Simon Bramfitt

Thin client performance benchmarks

Simon Bramfitt — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 09:00:10 +0000

Devon IT and Wyse Technologies both started the year with announcements of thin clients that have been awarded Microsoft RemoteFX logo certification. Last week, it was IGEL Technologies’ turn, and now today HP is joining the RemoteFX certification club with the launch of its new t510 and t610 thin clients. So what does Microsoft RemoteFX Logo Certification mean? And does it really matter?

Cisco Desktop Transformation Webinar Survey Results

Simon Bramfitt — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 09:00:47 +0000

I had a great time last week with Cisco doing the Desktop Transformation webinar, and an even better time afterwards talking to Cisco Distinguished Engineer Jim French about some of the more far-reaching opportunities that become possible when you start down a path to deploy VDI alongside Unified Communications. I’m looking forward to the day when I’ll be able to share at least some of the items we discussed.

Cisco Opens 2012 Desktop Virtualization Push

Simon Bramfitt — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 09:00:02 +0000

I’ve already said Cisco will be the company responsible for putting VDI on the map this year, which could explain why I’ve been asked to fill the role of “industry expert” in the first of Cisco’s 2012 desktop virtualization webcasts. Far more important than me though there’s the opportunity to listen to Cisco Distinguished Systems Engineer Jim French and our Host and Director of Engineering, Jeff Platon; both of whom know far more about VXI than I’m ever likely to.

Embarrassing, but valuable nevertheless

Simon Bramfitt — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 16:00:41 +0000

Citrix screwed up recently with VDI-in-a-Box, creating a worldwide outage for every user of the product on January 1st. The proximate cause was a simple one, the Virtual Desktop Agent used by VDI-in-a-Box had a .dll which expired at midnight December 31st 2011 and the software wasn’t patched to address this. Like I said – embarrassing.

Now although it was a VDI product that had this problem wasn’t a VDI problem, it could have hit almost any product. I’ve seen this same type of failure take out many tens of thousands of PCs in one go and I’m sure it will happen again; people make mistakes.

Comparing Apples to Oranges

Simon Bramfitt — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 10:48:03 +0000

Atlantis Computing caused a bit of a stir yesterday when it announced the $200 VDI desktop. So I hope I don’t get any into any trouble with Atlantis for saying this, especially as I will be paying them a visit on Wednesday, but you don’t really get a virtual desktop for that much.

Let’s be fair now, most thin clients cost more than $200, so you can’t really expect a full VDI solution for that little.

2011 Review – Cisco

Simon Bramfitt — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 09:00:24 +0000

As I hinted in yesterday’s post, Cisco is in my top vendors list for the second year running. If you need the background on Cisco’s desktop virtualization ambitions, I covered the products and services in some depth here when Cisco first introduced VXI and more recently here when it announced its five-year technology partnership with Citrix in October 2011.

More important than shipping a compelling hardware platform, Cisco is building out a services team capable of designing, deploying and supporting end-to-end environments using either VMware View or Citrix XenDesktop – As I highlighted yesterday there’s a lot more to building a VDI environment than end-point, server, and connection broker.

2011 review – Citrix

Simon Bramfitt — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 13:22:58 +0000

Citrix had a busy year with notable acquisitions in the form of Kaviza, cloud.com and most recently App-DNA. Setting aside cloud.com as not being immediately relevant to desktop virtualization; in acquiring Kaviza and App-DNA, Citrix is directly addressing the two most important concerns that potential adopters of desktop virtualization have expressed – complexity and vendor maturity.

Joe Onisick highlighted this concern in a comment on my post on Cisco’s ability to create an inflection point in VDI adoption by saying

All the companies and tools you mention are great for VDI deployments, but is an infrastructure that requires 5-6+ vendors just to deliver a desktop really the house of cards you want to run your business on?

2011 Review

Simon Bramfitt — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 13:00:05 +0000

Yes, it’s that time of year again. Time for gifting, gluttony, and awkward embraces from your over-familiar uncle Ted. Festivities and restraining orders aside, at this time of year it’s only fit and proper to have a post detailing the year in review or offering a list of predictions for the coming year. You can find my thoughts on 2012 at The Virtualization Practice here and here, while on my blog I’ll be looking back at those vendors, products and events that have contributed most to ~~my retirement fund~~ next generation workspace technologies in 2011.

If you want something post-PC, go buy a Kindle!

Simon Bramfitt — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 09:15:28 +0000

Seriously, the only post-PC device shipping today is a Kindle. And that’s the regular Kindle, not the iPad busting Kindle Fire.

The post-PC future is not a tablet or a smartphone, but a context aware user-centric environment where devices and application interact with data in ways that are consistent with both the users’ needs and device capabilities with the minimum of interference.

You Need To Justify Desktop Virtualization? Look No Further Than This

Simon Bramfitt — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 17:43:51 +0000

I’ve long held the opinion that most conventional desktop management implementations are fundamentally broken. The amount of manual intervention needed to keep these systems working is about the same as that needed to maintain a vintage Rolls-Royce. It is a labor of love that few can afford.

Today I have an outstanding example of what I mean. Look at this job posting from LinkedIn

Intuitive Technology Group is currently working with a client who is in the process of expanding their current Altiris environment to support an additional 40,000-50,000 computers.