One of the key limitations of our VDI platform, VMware View at the present time is the lack of support for PCoIP sessions via the View Security Gateway. As I describe in this old blog post, it's a critical issue. The limitation means that in order to utilize PCoIP in a meaningful way at a remote site, one must have an IPsec VPN tunnel established. This adds latency, and a single point of failure that's frankly unaccpetable in an enterprise class solution.
After months of work, we've finally got our new website design online and ready to go. Hope you all like the new look! Check back soon for more updates, we're going to add some lovely designs and artwork as the days move forward.
I decided to have some fun in Adobe Premier today. Having never used the program before, I was able to whip this out in a couple hours. :) I think it's pretty scary!
A good friend of mine went to replace a failed hard drive in an old voicemail server. He found this:
We've had a lot more time over the last few weeks to spend working with PCoIP. I've concluded it's still not quite ready for prime time, but it sure is close. When you get it dialed in properly, it's a pretty amazing desktop experience. As I write this, I'm working from a Teradici zero-client on a 12/2 meg Internet connection. I'm connecting via an IPSec tunnel to our infrastructure which is on a 1 gigabit Internet connection provided by Internap.
One of our biggest potential client segments for Virtual IT are IT people that have built up their own contract-based consultancies. We're IT people too, and we've put together Virtual IT as a way to eliminate many of the things that make IT inefficient and needlessly difficult.
A good friend of mine, and former co worker, started a consultancy of his own about 5 years ago and has a few clients he's been thinking about shifting over to our Virtual IT product. A week or so ago, he sent me the following email:
Looks like VMware released View 4.0.1 back in February. The only major fix it seems to address from my list of peevs is ThinPrint printing over PCoIP. Woo.
Some interesting reporting by Bob Sullivan over at MSNBC on some of the privacy issues surrounding cloud computing. The article directly touches on why I started SymbioSystems, and my vision for Virtual IT:
http://redtape.msnbc.com/2010/04/the-constitutional-issues-raised-by-cloud-computing.html#posts
We have a few users that have iphones. The semi-new ability for an iphone to connect to an Exchange account is great, but there is still a bit of missing functionality. I recently had an iphone user request that I find a way to sync his notes with his virtually-hosted exchange account. To do this the Apple way, we need to sync the notes over the cable to a computer that has itunes installed and has an Outlook profile with the Exchange account that we need to sync with.
There are many benefits to using virtual infrastructure; too many to count. With all of the benefits, however, come a few challenges that I had not expected before becoming accustomed to supporting users of this virtual environment. From a user’s perspective, we want to make the experience as close to the “classic” computer experience as possible. In working towards this goal, we’ve come across a few hurtles that have taken some creativity to navigate.
