Kemp Technologies updates their hardware Load Balancers for RDP sessions (with or without Session Directory)!

Kemp Technologies announced today that the newest software update for their entire line of load balancing appliances will make them all "RDP-aware," meaning that they can intelligently load balance between Terminal Servers and/or integrate with Session Directory.

Article by Brian Madden on February 06, 2008.

VMware releases VDM2, the new version of their VDI product. What will the impact be?

Yesterday VMware released the much-awaited update to their VDI product, VDM2. This is a complete VDI solution, packaging VI3, a desktop broker, and the management tools you need to have a turnkey VDI solution. How will it fare against Citrix, Microsoft, and Provision Networks in the market?

Article by Brian Madden on January 31, 2008.

Is is time for Microsoft to create "User Center" to complement System Center?

All of the big vendors are so focused on managing "systems" (virtual, local, remote, streaming, on-demand, snap-shotted) that they're forgetting the "other half" of what customers have to deal with each day: the users! What if they took user management as seriously as system management?

Article by Brian Madden on January 30, 2008.

Submit your session ideas for BriForum 2008 Chicago, the event website is live

It's a new year, and BriForum is just around the corner. As we announced in October, BriForum 2008 Chicago will take place June 16-18, 2008, at the Chicago Navy Pier. We've updated BriForum.com with all the information about this year's conference. Can you believe this will be our sixth BriForum?

Article by Brian Madden on January 29, 2008.

Microsoft gets serious about virtualized desktops (in a Microsofty way)

Now that we've spent a whole week looking at each aspects of Microsoft's big desktop virtualization announcement from Monday, let's take a step back and look at what this means in the grander scheme of things.

Article by Brian Madden on January 25, 2008.

Microsoft and Citrix clarify XenSource / Hyper-V interaction. Both companies win.

Part of Tuesday's big virtualization announcement from Microsoft detailed how Microsoft and Citrix would work together in the Hyper-V and XenSource space. It turns out that Citrix will play a critical role in what Microsoft claims is their "comprehensive" management platform.

Article by Brian Madden on January 24, 2008.

Microsoft reconsiders virtualization rules for Vista: Now you can (legally) run it in a VM, lowers VECD pricing

It's been almost a year since Microsoft officially announced their licensing policies for using Vista in virtual machine environments. Today they made a few changes to those policies.

Article by Brian Madden on January 23, 2008.

Citrix XenDesktop will run on Microsoft Hyper-V!

Citrix and Microsoft jointly announced yesterday that Citrix XenDesktop will run on Microsoft's Hyper-V hypervisor. This comes despite the fact that Citrix created XenDesktop specifically so that it was a single product that didn't need anything external, like a hypervisor from Microsoft.

Article by Brian Madden on January 23, 2008.

Microsoft buys Calista Technologies. What will this mean?

Microsoft announced that they're buying Calista Technologies, a startup software vendor whose technology can virtualize the graphics system in Windows, thereby delivering a full multimedia Windows desktop via a regular RDP protocol. What will this mean for Microsoft's VDI strategy, and how will this affect Citrix?

Article by Brian Madden on January 22, 2008.

VMware buys Thinstall! What does this mean?

Today VMware announced they're acquiring application virtualization vendor Thinstall for an undisclosed amount of money. Thinstall has an application virtualization product that's similar to Microsoft SoftGrid, Citrix's Application Streaming, or Symantec / Altiris's SVS technology. Does this mean that VMware is finally climbing up the value stack into the application space?

Article by Brian Madden on January 15, 2008.