Solving The Desktop Virtualization Challenge With Vblock FastPath

The Desktop Challenge
The traditional workplace experience used to be working at the office on a PC. Now, the workplace could be the office, the home, or any public location. Now we have more than PC's. Work tools also include tablets and smart phones. Network users could be anywhere, on any kind of device, and they'll need access to all forms of rich media like real time interactive video as well as voice. As a result of these changes organizations are faced with growing security concerns around access to applications and control over corporate data.

Virtualization has been used extensively over the last decade to consolidate servers, improve resource utilization, reduce power consumption, lower costs, and streamline server management. Many of the same issues around cost, complexity, and energy efficiency impact desktop users and IT administrators. Conventional desktop computing approaches are evolving to address an increasing number of regulatory requirements such as Sarbanes-Oxley, and HIPAA. We all know that data breeches are a major concern for corporations. Organizations are trying to protect data, and to simplify desktop management , while meeting the needs of users who demand greater mobility, more devices, and increased flexibility.

As a result of these challenges with desktop management organizations are looking for ways to deploy a more secure, cost effective and flexible desktop environment using Virtual Desktop Infrastructure. With VDI organizations can centrally manage desktop images, ensuring a uniform experience for users no matter what platform they are using or where they are locates. With VDI company wide security posture is improved by keeping critical information in the corporate data center, not on the PC. Costs are reduced through centralized desktop management.

Platform as a Service: The Next Big Opportunity for Service Communications Providers

The Route to PaaS
When cloud computing emerged a few years ago Communications Service Providers (CSPs) saw the opportunity to build the infrastructure layer and offer services on it. CSPs had data center facilities that when combined with their network assets created a cloud service offer with higher service delivery assurance than some alternatives. CSPs are now delivering infrastructure-based cloud services, especially Compute as a Service and Storage as a Service, to the public and to their large Enterprise customers in private cloud offers. As the cloud service model matures, providers who have invested in cloud infrastructure are finding that they are well positioned to evolve their Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) offerings into new service delivery models by leverage their services, systems, and expertise to take on the next great opportunity in cloud services which is Platform as a Service.

The Value of PaaS
PaaS is an integral component to development and delivery of cloud-based applications delivered as Software as a Service—or SaaS. Developing a PaaS offer gives CSPs the opportunity to take advantage of the huge and growing SaaS market and help to accelerate the development of SaaS offers. CSP’s can take an active role by leveraging their assets and developing their capabilities, via a PaaS offer, rather than just hosting and transporting SaaS services. The capability they can provide is to enable development and then deploy applications that are created using tools that they support on to their cloud infrastructure. PaaS enables CSPs to carve out a new and essential role in SaaS development and delivery, situated between software developers and end users, for both business and consumers.

Routes to Market
The route to market for PaaS is complex and to reduce complexity and maximize success the CSP needs to play a major role in providing the platforms and services as well as hosting and delivery capabilities that are needed. They can facilitate SaaS development as a cloud platform provider by offering capabilities for development, enablement, and delivery of SaaS services including the components for development, billing, customer and vendor management, and customer self-servicing tools. They can also act as a SaaS aggregator by hosting a suite of SaaS applications and as a market place provider where multiple SaaS providers utilized their back-end and customer facing portals and tools to enable service delivery.

Optimizing Delivery of Applications from the Cloud

The adoption of cloud-based computing promises to improve the agility, efficiency, and cost effectiveness of IT operations required to provision, scale, and deliver applications to the enterprise. As with other technology trends, delivering applications from the cloud, to remote sites, creates challenges with application performance, availability, and security.

Enterprise IT departments are continuing to invest in technologies that generate cost savings while making their business applications more agile and available. These initiatives, such as consolidation of branch-office servers and virtualization of data center servers, are increasingly being adopted by the enterprise; however, they have not been without consequences. For example, branch-office server consolidation projects, while reducing the server footprint, can result in a poor end-user experience and increased bandwidth utilization because applications traverse a WAN link with higher latency and packet loss and lower bandwidth than they traverse a LAN link. WAN optimization solutions, such as Cisco® Wide Area Application Services (WAAS), are implemented to deliver LAN-like application response times for end users and to defer a WAN bandwidth upgrade.