was the case a panel discussion Thursday on a look at the future of channel business models at the Xchange Tech Innovator conference, held this week in Las Vegas.
For solution providers with a primary focus on government, the move to cloud computing appears to be much slower than for those with more of a commercial customer focus.
Authenticating yourself in the cloud
Of all that has been written about cloud computing, precious little attention has been paid to authentication in the cloud.
Before we get to that, let’s review how authentication works on a private network.
When you log on to your machine and then try to access a resource, say a file server or database, something needs to assure that your username and password are valid. If you’re logging onto a Windows machine, this authentication is performed by a component called the "Local Security Authority Subsystem Service".
Dell looks beyond Microsoft for mobile and cloud
Once upon a time it was nice and simple. If you were in charge of corporate IT, you bought Microsoft. Serious quantities of computing power required a different solution, but for everything from mid-level enterprise down to desktops, Microsoft did the job. When it came to smartphones, Microsoft’s products have never been great but always integrated neatly and were favoured by some although not all organisations.
Zoho Support adds customer support management to cloud apps
Zoho has added a customer support management application to its web-hosted collaboration, communication, business and office productivity suite for small and medium-size businesses.
Zoho Support is designed to help companies capture, process and manage support tickets and includes features to prioritise and sort through requests, apply service level agreements, generate statistics and reports and archive and publish common solutions. "The application streamlines the customer support model for any organisation," said Raju Vegesna, Zoho evangelist.
Windows 8 may get cloud storage
Microsoft seems to be planning robust integrations between its online services and Windows 8, possibly including a cloud-based backup service, according to Microsoft job postings.
One job posting for a Windows Server position — which is no longer available but was quoted by the unofficial Windows8beta blog — states: "We are currently working on a Windows Azure-based service and integrating with certain Microsoft online services and Windows 8 client backup."
Cloud Drives Need for Improved WAN Optimization
If the public cloud is in your future, there will be no getting around the fact that application performance will very much depend on your ability to negotiate public networks.
That problem is that once your data has left the confines of your internal infrastructure, you are at the mercy of whatever traffic conditions happen to be in place at any given time. For many organizations, that leaves too much to chance, which is why interest in cloud-ready optimization technologies is at fever pitch.