A-Logic Business Computing

VMware Zimbra is a next generation email and collaboration solution that delivers on the End User Computing vision and enhances productivity by connecting people, applications and data on any device or platform. Zimbra provides an open platform designed for virtualization and portability across private and public clouds, making it simpler to manage and more cost-effective to scale. With more than 60 million paid mailboxes and 150,000 organizations worldwide, Zimbra is one of the largest and fastest growing email providers and now every partner can sell this solution!

Productivity
Zimbra empowers end users with an innovative, feature-rich user experience integrated with all business applications and collaboration tools and accessible from any device or even offline. Exceptional email and calendaring performance without storage limits accelerates decision-making for increased productivity.
• Rich web UI, indexed search and innovative tools to organize your mailbox
• Access email from anywhere, any device, anytime – even offline

Openness
Zimbra’s modular architecture is based on proven open source components and designed for virtualization, making it easier to maintain, and more cost-effective to scale. Zimbra allows IT to support all clients and operating systems seamlessly, and easily integrates with 3rd party platforms.
• Compatibility and interoperability help leverage current investments
• Best cross-platform support in the industry, including: Windows/Mac/Linux desktops;IE/Firefox/Safari/Chrome browsers; Outlook, Zimbra Desktop and other desktop clients; BlackBerry, iPhone and other smart phones.
• More than 100 third party extensions available through gallery.zimbra.com

Manageability
Zimbra offers administrators a web-based application which reduces support costs, streamlines email deployment, management and provisioning with greater reliability, and easier administration, all resulting in up to 50% lower total cost of ownership.
• Optimize for virtualized infrastructure
• Improve scalability and performance
• Provide visibility into application usage

Author: www.vmware.com

When you’re shopping for an HD Flatscreen, there are plenty of factors to consider. Chief among them is the type of display. While boxy, bulky CRTs are long dead and mammoth rear-projection HD Flatscreens are all but extinct, the HD Flatscreen market currently offers three distinct choices in display technologies: plasma, traditional CCFL-backlit LCD, and LED-backlit LCD. For years, the question of which technology reigned supreme has remained unanswered.

In the early days of HD Flatscreens, plasma, with its inky blacks and top-notch picture quality, was the prevalent flat-panel technology, especially among videophiles. Gradually, thinner, more energy-efficient LCDs with CCFL backlighting became less expensive and more capable and started gaining ground. The difference between plasma and LCD wavered for some time, with each offering different economic and visual benefits depending on the model, price, and time in the life cycle of HD Flatscreens. But in the past couple of years, with the advent of increasingly sophisticated LED backlighting, we finally have a true winner. With its unmatched energy efficiency, LED-based LCD is the best flat-panel HD Flatscreen technology. Unfortunately, it’s also generally the most expensive, although LED HD Flatscreen prices have come down considerably over the past year, and continue to drop all the time. If it’s in your budget, the choice is clear: Pay the premium and get an LED-lit HD Flatscreen.

The Basics: What’s the Difference Between LCD, LED, and Plasma? The three technologies are vastly different, particularly how each the screen is lit.
Plasma screens: the phosphors that create the image on the screen light up themselves, and don’t need any backlighting.
For LCD screens, the liquid crystal screen does not illuminate, requiring a separate light source. That’s where the difference between “regular” LCD screens (also known as CCFL-backlit LCD) and LED-backlit LCD screens (also known as LED-LCD, or just LED screens) come in.
Traditional LCD screens: these use cold cathode fluorescent lights (CCFLs) to illuminate the screen. CCFLs are similar to the fluorescent lights you might see in your lamps and overhead light fixtures. They use a charged gas to produce light.
LED-LCD screens: like their name implies, use light emitting diodes (LEDs) to illuminate the display.

Several factors can be influenced by the type of HD Flatscreen display you choose. Among them, the most prominent are screen thickness, brightness, darkness, energy efficiency, and price. Ideally, you want an HD Flatscreen that’s affordable, paper-thin, can get face-of-the-sun-bright and black-hole-dark, and consumes less than a watt. That’s currently impossible, but LED-backlit LCD HD Flatscreens can come closer than the other two technologies. For this advantage, LED HD Flatscreens command a premium; for all major HD Flatscreen manufacturers, LED-backlit HD Flatscreens can cost more than CCFL-backlit HD Flatscreens of the same size. Generally, plasma HD Flatscreens tend to be the least expensive, priced at equal to or slightly less than CCFL-backlit HD Flatscreens. However, that saving means the screen will be thicker and much more power-hungry, even if it does offer as good a picture as an LED-backlit HD Flatscreen. LED HD Flatscreens don’t have to be super-expensive, but they almost always cost more than their CCFL-backlit and plasma counterparts. Considering the excellent picture quality and significant benefits in screen thickness and power consumption, that extra amount on the price tag is well worth it.

How good the picture looks, especially if you’re a videophile or a cinema fanatic, is the most vital aspect of any HD Flatscreen. Specifically, peak white and black levels determine how detailed a picture can look on a screen. Poor white levels mean fine details can get washed out in bright scenes, while poor black levels mean shadows swallow up parts of the picture in dark scenes. A very wide gamut from dark to light lets the HD Flatscreen show the tiniest details, regardless of how bright or dark the movie gets. In our tests, we measure white and black levels by luminance using a chromameter. A mediocre HD Flatscreen might produce black levels of 0.05 to 0.07 cd/m2, while an excellent HD Flatscreen might offer levels of 0.01 to 0.03 cd/m2. Historically, plasma HD Flatscreens have produced the best black levels, specifically the now-defunct Pioneer Kuro HD Flatscreen brand. The Kuro’s screen got so satisfyingly dark that it remained a popular HD Flatscreen for enthusiasts long after Pioneer stopped making the sets. The domination of plasma in this field, however, is over. Our current Editors’ Choice HD Flatscreen, the LED-based LG Infinia 47LW5600, puts out only 0.01 cd/m2, the best level we can measure. That any LED-backlit LCD can get that dark shows how far the technology has come. White levels don’t matter quite as much as black levels, because it’s more difficult for screens to show fine details in shadows and easier to crank out very bright whites with backlighting, but they can still matter. At this, LED backlighting again triumphs. The Panasonic TC-L42E30 reaches a staggering 473.50 cd/m2 white levels with modest 0.04 cd/m2 black levels. It completely (and literally) outshines the Panasonic TC-P50ST30, its plasma HD Flatscreen cousin that puts out only 107 cd/m2 peak white while offering a slightly better 0.03 cd/m2 black level.

Screen thickness isn’t the most important aspect of an HD Flatscreen, but initially, it’s the most noticeable. A super-thin HD Flatscreen is not only visually striking, but it’s more easily mounted on a wall, and can be more readily arranged, displayed, or concealed as part of your home theater. At this, LED lighting wins hands-down. The CCFLs that backlight standard LCD screens are much thicker than LEDs, and plasma screens require a fair amount of room for the actual plasma cells. LEDs, on the other hand, can be extremely tiny while being extremely bright, meaning an array of LEDs along the edge of an LCD can light it up while completely removing the backlight from the equation (in this configuration, the LEDs are considered “edge-lighting,” not backlighting, though the term backlighting can cover all screen illumination). Samsung’s 8000 series LED HD Flatscreens measure a very-svelte 0.9 inches, thanks to its edge-lighting. To contrast, Samsung’s 8000 series plasma HD Flatscreen models measure 1.4 inches thick, and its CCFL-backlit 750 series HD Flatscreens measure a bulkier 3.2 inches thick. You could literally cram three 8000-series HD Flatscreens front-to-back inside the space of one 750-series screen. However, edge-lit LCDs can’t produce quite as dark blacks as LED-array-backlit LCDs. With a full wall of LEDs behind the screen, individual lights can dim and turn off to produce the best black levels when the picture needs them. However, this means the screen can’t get quite as thin as if it was edge-lit. Still, even LED-backlit screens can stay remarkably thin. The LG Infinia 47LW5600 measures just 1.2 inches thick.

Energy efficiency is an important factor when choosing an HD Flatscreen, and between the three technologies LED-backlit HD Flatscreens win again. LED HD Flatscreens consistently consume around 100 watts or less, while plasma HD Flatscreens can eat up two or three times as much. The 47-inch LG Infinia 47LW5600 uses a meager 95 watts, and the slightly smaller 42-inch Panasonic TC-L42E30 needs just 78 watts. Compare that with plasma HD Flatscreens like the 42-inch Panasonic TC-P42GT25, which eats up 236 watts, or the 50-inch Samsung PN50C590G4F, which uses a staggering 272 watts. However, you can’t be certain that an LED-backlit HD Flatscreen will be energy efficient. It’s a good general rule, but some HD Flatscreens, like the Vizio XVT3D650SV, eats up 165 watts (although that’s for a massive 65-inch screen), and the Sony Bravia 46EX720 consumes 112 watts. Even still, these are far better numbers than you’ll get with any plasma screen.

Author: www.pcmag.com

Major Platform and Product Upgrades Strengthen Infrastructure Foundation for the Cloud Computing Era
SAN FRANCISCO, Calif., July 12, 2011 — At a live event today, VMware CEO Paul Maritz unveiled VMware vSphere® 5 and a comprehensive suite of cloud infrastructure technologies built to help customers transform IT to drive greater efficiency of existing investments and improve operational agility. With nearly 200 new and enhanced capabilities, VMware vSphere 5 will continue to set the standard in virtualization, delivering better application performance and availability for all business-critical applications while automating the management of an increasingly broad pool of datacenter resources. VMware today also announced VMware vShield™ 5, VMware vCenter™ Site Recovery Manager 5 , and VMware vCloud® Director 1.5 , products that together with VMware vSphere 5 will amplify the value customers can realize from virtualized resources by enabling cloud-scale operations. ”The market has fully embraced virtualization as a key transformative technology at the heart of the next era of computing,” said Paul Maritz, VMware CEO. “With vSphere® 5 and our cloud infrastructure suite, VMware is helping customers accelerate towards more efficient and automated cloud infrastructure, redefining how resources are managed and secured, and ultimately, driving a more productive relationship between IT and the businesses they serve.”

The VMware cloud infrastructure suite will help organizations build intelligent virtual infrastructures, which infuse highly virtualized environments with the automation, self-service and security capabilities customers need to:
• Deploy Business-Critical Applications with Confidence – Dramatic performance and scalability gains in VMware vSphere 5 will enable customers to run even the most resource-intensive business-critical applications in virtual and cloud environments.
• Respond to the Needs of the Business Faster with Cloud Agility – From rapidly provisioning new resources to intelligently managing ongoing operations, VMware’s cloud infrastructure suite will radically simplify infrastructure management.
• Move to Cloud Computing with Trust – VMware is evolving security from a physical model to a virtual software model, driven and managed by policy, enabling customers to trust in the security of their applications and data regardless of where they reside or how frequently they move across various private, public and hybrid cloud environments.

“A recent Gartner contextual research study revealed that end user organizations overwhelmingly consider x86 virtualization an essential foundational component of private cloud infrastructure-as-a-service architectures,” said Chris Wolf, Research VP, Gartner. “In addition, many organizations consider the x86 VM as the default infrastructure platform for new applications. Cost savings and business agility remain the two most frequently cited drivers behind both virtualization and cloud computing investments.”
VMware vSphere 5: Advancing the Cloud Infrastructure Foundation
VMware vSphere, the most trusted, most widely deployed virtualization platform in the world, forms the foundation of VMware’s cloud infrastructure suite. Architected to support the broadest range of virtual and cloud infrastructure needs, VMware vSphere is broadly utilized by enterprises, small and midsized businesses (SMBs), public cloud service providers and as the foundation for the growing virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) market. An increasing number of customers are standardizing on VMware vSphere as their strategic IT platform.
VMware vSphere 5 will support virtual machines (VMs) that are up to four times more powerful than previous versions with up to 1 terabyte of memory and 32 virtual CPUs. These VMs will be able to process in excess of 1 million I/O operations per second, which will far surpass the requirements of even the most resource-intensive applications. When combined with VMware vSphere 5′s enhanced, simplified High Availability, these VM scalability and performance gains will allow customers to run their most business-critical applications with confidence in their performance and availability.

VMware vSphere 5 will also introduce three new flagship features that extend the platform’s unique datacenter resource management capabilities, delivering intelligent policy management to support an automated “set it and forget it” approach to managing datacenter resources, including server deployment and storage management. Customers define policies and establish the operating parameters, and VMware vSphere 5 does the rest. VMware vSphere 5′s new Auto-Deploy, Profile-Driven Storage and Storage DRS features can save a customer with a 1,000-VM environment up to a full year of administrator time. ”With VMware vSphere® 5 and the cloud infrastructure suite, the task of virtualizing our business-critical applications will be greatly simplified,” said YP Chien, information intelligence manager, Kingston Technology. “This will help accelerate Kingston Technology’s journey into cloud computing to achieve ultimate operational performance and business agility.”

All built upon the foundation of VMware vSphere 5, VMware is bringing to market a comprehensive suite of technologies that will deliver the automation, self-service and security capabilities customers need:
• VMware vShield 5 – Addressing the top enterprise concerns about cloud computing – security, control and compliance – the vShield product family overcomes the limits of traditional security solutions by delivering an adaptive, software-based security model designed for virtual and cloud environments. vShield 5 will include new Data Security capabilities that will enable IT to quickly identify risk exposures resulting from unprotected sensitive data, isolate applications with different levels of trust and migrate security policies as data and applications move between different virtual systems and apply the same policies in public clouds.
• VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager 5 – Extending this proven disaster recovery solution, vCenter Site Recovery Manager 5 will introduce built-in VMware vSphere replication capabilities that will allow customers to double the number of protected applications for the same cost while supporting heterogeneous storage configurations in the primary and backup sites. New automated failback and planned migration capabilities will allow customers to orchestrate migrations for disaster avoidance and to support planned maintenance activities and datacenter consolidations.
• VMware vCloud Director 1.5 – Enabling a self-service model for provisioning infrastructure services across internal and external sources, VMware vCloud Director 1.5 will enable IT to dramatically reduce the time required to provision new servers. New Linked Clone capabilities will reduce provisioning time to as few as 5 seconds, while also reducing storage costs by as much as 60 percent, all while managing resources from a single pane of glass.
• VMware vSphere Storage Appliance™ – a new software product that will bring the rich business continuity and automated resource management capabilities of VMware vSphere to SMBs without the cost and complexity of shared storage. The new VMware vSphere Storage Appliance will transform server internal storage into shared pools of storage enabling SMB customers to take full advantage of the unique business continuity and automation capabilities of VMware vSphere, including High Availability, vMotion®, and Distributed Resource Scheduler™.

VMware’s cloud infrastructure suite is supported by more than 25,000 partners, including technology partners and independent software vendors (ISVs), solution providers, service providers, and systems integrators, as well as every major global hardware manufacturer. VMware’s partner community continues to mature as the company consistently sets the bar for innovation in virtualization and cloud technologies.

New Licensing Model Extends Benefits of Pooling Beyond Technology
With the introduction of VMware vSphere 5, VMware is evolving the product’s licensing to lay the foundation for customers to adopt a more “cloud-like” IT cost model based on consumption and value rather than physical components and capacity. VMware vSphere 5 will continue to be licensed per processor (CPU), however, VMware is eliminating the current, restrictive physical entitlements of CPU cores and physical RAM per server and replacing them with a single, virtualization-based entitlement of pooled virtual memory, or vRAM.
Pooled vRAM is the total amount of memory configured to all VMs in a customer’s environment. Each VMware vSphere 5 CPU license will entitle the purchaser to a specific amount of vRAM, which can be pooled across the entire vSphere environment to enable a true cloud or utility based IT consumption model. There are no restrictions on how vRAM capacity can be distributed among VMs: a customer can configure many small VMs or one large VM. VMware vSphere has made it possible for customers to maximize hardware utilization and efficiency by pooling CPU, memory, storage and networking. With these licensing changes, VMware is extending the concept of pooling – one of the foundational elements of cloud computing – beyond technology to the business, allowing the pooling of licenses for maximum utilization and value.

Author: www.vmware.com

VPN not only helps you to access your work machine back in the office, but it can also provide consumers more secure Internet browsing or virtual LANs. Best of all, there are some good free choices available, too. When you think of VPN, if you think of anything, it’s probably not free VPN clients for consumers. But setting up and using a VPN (Virtual Private Networking) has become much less of a hassle recently. What was formerly a technology used mostly by businesses to allow employees to access the company network remotely has turned into a multi-purpose technology. Now VPN means everything from enterprise VPN hardware to on-the-fly software solutions simple enough for use by consumers who want to provide remote access to their home networks. And it’s not just the technology that has become more accessible—the price, too, is right for everyone, with several good free VPN clients now available.

Traditional VPN
VPN traditionally has been a locally-deployed client/server solution. You would build a VPN server to manage and negotiate the connections and install clients to the machines that needed remote access. This is still the way many businesses set up VPNs. Organizations often have strict security and log in requirements. They need to know who is accessing the company network and when. Sometimes this information is used for billing consultants or employees who work off site. Cisco’s VPN client software is one of the most widely-used in business. Some businesses use turnkey VPN appliances. Cisco, Juniper, and Barracuda are a few companies that provide such products. These appliances are often easier for a business to deploy than building a VPN server, and they often feature very sophisticated and granular security and management options. Of the many open source traditional VPN solutions available, OpenVPN is one of the most widely used. With features like blowfish or AES encryption, certificate-based SSL connectivity, free clients for Windows, Linux, UNIX and Mac, site-to-site and host-to-site configuration options, it is not difficult to see why is has become a favourite among open-source enthusiasts.

Non-Traditional VPN
Of course, not everyone needs traditional VPN. Some people just want to be able to connect to their work machine without a lot of hassle, albeit that this usually implies without much in the way of security. Others may just want to set up VPN to collaborate or host PC game-playing sessions with friends. There are solutions out there for quick and easy VPN, but not all of them are true VPN solutions, providing a secure, encrypted data connection between two clients via the internet. True VPN is different to remote control solutions like Team Viewer or GoToMy PC . These remote access solutions are designed more for accessing a single machine’s files, or for desktop sharing. They are usually cloud-based and require client software, but are ofter not the choice of the security conscious.

VPN solutions can allow you to create virtual LANs. LogMeIn’s Hamachi allows for this. It’s a free solution for a small business that may not have a physical LAN established but wants to create one with users and shared resources virtually. Some VPNs are used more to create a secure data connection for browsing the Internet. OpenVNS’s Shield Exchange acts more as an anonymizer, blocking your IP address when you access websites and guarding against online threats. It’s good additional security to have in place when connecting to the Internet at public hotspots. Other free VPN solutions are for more casual users. Wippien is embraced by gamers because it makes hosting games easy and has built-in chat functionality.

Author: www.pcmag.com

The Progression of the SATA Interface
When parallel SCSI and parallel ATA were developed over 20 years ago, their roles in IT infrastructure were fundamentally distinct: servers needed the speed and reliability of SCSI storage, while economical ATA storage was adequate for desktop use. However, these parallel storage buses became problematic as the demand for faster throughput increased, discouraging further development. By contrast, serial interfaces were growing by leaps and bounds. Simpler, faster and more robust, serial architecture was clearly the wave of the future and serial ATA (SATA) was born. SATA was designed to replace the older parallel ATA (PATA) interface. SATA and PATA interfaces use the same logical command structures but have different physical (cable, connector and electrical) characteristics. The SATA interface employs the use of two pairs of high-speed conductors compared to 16 low-speed conductors used in the PATA standard.

The SATA 1.0 revision achieved maximum data transfer rates of 1.5Gb/s (gigabits per second) a slight improvement over the existing PATA specification of 133MB/s.
With the release of SATA 2.0, the maximum data transfers doubled to 3Gb/s. In addition, SATA 2.0 introduced a new feature call Native Command Queuing (NCQ). NCQ techniques provide flexibility to the hard drive to change the order in which host commands are executed; if three commands are sent to the hard drive in order A, B, C, the drive can execute these commands in any order, such as B, C, A. This allows a hard drive to improve efficiency and speed by reducing the number of disk rotations needed to achieve a given sequence of host commands. SATA 2.0 with NCQ represented a significant performance improvement in the evolution of the SATA standard.

SATA 3.0 is the most recent standard, which was officially released on May 27, 2009. Once again, SATA 3.0 doubled the maximum data transfer rate from 3Gb/s to 6Gb/s. In addition, new NCQ commands have been defined to enable isochronous data transfers, primarily intended to improve performance in high-bandwidth applications such as streaming high-definition video. SATA 6Gb/s products have already shown up in the marketplace, with motherboard solutions from the likes of Asus and Gigabyte as well as the first hard drive supporting the SATA 6Gb/s interface, the Seagate® Barracuda® XT drive.

Why Is SATA 6Gb/s Needed Now?
Today, hard drives for PCs don’t seem to be pushing the limits of the SATA 3Gb/s interface. The highest-performance desktop drives on the market deliver about 1.5Gb/s in sustained data transfer rates. Add another 0.5Gb/s in command overhead that is not available for general data transfers, and you still have 1Gb/s of headroom before you bump into the 3Gb/s ceiling. But it won’t be long before hard drive technology catches up to the SATA 2.0 standard. Seagate estimates that hard drive transfer rates will exceed 2.5Gb/s by mid-2011. Add in the 0.5Gb/s command overhead, and the SATA 2.0 standard is out of gas. See Figure 1.0.
Since the transition to any new computing standard always involves careful coordination with all impacted players in the ecosystem, it’s vital the technology be introduced well before the need becomes critical. In the case of SATA hard drive controllers, device drivers and storage device interfaces began a migration to the 6Gb/s speed in late 2009. This transition to the new, faster standard will likely become mainstream by early 2011.

Early Adopter Benefits
If hard drives don’t yet fill the SATA 3.0 pipe at 6Gb/s speeds, then you may wonder what would be the benefit to adopting the technology now. It’s all about cache. Early adopters of SATA 6Gb/s can expect to see performance improvements. Cache-efficient desktop applications such as gaming, graphics design and digital video editing can experience immediate incremental performance using a SATA 6Gb/s interface.
Big Cache + SATA 6Gb/s = Faster

To tap into the 6Gb/s interface speed potential, hard drive vendors are equipping new drives with bigger, faster cache memories. Once data is pre-fetched and stored in cache before actually being requested by the application, there is no delay in retrieving the information from the media. In these cases, the faster transfer rates of SATA 6Gb/s can be exploited. Again, intelligent pre-fetching and caching algorithms are common in applications such as video editing and gaming, where it’s easy for the application to predict what data is likely to be needed next.
In comparative performance testing conducted by Seagate, two 500GB/disk, 7200-RPM hard drives were tested under PC Vantage and the new Microsoft Windows 7 operating system. The primary difference between these two drives is cache size (32MB vs. 64MB) and SATA interface speed (3Gb/s vs. 6Gb/s). Based on this testing, a clear benefit can be seen with SATA 6Gb/s speeds, especially when coupled with larger caches, with overall performance improvements of 22 percent.

RAID 0—The Ultimate Performance Booster
For true power junkies, an incremental investment in a duplicate drive configured in a RAID 0 setup can yield dramatic performance improvements. Given that RAID 0 stripes the data across two identical hard drives, effectively doubling the single drive data throughput potential, the faster SATA 6Gb/s bus further amplifies the benefit. Testing on a RAID 0 system was conducted by Marvell, an early supplier of SATA 6Gb/s-enabled chipsets. The Marvell test system equipped with a Seagate Barracuda XT hard drive was able to achieve maximum sustained burst rates of 260MB/s. This is faster than many SSD drives and can be delivered for a substantially lower cost per gigabyte (and in higher capacities) than solid state alternatives.

Conclusion
The computer industry has a well-established history of continued performance enhancements. Many times experts have questioned the need for these newer and faster versions of technology, speculating that they simply weren’t needed or could not be effectively utilized by the user community. Without exception, the industry has responded and found new ways to exploit bigger, faster and more efficient enhancements in information technology, resulting in more sophisticated, more valuable and more productive solutions. The march to faster performance within the SATA standard is just another example. While implementation of SATA 6Gb/s will be among early adoptors for the next few months, don’t be surprised to see it take hold as a mainstream, high-performance enabler in the very near future.

Author: http://www.seagate.com

Citrix XenDesktop lets you deliver on-demand virtual desktop and applications anywhere your users work, anywhere your business takes you, to any type of device, bringing unprecedented flexibility and mobility to your workforce. XenDesktop unlocks the full productivity and creativity of every worker while helping the entire organization adapt rapidly to new challenges and opportunities.

Enables productivity for any user, anywhere
To put the best talent to work for your organization, you need to be able to deliver their desktops wherever they are in the world—and wherever they go—any time they need them. With XenDesktop, your users can take advantage of virtual workstyles such as teleworking and home-sourcing to integrate computing more seamlessly into their lives, and never lose productivity just because they’re away from the office.

Increases user choice and flexibility
Today’s workers are more savvy than ever when it comes to the latest mobile devices. XenDesktop empowers them to use smartphones, tablets, personal laptops—any device they choose—as a seamless part of their corporate desktop experience. That makes your organization the kind of place the best workers of the digital generation want to be—and by saying Yes! to their preferences, you inspire them to drive further innovation in everything they do.

Improves business agility
Competitive advantage depends on your ability to get work done the right way, in the right place, at the right time. Fast, flexible virtual desktop delivery with XenDesktop helps you adapt quickly and cost-effectively to business changes from mergers to growth initiatives to strategies like workshifting and offshoring. As global markets demand more fluid and responsive virtual organizations, XenDesktop lets you deploy full desktop computing resources wherever they’re needed in seconds.

Makes desktop management simpler, more secure and lower-cost
By transforming complex, distributed desktops into a simple, on-demand service, XenDesktop frees you from the costs and constraints of traditional computing architectures. Centralized delivery, management and control of virtual desktops bring new levels of efficiency to your IT organization while streamlining security and compliance. Self-service application provisioning, simplified helpdesk support and support for mobile and virtual workstyles give you a foundation to leverage a new generation of IT models
and strategies.

Author: http://www.citrix.com

Purchasing a first server is a big investment for any small business, so they will want to protect it. Trend Micro’s™ Worry-Free Business Security Services is an affordable, but extremely powerful hosted security solution. It provides anywhere, anytime protection for the server plus multiple PCs and laptops against the very latest threats and data loss. It’s extremely easy to use.

SAFER – anywhere, anytime protection
Worry-Free Business Security Services protects all of a company’s computers, wherever they are, and is always on so it’s always secure. Its Smart Feedback mechanism ensures businesses are constantly protected against the very latest threats identified by the Trend Micro Smart Protection Network™. Each day it protects millions of enterprises, small businesses and home users around the globe by scanning and checking over 21 billion emails, files and web addresses. As a result, NSS Labs ranks the Trend Micro Smart Protection Network as #1 for protection.

SMARTER – fast, pro-active threat prevention
To ensure maximum efficiency Worry-Free Business Security Services’ unique Smart Scan technology provides faster protection and takes 80% of the workload off the customer’s own network. As well as blocking 95% of spam, its Web Filtering prevents access to malicious web sites where over 90% of threats are found. Its Behaviour Monitoring adds another layer of protection by proactively identifying any abnormal and potential dangerous activity, while its Instant Messaging Content Filtering restricts the loss of sensitive corporate data.

SIMPLER – easy to set-up and manage
As a hosted service Worry-Free Business Security Services is incredibly easy to set-up – a customer can register online and receive instant access to the service. Once online, all of a company’s PCs and servers can be connected and protected using a simple process. And with access to a secure, web-based management console small business owners have the peace of mind that the security status of their business is only a mouse click away – anywhere. The service’s Enhanced Security Dashboard provides a simple traffic light status that quickly highlights areas for action to optimise protection.

Author: http://www.trendmicroaffinity.com

There is a lot of talk in the IT industry about cloud computing. Much of it is confused and confusing. There are vendors already claiming to offer it as a service when in reality they are just pushing existing hosted technology solutions. For many hard pressed IT managers it seems to be yet another ‘IT solution looking for a problem’. Just another buzzword in a jargon-heavy industry… So what is the truth behind the hype and what can it mean for your business? What is cloud computing really?

A recent survey by NTT Communications* identified that 62% of the surveyed CIOs felt that definitions of cloud computing were unclear. But whilst there is no general consensus on a definition, there are some early examples in the market that most people seem to agree exemplify what cloud computing is all about.
Google Docs is a service that allows people to privately share simple documents. User 1 creates the document in the Google Docs environment and then invites others to view and edit it. All of the users are looking and changing the same physical document in real time, but none of them has any knowledge of the actual location of the document (on which server in which country) or of the underlying technologies that are being used to deliver the view/edit service. In the case of Google Docs it is a free service, but in cloud computing terms it would more normally be offered as a subscription service with either a monthly usage fee or Pay As You Go metering. Examples of this can be found with service providers such as salesforce.com and NetSuite who provide fully-functional CRM systems via the internet on a rental-only basis. For many users the model adopted by Google Docs, salesforce.com and NetSuite is a great way to solve the problem of processing and sharing information without the cost and risk overhead of setting up the environment yourself. But for more commercially confidential users the concern over not knowing the location or technology base for the application can be a worry. In these instances the concept of having a private cloud has evolved.

Private cloud computing offers users the same experience of using software without needing to know its location but within a tightly controlled and protected environment. This environment would be created by the customer organisation itself or by outsourcing to a managed hosting provider like RapidHost. Access to the cloud applications and services would be limited to registered users only and data archived to the organisation’s own standards. Using a private cloud approach dilutes the principle benefit of cloud computing, that is not having to bear the cost and risk burden of setting up the systems, but does offer improved data security/confidentiality. It is perfectly possible to make use of both public and private cloud computing with each offering benefits for different application classes.

Why could cloud computing be of use in my business? Cloud computing has a number of cost and efficiency benefits for businesses of all sizes. Initial benefit areas cover online storage (primary and secondary), backup services, CRM, word processing and online email (favoured by over half of companies according to NTT Communications*). However, further areas are being developed all of the time with new services being launched almost daily. The logic behind delivering IT services within a cloud approach is compelling. A specialist provider builds all of the infrastructure (servers, networks, software, support teams) on a large scale basis thus reaping the economies of scale for both cost and efficiency of operation. Users then subscribe to use a scalable portion of that environment on some sort of Pay As You Go basis, and in doing so are benefitting from a more efficient and robust IT environment than they could otherwise afford to build themselves.

On the surface it is very much an elegant win-win solution to some complex, and often expensive, technical issues. But there are downsides. The principle one being centred on trust. To choose to use cloud computing to manage genuinely business-critical systems requires a very high level of trust in the cloud service provider. Not only is the robustness of the service a risk, so is the absolute protection of confidential information. This is why the early adopting organisations are taking a piecemeal approach. Initially they are using a cloud approach for low-risk applications where system unavailability or data security breach is not a major concern – using Google Docs to share certain information with suppliers and customers for example. Where they have greater confidence in a service provider they will ‘risk’ further cloud solutions such as online data backup for their office servers and PCs, and online CRM. This cautious approach is backed up by NTT Communications’* research, with those planning to adopt cloud computing with the next two years only committing 1-10% of their IT spend to it. The ‘moral’ seems to be to adopt a very pragmatic approach to cloud computing and judge each service need on its individual cost/benefit merits whilst allowing for security and availability risk.

Who pays for cloud computing? Ultimately the users pay for the service. The same is true of most pooled services. Sometimes the ‘payment’ is in the form of accepting advertising, like using Google’s search engine, and other times it is directly funded (such as salesforce.com and NetSuite). The cost advantage that cloud computing will bring when adoption levels are greatly increased is that the service providers can purchase equipment, network bandwidth, support and management systems on a grand scale, thus the unit cost is very much lower. Even allowing for the profit that the service provider needs to make, cloud computing will offer a lower cost computing environment than the equivalent Build It And Operate It Yourself for the majority of IT uses. However, we are at the early stages of mass adoption which means that service providers are investing ahead of the revenue/profit return. In the short term this could result in higher than optimum pricing and the risk of financial failure for overstretched providers.

Will cloud computing ever really catch on? It has already caught on. We all use cloud computing services today, but don’t necessarily use that terminology. Google’s search engine is a cloud computing service. The BBC’s website is a cloud computing service. Microsoft’s automatic update service for their PC operating systems is a cloud computing service.
The real debate here is about when this approach to IT service delivery will break into mainstream business applications, like office productivity, accounting, design, manufacturing and so on. Will there come a time when small, medium and large businesses have very little internal IT equipment and software beyond simple desktop devices? Well it seems that a time like that will come … but not for a while. Gartner Group* believe that it’ll take until 2017 before cloud computing becomes mainstream. However it is estimated that already around 60% of UK businesses are looking to invest in Software as a Service (cloud) solutions in the near future (source: NTT Communications*) so there is real movement going on.
RapidHost believes that cloud computing is the way forward purely because of the compelling financial and efficiency logic. Once the industry has overcome the security and availability concerns that organisations naturally have, there will be very little reason to not adopt it, even if initial forays are using a mixture of public and private clouds.

Author:

www.rapidhost.co.uk

If you’re using the Linux operating system, you can choose from among numerous browsers that range in scope and feature. But despite all the choices, most Linux users are familiar with only one or two. (Firefox and Chrome top the list.) Here we highlight 10 browsers for the Linux operating system, and although some might be similar, they are not the same.
1: Chrome
Chrome is, without question, the fastest browser on the playground. None of the competition even comes close to its speed. On the Linux operating system, you will find two versions: Chrome and Chromium Browser. By default, most Debian-based distributions can install Chromium Browser when you search for it in the Add/Remove Software tool. Chromium is the open source version of the Chrome browser and works as well. It stands up, feature-for-feature, against its proprietary brethren.
2: Firefox
Firefox has been the go-to browser for the Linux operating system for a long time. Most users don’t realize that Firefox is the basis for many other browsers (such as Iceweasel). These “other” versions of Firefox are nothing more than rebrands. Most Linux distributions come with Firefox installed and set as the default browser.
3: Opera
For some time now, Opera has attempted to dethrone all other browsers for the top browser spot. Although this has not happened, Opera is still an outstanding choice. You won’t find Opera in the Add/Remove Software tool, but the Opera download page will auto-detect the flavor of Linux you are using and offer the appropriate download. In most cases (the exception being Chrome), when you open the download, your package manager will automatically open and ask if you want to install the package.
4: Konqueror
Konqueror used to be the default “everything” tool for the KDE desktop. Both file manager and Web browser, Konqueror looked to be the king of the Linux desktop. But then the KDE team decided to introduce Dolphin as the default file manager, and Konqueror no longer stood as the one-stop-shop on the KDE desktop. But Konqueror was (and is) a fine browser, and it offers something no other Web browser offers: multiple rendering engines. You can have Konqueror with the default KHTML or with Webkit. By default, Konqueror will install using KHTML. To get the WebKit version, install rekonq.
5: Lynx
For the longest time, Lynx was the best Web browser available. That was back when browsing the Web was done to read and read only. Lynx is a text-based Web browser that is viewed from within a terminal window. If you’re using a GUI-less server and you need to look up something on the Internet, a tool like Lynx is indispensable. Just don’t expect it to behave like your standard browser. You can’t “click” links, you won’t see images, and you certainly can’t view Flash or Java applets.
6: Epiphany
Believe it or not, Epiphany is the default browser for the GNOME desktop. Its goal is to allow the user to concentrate on content and not the Web browser application. When you install Epiphany, you will be pleasantly surprised at how well it works. To get the full experience, make sure you install the epiphany-extension package as well. This package will allow you to use various plug-ins and tools you wouldn’t have otherwise. Epiphany does suffer from serious crashes when trying to view Flash or Javascript-heavy sites. This serious flaw may disappear as Epiphany evolves and ages.
7: Midori
Midori aims to be fast and lightweight — a goal many browsers strive for. But where many others fail, Midori succeeds with flying colors. This browser is light and fast and doesn’t suffer from the same crash-prone nature as does Epiphany. The only downfall many users might find is that it’s not festooned with extensions, plug-ins, and themes. But Midori is a simple-to-use, incredibly fast WebKit-based browser that will have you browsing with speed many other browsers only dream of.
8: Arora
Arora is a QtWebKit-enabled browser, and it’s not limited to Linux. On top of being lightweight, fast, and easy to use, Arora is cross platform (Linux, Mac, and Windows). I’ve tried Arora on all three platforms and I have to say it’s impressive. For a browser that gets very little publicity, Arora is one of the finest. After experiencing this browser (on all platforms, especially), you would think it’s coming from one of the larger, better-known development teams. And considering Arora is still very much in beta (as of this writing, it’s in release 0.2.2 on the Linux platform and 0.10.0 on the Windows platform), you would expect much more erratic crash-prone behavior. Not the case with Arora.
9: Dooble
Dooble is another WebKit browser written in Qt4. Dooble’s primary claim is that it’s designed to safeguard the privacy of its users. If you look carefully, you won’t find many differences in what other browsers are doing for security. But you will find a few other features that are unique to Dooble, such as the included Desktop. The Dooble Desktop is a unique tab that allows you to add application launchers as well as a desktop background. Although you can install Dooble from within your package manager, you more than likely will be installing a very out of date release (Ubuntu 10.10 installed version 0.07, whereas the source file on the Dooble Web site is at version 1.14.) NOTE: If you do install Dooble from source, you will also need to have Qt compiler tools installed (such as qt4-qmake).
10: NetSurf
NetSurf claims to be “small as a mouse, fast as a cheetah, and available for free.” From my experience, NetSurf is quite a fast browser. In fact, it might be one of the faster browsers you will find. However, that speed comes at a price. Since NetSurf is in early development, you will find much that’s not supported. A lot of the Web Standards compliance has yet to be complete, so features such as plug-in support are nonexistent. But if you are looking for a bare-bones browser to do what the Web was originally designed for (get information), NetSurf is a good choice. Even in its infancy, NetSurf offers ad blocking, buffered rendering, browser history, memory cache, printing, scale view, themes, and much more.

Authur: www.techrepublic.com

It may seem like a bizarre and idiotic statement, but some beg the question “Is the PC outdated?” Technology is no longer tied down to a desktop computer, and is not even limited to a portable laptop or notebook. In fact, smart phones function in many ways as well as a computer, making some techies claim that the desktop will someday be on a list of archaic items like the Atari and cassette tape now are. Of course, this day is a long way away, but for most individuals, their computing needs are performed by a laptop or their smartphone – or iPad.

So long as businesses rely on desktop computers for their office networks, the desktop has not breathed its last breathe. However, the moment someone creates an alternative with as much reliability and power as the traditional desktop, you may be able to safely claim the end of the desktop era.

While businesses and offices may rely on this dinosaur, individuals have certainly celebrated a new era in computers. Your smart phone can perform the basic functions of those tedious office tasks and you can complete them from anywhere you are. With a virtual desktop in your pocket, purse, or custom gemmed phone protector, you can sort through emails, reply to emails, compose emails and even open attachments. Most phones also allow you to create documents and upload them to emails right on your phone.

Beyond managing your email, cell phones are one-upping computers by bringing you all the wonders of social media, right to your phone. Life happens when you’re away from your desk. What better way to instantly share status updates than by using your phone the moment it’s happening? So you see the craziest thing you’ve ever seen; take a picture of it with your mobile device and upload it directly to your social network profile. Presto! Your computer is now outdone by the cell phone you carry around with you every second of the day.

Cell phones are not the only device vying for a spot above your PC. Electronic book devices and handheld mobile pads, like the iPad, all take away a part of the shelf life of the traditional desktop. The documents and books stores on your PC can now by light and convenient to carry around in your purse. Nooks and e-book readers are no bigger than the size of a magazine, often times smaller. These devices have the capacity to store hundreds of books or thousands of documents. There is no bulky laptop to carry around – one sleek device puts knowledge at your fingertips.

Mobile book devices do more than just store electronic pages, many of them allow you to access Wi-Fi and surf the web. Imagine being able to read your textbook and do some research all right from your mobile device. This opens the door for you to multitask and never waste another minute of your day. Suddenly, you can study on the bus, in between classes, from the park, at an airport – virtually anywhere you are.

Make no mistake, the desktop is not down and out yet, but there are more convenient and innovative devices already available. Who knows what is to come and how it will affect the longevity of the traditional desktop units we are familiar with today.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Sarah_E_Little