Virtual Bridges VERDE 4 introduces RDP 7 brokering, web interface

Yet another example of a too-little-too-late VDI product. Should we rejoice at the fact that they finally has a management console? I mean, credentials pass-through isn't even available, as is evident from the demo. And who cares about VERDE's own protocol or the NX protocol? Please show me what this product has that just about any existing product on the market, including VMware's sucky View, doesn't already have? Why do I want to use this pathetically inferior product instead of, say, Microsoft's out-of-the-box VDI, which is vastly superior to this POS???

Thanks for providing the demo video from the Synergy show floor!

edgeseeker: VERDE has a number of unique features but given your sarcasm, I doubt you really care to get an answer.

For one they seem to care enough about Linux to include it as a supported platform for Virtual Desktops.  The NX protocol is specific to Linux since, so far as I know, there isn't a Windows nor Mac version of the NX server.  I'm guessing you don't care about that but to me, as someone who has been using Linux desktops for years, it is an important feature.  They have also stated that they will adopt SPICE as an additional alternative when it is ready.

I must admit, not having used any VDI solution before, I'm not familiar enough with all of the other products to give you a complete answer but another feature of Virtual Bridges is their pricing model.  They  give you all of the components at one price including the Branch and Leaf.

They are also fairly flexible with regards to authentication and you can use Active Directory, generic LDAP and even NIS.  I'm not sure if they have a single-sign-on feature or not but given their support for multiple authentication methods it wouldn't surprise me if single-sign-on works under certain conditions and not under others.  As shown in the video, the desktops they were connecting to were from their hosted solution on Rackspace and it might be that single-sign-on with Rackspace as the delivery method isn't currently available.

Being KVM-based they also allow you to pick from more than one Linux distribution for the virtualization host.  To me they have a lot of flexibility.

If you want to know more, I'd recommend you check out there admin guide which is freely available.

<a href="www.vbridges.com/.../a>

It would be good to see Verde do more to enable Linux to become a first class citizen on the endpoint. Extend RDP to offer better Linux features. I would focus on scale, and making the solution simple to implement. Very easy for them to disrupt View due to all the weaknesses in PCoIP. Smart to make RDP a first class citizen. They will struggle against HDX, but still could capture meaningful market share if they can get folks to implement. We all know View is not implemented at scale anywhere a huge problem for Vmware, and just a sweetener for vShpere/ESX sales.

I’d also say focus on cloud based deployments, we’ve also seen Quest get nowhere in the Enterprise with their RDP + offerings.

@Scott - What's sarcastic is the fact that you've somehow convinced yourself that Linux is a viable desktop alternative to Windows. What are your apps? A web browser and OpenOffice? Good luck! But you're not alone out there as I'm sure you'll find 2 or 3 others wanting Linux on the desktop. And good luck with NX and SPICE, especially when it comes to printing and device redirection.

@AppDetective - I don't know what Quest's enterprise penetration is at this point, but when VDI  made its debut 4 years ago, it was all about replacing physical desktops with virtual desktops. How much of that do you trhink has been accomplished now that 2010 is coming to a close? In a nutshell: anemic!!! None of the vendors, including VMware and Citrix, have been able to make a dent in the desktop market. Why? Because the whole concept is flawed. The right aproach to desktop virtualization is a Terminal Server-like solution offering full isolation. Until Microsoft comes to the realization that RDS has to evolve into a Parallels Virtuozzo type solution, VDI will continue to remain a niche market, just like RDS has remained a niche market since its inception.

@edgeseeker/attentionSeeker

You arrogant sod – that’s not my opinion, that’s fact.

We have 7000 desktops and just over 1000 of them have a requirement for Linux and this requirement is counting. I can think of many more organizations with the same requirement.

Much of Europe has higher ratios of Linux to Windows in the enterprise, education, healthcare and local government.

“too little too late”? Isn’t this meant to be the year of POCs and PILOTS in the hosted desktop space? How’s it too late? Given the small percentage of the take up of hosted desktops/VDI it would seem nobody else has blown the market away with their products. It’s never too late.

I’ve seen credentials pass-through working with VERDE.

You seem to have a lot to say with no real clout to back it up with.

Not @edgeseeker

we’re a vWorkspace customer however linux desktops have been a pain point for some time. There are very few good scalable solutions out there. We’re seriously looking at VERDE just for Linux desktop hosting and so far so good.

@Daniel - Thanks for the compliment; however, I'd rather steer away from the verbal attacks and stick to the facts. First, congrats on using vWorkspace as it's certainly a fine, feature-rich product, and in many ways, superior to its peers. But rather than looking at VERDE for your Linux support, you should apply pressure on your existing vendor to provide some level of support for Linux desktops. But understandably, we live in a predominantly Windows world, even though several European parties have been desperately trying to displace Windows with a cheaper Linux alternative. While I do admit there is some hint of requirement for Linux desktop support out there, the economics don't come close to justifying any appreciable investment on the part of any of the major desktop virtualization vendors. The company that owns the desktop app layer also owns the OS layer, and whether we like it or not, that's Microsoft. So again, we live in a Windows desktop world, and we will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.

As an example, take Leostream. It's one of the very early VDI providers. They too offer Linux support, including NX protocol support, among others. Where are they today? How come they didn't even get mentioned in the most recent VDI shoot-out? Simple... They're "Yet another Broker" with no game-changing features to make them stand out. They've been getting one round of money after another for the last couple of years to stay afloat, and they'll eventually go down like many small me-too players have done so in the past. Think NewMoon, Jetro, etc.

I'm not trying to be arrogant; I'm simply trying to provide clarity.

Namaste.

@edgeseeker I agree with you to a point, but here is some food for thought.

The market is still early, and I don’t believe that either VMware or Citrix are under and delusion that this model will replace all PCs. They only need it to replace 10% of the market over the next 3-5 years and there is a massive payout for them and their shareholders. To drive broader adoption there are barriers, mostly cost, management, scale and user experience. Some of those can be attacked with TS, or with concepts like containers. I think you know my view on Virtuozzo. But for the record, very little traction in the Windows world and unless MS buys into this, it’s going nowhere. I’d rather bet on RingCube if I was going to try this path as they can virtualize kernel objects and have a much better app compat story.

Getting back to adoption. Citrix just claimed they sold 1.5 million XD licenses in the first two quarter after availability. Of course none of that has been implemented, (we know the XD teams quality sucks, can’t say more otherwise Brian will get upset at me again :-) ) and I am sure much of it is XA as part of XD. However one needs to understand that XA etc are all compromises as compared to a desktop experience. VDI gives you the most flexibility like a desktop if that is what you want. Folks implementing today are not cost driven for VDI, they are agility/flexibility driven. Plenty of blogs explain that. The single image nonsense that the vendors speak about to reduce cost is not achievable with today’s technology. It’s a vision, a good one. To get there, innovation is needed. Some startups are trying to address is, the layer guys etc. I have yet to hear clear direction on what the leaders are going to do. Until then, I agree with you, it will be for niche use cases and not go much further. Hence all the interest in XC. IMO, all the models need work and hence there is a ton of opportunity and white space still to be explored. It’s too easy to get sucked into the do it with XA mindset because it’s cheap. That is true only if you are in a highly structured organization and don’t have a need for much user flexibility. I don’t see that as the long term model, it will frustrate users as they expect more flexibility from their desktop. If Desktop Virtualization can’t provide that, it’s back to fat PCs I’m am afraid and all the nightmares associated with that heavy broken model. At the end of the day, and it’s not my quote, “It’s a desktop.”

@Appdetective - This is indeed good feedback. However, VMware has estimated the size of the VDI opportunity to be as much as 20x the size of the server virtualization opportunity. If VDI would end up only achieving 10% penetration, I'm afraid this would spell doom because that would be about the same penetration rate that has been achieved by TS over the years, and that certainly did not help Citrix much as far as organic growth. If VDI fails to plug ALL the current shortcomings, then the physical desktop will continue to reign supreme for the most part, and VDI could permanently lose prestige. After all, it's been touted as a desktop replacement solution right from its inception, not a tactical, remote access solution, along the lines of TS.

Yes, Citrix is slick in the way they report their numbers. They sell their bundles and report much of them as XD sales, when in fact 99% of the customers are buying them mainly for XA.

Microsoft has a unique opportunity to redefine and own the desktop virtualization market by modernizing TS. By that, I mean REALLY modernize it, not just rebrand the same old antiquated technology as RDS. They've wasted very precious time over the last 5 years by extending RDS with trivial features such as web-based access, SSL gateway, universal print driver, etc. We all know that the vendor community, including Citrix, Ericom, Quest and TriCerat, was already providing multiple options, but Microsoft, unwisely and unsuprisingly, have once again chosen to compete against its own partner ecosystem. What Microsoft should have done instead is to modernize TS and plug its long-standing holes, especially the lack of adequate full-desktop isolation, that have prevented it over the years from achieving much penetration. If that was ever done, VDI might have never seen the light of day. But in reality, Microsoft couldn't do it because it cannot reasonably be expected to canibalize its legacy Windows desktop market.

@edgeseeker - perhaps you should give VERDE a try before jumping all over it... If you did, you might learn what the excitement is all about.

Citrix has taken us seriously enough to have a (very distorted) competitive position paper put out on it.

IBM has it in dozens of accounts world wide.

Austin Ventures, a tier-one, multi-billion dollar fund has put its resources behind it...

Rackspace, the leading hosting company in the world has entered a co-branding program with Virtual Bridges...

The VERDE functional specs are finding their way into more and more massive RFI's...

Why the excitement about VERDE - first, it is purpose-built for desktop virtualization. It is not a re-purpose of a server consolidation architecture or an app delivery infrastructure. It has no legacy baggage to carry around. It is built from the ground up to solve one problem - managing and provisioning desktops.

The second area of excitement is the economics. A lot is made of the lack of TCO case for VDI. No capex savings. Moderate opex. With VERDE, you get both. Our efficiencies are in our densities and the integrated nature of our infrastructure (again, please contact us to get an eval and see what we are talking about).

The third area of excitement is around our functional capabilities. This is not just VDI. We also have an integrated client-side hypervisor, a remote branch solution that eliminates WAN latency, a distributed connection broker model that improves availability and scalability - and yes, we offer both Windows and Linux guest support. And, no, Leostream is not the same thing - it only brokers to another infrastructure. You still need a virtual machine hosting Linux somewhere on the backend. Our solution is seamless and, as was stated earlier, is available at one, simple, fully integrated price.

The other interesting thing to note is that we are the “third way” in that there is ESX, Xen and KVM – We have been shipping a KVM based VDI solution since KVM became stable enough to support desktops back in mid ’08. Many of the other solutions that may come to your mind are eco-system plays relying on ESX or Xen, or they are niche players providing only partial solutions. VERDE offers the full solution without the need to use ESX or Xen.

Thanks to Gabe for coming by the booth. Really appreciate it! The Synergy show was great for us! See you all at BriForum!

@VirtualBridges - All this is nice, but I assure you that for every install of your product done by IBM, there's a thousand installs of Citrix and VMware done by no other than... IBM! Austin Ventures may have put their resources behind your company, but they will eventually wake up once they realize they're throwing good money after bad. Co-branding by Rackspace? Do you think hosting customers would be looking to their rack space provider for advice on which desktop virtualization solution to adopt? Good luck!

Do you really think that customers would entrust the hypervisor piece to you? Citrix offers XenServer as an integral part of the XenDesktop solution. Yet, per their admission, the lion's share of XD installs are on VMware Sphere. And, what complementary technologies do you offer in the way of printing, profile management, protocol enhancements (a la Citrix HDX, Quest EOP/XStream, etc), user profile management, etc? Nothing! Let me guess: you rely on third parties to provide these capabilities. In other words, your fully integrated solution is not, well, so fully integrated.

I recommend rebranding your solution as VERDE TL2 (too little too late). Having said that, I wish you  the best of luck and I hope you'll prove me wrong.  

@edgeseeker - I guess the other contributors hit it on the head... you are seem to be more interested in attention than the "edge". Your comments lack a grasp of the facts and seem to be the opinions of someone who has made up their mind without having done any research to determine the facts.

It would be much more useful and professional if you would actually do some research on our product before you pretend to know what you are talking about.

A couple things worth rebutting...

The "thousands of installs by IBM" is complete BS with respect to VDI. Forget IBM for a second, and look at VMware... per their own latest numbers they have 8000 customers with a million users in total. That is an average of 125 users per "customer"... That is indicative of a lot of tire-kickers who have taken handouts and trial accounts that have ended up stalling due to lack of TCO, product complexity or incomplete functionality. With Virtual Bridges customers are seeing the benefit in all three areas and moving their pilots and deployments forward into large number deployments.

More importantly, customers aren't "entrusting the hypervisor piece to" us, KVM is the Linux standard and embraced IBM, Red Hat, Novell, Canonical and more recent AMD and Intel, among others. Pull your head out.

And most importantly, again, do some research... Virtual Bridges VERDE protocol has had seamless integrated printing for years - well ahead of others who require Thinprint as an add-on. Profile management, protocol enhancements, distributed connection broker, user personalization, remote branch support, memory de-dupe, disconnected use, bi-directional data synch, and much more are all part of our capabilities -- please check it out yourself before you pass yourself off as someone who knows what they are talking about - and, these capabilities are all fully-integrated and available for one simple license cost directly from us and our partners worldwide, without the need to use or license third party products.

If you want to educate yourself, we are more than happy to help, but please stop making these wildly inaccurate assumptions.

@Virtual Bridges - You seem to be more interested in personal attacks than in building "bridges".

No Windows desktop administrator is interested in hosting desktops on a Linux-based platform. Windows admins are generally not well-versed in Linux, neither do they want to be. When VMware originally acquired Propero, they, like you, lived in denial for some time before finally waking up and revamping the entire product to be Windows-based.

All protocols nowadays support printing. However, having a universal print driver is a nice enhancement to obviate the need for installing print drivers inside each desktop. You don't have it!

User profile management? User personalization? Show us! BS!!!

What it comes down to is this: all VDI solutions out there today are failing to deliver on the TCO promise because none of them has been able to obliterate the status quo of how desktops ought to be managed. It's one thing to be able to spawn desktops from golden images, but it's an entirely different thing to be able to effectivelhy and efficiently manage those desktops after they've been deployed.

And that's why after 4 years of VDI hype, all deployments out there are of the tire-kicking variety.

Hypervisors are an unnatural way to vitualize the desktop. Until Microsoft wakes up and modernize RDS to include full-desktop protection features similar to Parallels Virtuozzo Containers, I'm afraid customers will continue to be guinea pigs to the likes of you, VMware, Citrix, and others who keep waving a hammer in the face of every daunting problem.

Until the Windows desktop group at Microsoft takes ownership of the RDS/VDI group, the traditional physical desktop will continue to reign supreme.

@edgeseeker

You may view these as personal attacks if you wish, that is not the intent. The bottom line is that you do not know what you are talking about when it comes to Virtual Bridges and your insinuations and inaccuracies require clear rebuttal.

To address a few...

You say "show us". We have offered several times in this thread to do just that.

You say we don't have a universal print driver. The fact is that we do.

You say that we need a way to managed gold master "spawned" desktops after they have been deployed... this comment shows an utter lack of understanding of how our gold master model works.

You further discredit yourself by categorically lumping us into the same category as VMware and Citrix "waving a hammer"... the excitement around Virtual Bridges is that we offer a fresh approach to desktop management and provisioning that addresses the short-comings of the Vmware and Citrix approaches - namely TCO, ease-of-use and range of functionality.

Whatever approach it is that you feel we are threatening is probably just fine for what you are doing. The desktop computing world is diverse and different solutions are needed for different situations. Please show the same tolerance to others as they show to you.

VERDE 4 - Just in Time... ;-)

It is clear the "edgeseeker" user, which doesn't log in with his real name, is foolishly charmed by Microsoft and is writing comments just to create dissent and challenge.

I don't care.

Here in Europe we have hundreds of thousand of Linux installations also in Government administration (i.e.: French Parliament, Netherland's counties, Spanish administrations, etc) and we hare happy to be using a software which is stronger, higher quality, safer than Microsoft. Not a matter of money, but  efficiency and reliability. And every installation has its own professional support behind.

He should leave his "enchanted dream" and open his eyes on reality.

All:

Let's not ignore the fact that ESX and Xen are NOT WINDOWS. World has trusted Linux and non-Windows as the best platforms for Virtualization.

Having come from several infrastructure products such as Networking, Security and other types of infrastructure -- majority of the customers run their infrastructure on NON-WINDOWS platforms, and most of them use Linux.

When customers want reliability, security, high-performance and most importantly the purpose-built nature for appliances and applications -- Linux has always proven to be the choice platform.

At Virtual Bridges, our mission is to help customers deliver Desktops as a mission-critical service -- and we realized that Linux and KVM are the best vehicles for that.

At the same time, this platform powers Windows XP, Windows 7 and Linux desktops with the same ease-of-management and performance, without any concerns about security, performance..

Coming to the VERDE solution.. having been in this space for 4+ years, most vendors have made VDI and Desktop Virtualization as complex as possible -- leaving customers and partners looking for fresh alternatives.

At Virtual Bridges, we simplified this solution to an extent where now customers could get their solution up and running in 45 mins on a single server -- without worrying about multiple consoles, connection brokers etc.

As mentioned before, the same simplicity extends from a single server to a cluster wide deployment, including disconnected users and branch offices.

We are here to help our customers and partners to solve their 'desktop management and provisioning' problem -- not hypervisor management, connection brokering, profiles, WAN optimization etc.

Best,

Srini

@Fabio Marzocca - It's not surprising for socialist systems, whose Euro currency and union are about to fall apart, to be bashers of innovation and capitalism. It's no secret that Europeans have been spending their way to bankrupcy, and therefore you have no choice but to favor the use of Linux, given you don't have the money to reward ingenuity by paying for software.

If you read my previous blogs, it should become obvious to you that I'm by no means charmed or enchanted by Microsoft. In fact, I'm pretty critical of them. And unlike your parliaments, agencies, etc., their US counterparts have tens of thousands of Windows applications that have been procured or custom-developed over many years. Therefore, whether you like it or not, we live in a Windows desktop world.

Personally, I use Linux as much as I do windows. But let's face it: for the most part, if you want anything above and beyond FireFox and OpenOffice, you practically have no other choice but Windows. I'm leaving Mac out of the equation because it simply isn't a business platform.

This whole thread isn't about Linux vs. Windows. It's about the overcrowded VDI space. The point I'm making is that there hasn't been much innovation in this space to keep VDI's momentum going. VDI came onto the scene roughly around 2005. Five years later, the protocol hurdle is yet to be solved effectively. The storage hurdle is yet to be solved effectively. The [name_your_hurdle] is yet to be solved effectively. This should be a clear signal to the community that VDI, by way of a hypervisor, is an unnatural way to manage today's and tomorrow's desktops. If the hurdles are too complex to overcome, then maybe VDI, in its current form, doesn't hold much merit.

In the other hand, by modernizing RDS into a full-isolation desktop environment, Microsoft can put a stop to all of this overcomplicated, overhyped VDI non-sense. If Parallels can do it with Virtuozzo Containers, I'm sure Microsoft can do as good or better job.

@Srini - It's true that most networking and security platforms are based on Linux, but desktop platforms are based on Windows, and desktop administrators are Windows folks, not Linux. Moreover, without taking anything away from KVM, the virtualization world is dominated by two players: VMware and Microsoft. Even Citrix XenServer is dying a slow death, and the majority of VDI projects are being implemented on either VMware or Microsoft. Having said that, I think you do have a nice product, but it's essentially not different than anyone else's, and that's a generous statement. Your protocol options leave quite a bit to be desired, and your block-based approach to image management is antiquated. This is not the way to solve the storage management problem. Having said all that, I do admire your passion and that of your colleagues. Your company sounds like a great place to work at.

@Virtual Bridges -  I'm quite familiar with your product. What do you think you have to offer that others don't? To be more than fair, I'm going to keep the big gorillas, namely, VMware, Citrix and Microsoft, out of the equation and compare you to the relatively smaller vendor, Quest. Here are some of the features I remember seeing:

1. Superb management console with admin delegation.

2. Integrated support for vSphere, Hyper-V, Virtuozzo Containers, and RDS.

3. Native support for golden images on vSphere, Hyper-V, and Virtuozzo.

4. Multiple graphic enhancement technologies.

5. Universal print driver.

6. User profile management.

7. User workspace management

And those are just a few of the features I remember seeing, not to mention the entire install took less than one hour. Do I bother also mentioning that Quest is a 3,300-employee company? Having said that, I'd probably still go with a safer alternative such as citrix XD.

What exactly do you feel your product has to offer that constitutes a clear departure from the VDI status quo that plagues this industry? CloudBranch? Come on! Golden image management? Please! Oh, let me guess: a client hypervisor option for disconnected scenarios? I'm thrilled! Good luck with that! I'm sure customers are lining up with orders.

@edgekeeper: I have not offended your Nation, your people and your race, so I do pretend from you not doing the same.

Anyway... thank you very much for Lehman Brothers crack and for all consequences on the world economy!

@edgeseeker  - it is really interesting how much we get under your skin. You haven't been this prolific since you shut down the layering discussion back in October.

It should be noted that @edgeseeker has drawn more technical fouls than Kendrick Perkins and if BrianMadden Forums were an NBA series @edgeseeker would have been suspended a while ago.

His insulting of people, countries and races aside, he refuses to adhere to the basic laws of reality -- he is trying to claim that we do not have something by listing a list of features that someone else does have... most of which VERDE also has, and the ones that we don't have are irrelevant - like tying into VMWare...

The whole point of VERDE is that is offers an answer to the weaknesses of VMware and Citrix, and for that matter, Microsoft with Hyper-V. We are the only VDI vendor to have a GA version (and customers!) for our off-line VDI, aka disconnected use. We are the only vendor to have a GA offering that supports both Windows and Linux guests. We are the only offering to deliver economic value even lower than the recent Pano announcement. And your only rebuttal to Cloud Branch is "come one"? Cloud Branch is a major differentiation in the eyes of customers, analysts and partners, so what gives you the right to categorically dismiss it with a "Come on!"?

We are the only purpose-built VDI solution (where VDI includes offline VDI as well) that addresses the needs of desktop management and provisioning from the ground up... as opposed to one that tries to extend a legacy architecture from an ancillary segment (server consolidation and app delivery respectively) to try and cover a new segment that has unique needs and challenges.

You are obviously irredeemably anti-VDI so we do not take it personally but it is just so annoying that you pretend to know what you are talking about. Just because VMware and Citrix have not been able to deliver on the promise of VDI yet (reasons for which are stated above) does not mean that every product that is VDI suffers from the same inadequacies and challenges of VMware and Citrix.

It is also clear that you do not know what you are talking about with respect to Virtual Bridges despite your claims to the contrary.

@gabe -- where's the whistle?  

@Fabio - I'm not sure how you could have taken anything I said as an offense. You guys are socialists, aren't you? You keep spending and spending and spending, and then you take off a whole month for vacation. Anyways, thanks a lot for the PIIGS: Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece, and Spain. You can blame your troubles on someone else all you want. Hopefully, your new austerity measures will include Linux.

@Virtual Bridges - I think what you allege to be technical fouls on my part may soon prove to be nothing short of prophecies. If I am to be suspended, you ought to be permanently expelled for misrepresention.

It seems that I'm the one getting under your skin, not otherwise. After all, I'm calling you on your feature shortcomings, and you keep living in denial. CloudBranch? You mean deploying branch-based servers is a novelty??? Let me reiterate my initial reaction: COME ON!!!!!!

Let's talk protocols: show me how you handle multimedia. What do you do for Flash? For Media Player? NX is a far cry from what VDI needs, and I dare you to claim otherwise. RDP? That's another far cry. Tell me what you do to enhance it. Golden image management? You're doing EXACTLY what has been available for years: snapshots!!! That's an aweful approach to image sharing.

I'm already said that you have a nice product. But that's all it is: nice. It is not a clear departure from the status quo, and most features aren't as good as similar features from other vendors.

You claim I keep insulting people. The reality is I've never done so in this thread. In fact, instead of sticking to the technical points at hand, here's some of what I've had to contend with for the last few days.

"You arrogant sod – that’s not my opinion, that’s fact."

"It is clear the "edgeseeker" user, which doesn't log in with his real name, is foolishly charmed by Microsoft and is writing comments just to create dissent and challenge."

And that's excluding the non-sense I've had to hear from you. Let the technical merits do the talking.

@ Gabe -  The whistle should be blown on those who can't withstand criticism.

@edgeseeker can we expect to see you at Briforum? Perhaps we can continue the discussion there... I look forward to it.

@Virtual Bridges - I've never missed a single one. I'll be there again this year. But what's there to discuss? I made my point.

It would be great to have a chance to correct your misconceptions as you are clearly not getting it through this exchange.

OK, look for a masked individual. That would be me.

:-)

@Edgeseeker:  The fact that you assumed that VERDE Gold Master is based on 'snapshots' shows your utter lack of understanding of our product and technology.

We would be glad to give you a demo of our solution so that you can get a better understanding of the technology.

Please DO NOT make false statements -- let's keep these discussions focused more on substance..

Re: your projections on KVM, you will be really surprised to see the rapid progress that KVM is making  == particularly, in some of the large cloud deployments.

Anyways, there is no point in continuing this discussion further with you.

@Srini - Please explain to us how your golden image is shared across multiple users.