The move at Cincinnati Bell to desktop virtualization using VMware Infrastructure 2 and Sun Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) is the subject of an InformationWeek article by Charles Babcock, who writes that the company is in the first stages of a move to shift certain call center, help desk, sales and service desk employees from Windows 2000 PCs to Sun Ray thin clients.

Cincinnati Bell project leader Jeff Harvey explained the move to Babcock saying that the company has no choice: "Most of it [legacy infrastructure] is running on leased assets. We have no choice," but to move to something else, and thin clients are a less-expensive alternative to upgrading hundreds of PCs.

Some of Cincinnati Bell's computer users already have moved to Windows XP, according to Harvey, who also said that small groups will remain on either Windows 2000 or Windows 2003, running an aging version of Lotus Notes. Some few employees will run Windows XP Professional, and two software quality-assurance testers will require virtual machines running Vista, so that the company can have assurance that the new software it's writing internally and for customers will work under a future Vista upgrade. The host hardware on which the VMs are located is likely to be running XP and, Harvey said, will at some future point become Vista. One of the advantages of being able to keep some users as they are, without an operating system and application upgrade, "minimizes business disruption," which makes desktop virtualization an even more compelling move.

Cincinnati Bell selected Sun VDI because it works on top of VMware Infrastructure 3, which Cincinnati Bell already had installed, and it also supports a range of user interfaces.

"Sun VDI translates the Windows Remote Desktop Protocol for use on various user systems, including Linux, Solaris for x86, Macintosh, various Windows versions, and the Sun Ray thin client," Babcock writes. "VMware generates the virtual machines, and Sun's Desktop Connector sits between the VMware pool and users. Desktop Connector, part of VDI 2.0, provides policy-based management of user connections."

Harvey pronounced the Sun Ray thin client "... a great thin-client solution," noting the expected reduction in administrative costs during future operations. With the Sun solution, Cincinnati Bell will be able to upgrade 800 users by merely updating 12 "golden images" versus 800 systems. When considering thin clients, Harvey says you cannot deny "their low cost is a factor." [...read more...]

From the latest issue:

Recent Blog Entries as of July 3, 2009, 7:16 pm
'Managing ZFS File Systems in Solaris Containers' Demonstrating Out-of-the-box Performance Gains with memcached-1.3.1 The Father of Java on His Progeny's Future Patch Checked Advanced (PCA) - Solaris OS Patch Management Utility VirtualBox 3.0 Released	Doing a Mobile Install of OpenSolaris and VirtualBox on a Laptop Latest Support and Key Features of Solaris Cluster for SAP NetWeaver Stack Solaris News Bites White Paper: Getting Ahead of The Trend in the Mobility Market Intel Xeon 5500 Processor Series on OpenSolaris, Solaris, and Linux
Blog RSS Feed