Displaying items by tag: Citrix

cloud-computing-bad

We are not a fan of the push to the cloud as you might have figured out from our articles. The reasons are many including, but not limited to, security, privacy, and a general dishonesty about what the cloud is and what it really means to the many companies that are offering cloud services (predictable revenue stream). All of that aside, there is a side effect to the present cloud push that we actually overlooked that explains more than a few things that are going on in the market as a whole. This is an unexpected impact on the sale of PCs (all PCs) across the consumer and potentially commercial market.

Published in Editorials
armchip displayv2

At their earnings call the other Day Intel made the statement that they are at least three years ahead of other companies when it comes to silicon manufacturing. Yesterday and today the news is all about how ARM is preparing to compete with Intel in the server market with their 64-bit RISC processors which are to be manufactured using the same tri-gate manufacturing that Intel is currently using for their Ivy Bridge CPUs. You know the ones that have been shipping since early this year? This means that no matter how thin you slice it ARM will not have able to make a tri-gate CPU until at least 2014-2015.

Published in News
Code

In Microsoft news of another, albeit similar, nature to what we have been seeing with Windows 8 and Surface it looks like Steve Ballmer wants to reignite the war between Microsoft and VMware. Ever since the launch of Windows 2008 Microsoft has tried to realize its vision of maintaining a data center eco system. They were more than slightly put out when VMware entered the scene and started pushing their new virtualization technology (including the hyper visor) around the market back in 1999. VMware’s continued success in 2001-2003 was something of a thorn in Microsoft’s side. It was this that led Microsoft to buy Virtual PC and Virtual Server from Connectix in early 2003.

Published in News

us_cert_logoThere is a new security warning for some people running virtualized systems on Intel CPUs. According to researchers at US CERT (Computer Emergency Readiness Team) the issue exists with some 64-bit operating systems when running on a hyper visor style host machine (also if the host OS is 64-bit). The vulnerability includes a method for escalation of privileges and a potential guest to host escape.

Published in News
Tuesday, 30 August 2011 20:42

VMware reinvents the Wheel

AppBlastIn stunning news VMware announced the reinvention of the wheel at the VMware World Conference in Las Vegas. They showed of their new “wheel” which will run slower and have a greater potential for security risks than the older wheel, but they feel that this is the way things are going to be in the future.

Of course the thing that VMware was showing off was not the wheel it was VMware’s Project AppBlast, an updated Horizon Application Manager (which now allows Windows Applications) and a new technology called ThinApp Factory. The theme was the “Post-PC Era” with CTO Steve Herrod saying such catch phrases as “the world has changed” and other nonsense considering the fact that Citrix has been out for more than 10 years and has never managed to push the PC to extinction.

The three technologies that VMware showcased today are not really new, Citrix has XenApp and even Microsoft has products that will allow you to serve up single applications to users. True the Microsoft product will not let you push out to anything other than Windows based systems but Xen can push to the iOS and even to Android in many cases. Xen also has a web interface that allows you to pick and choose the applications you want to run which are run in secured memory spaces on the client system.
We have tinkered with XenApp and XenDesktop on more than a few occasions and it is more than functional with plenty of support behind it.

So, while the new Applications from VMware are interesting they are far from revolutionary and with their expensive licensing scheme you can pretty much bet they will be pricing out of the reach of most companies.

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Published in News