The wheels on the I.T. model go round and round, and they're turning back around to centrally-managed, fully-hosted environments. Manageability, security, and economics all play into the push for a re-imagined virtual data center.
Virtual Desktops: Randall Kennedy has looked at three of the latest desktop as a service offerings and finds that we're farther down the road to a virtual Shangri-la than you might think. The three products he tested, from Microsoft, Symantec, and Thinstall, are aimed at an enterprise rather than a service provider, but each could provide a starting point if you're ready to begin stepping into a virtual future.
VMWare Extended: Speaking of virtualization, David Marshall has posted a new podcast on Veeam and Vizioncore, two products that add to VMWare's already impressive virtual server capabilities.
Demand Meets Capacity: Finally Ted Samson addressed a serious economic question in Sustainable IT: if processors keep adding cores, won't customers buy fewer processors? The answer is no--customers will find ways to use as much processing power as the chip manufacturers can provide. That simple (and not surprising) fact is a bit reason why providing that processing power in as ecologically-friendly packaging as possible makes sense to everyone's bottom line.
Posted by Curt Franklin on September 25, 2007 11:58 AM
