Desktop as a Service (DaaS) is coming, and it's bound to take the ICT market by storm.
Since the early days of VDI (Virtual Desktop Infrastructure) there has been talks about getting this service into the cloud, and leveraging it off the global network that is the Internet. Traditionally this was just a dream, as bandwidth was just too expensive, things have changed, in terms of bandwidth costs, and new protocols, making this far more cost effective.
Why host your desktop in the cloud?
Essentially, DaaS is a Virtual Machine loaded with a Desktop (workstation) Operating System, that is being hosted in a datacenter at an ISP. The Management interface of the environment will have a public IP address, and a Public URL. To access this desktop you will use a Thin-client, which is essentially just a device with Internet connection that has a screen, keyboard and mouse connected to it. The image below is an example.
So you connect to your Windows XP (or Windows 7) over the Internet using this Thinclient... Your user experience remains the same, but there are huge benefits... A few examples would be: You can now have as many different "PCs" (with different specs) as you want (One for work, one for the kids, one for your wife, etc), and connect to them via the same Thinclient, determined by login credentials! Also, note these can not be stolen either!!! If someone steals your Thinclient, simply get a new one, your desktops still remain unchanged, and unaffected! Also upgrading to more disk space, more memory, or processing power couldn't be easier... Traditionally you would phone a techie, who would charge for the labor, and part, and then it still took a couple of hours at least to have it done, with this platform upgrading is as easy as phoning the ISP, and requesting, after the phone call you reboot your machine, and it upgraded!!!! Same goes with software, you need a software package, you request it online, log off, and log back on, and it's there, instantly! No more waiting, no more software conflicts, no more expensive technical people!
Unique Partnership between Vodacom Business and NIL.
The product is called FlipIT, and it's designed to literally Flip IT and traditional ways of doing things around. It is fully multitenated, and integrates into every aspect of provisioning, from the network switches, to the firewalls, and storage arrays. By the click of a button you create a hosted company, while in the background VLANs are added, firewall rules are implemented, Fileservers, and LDAP servers are created, and users are loaded! All of this in the span of just 15 minutes, and you have a working IT environment, with Internet, an IP phone and an Email address, and the best part is that it's securely hosted, and managed in the cloud!!!I had the fortunate experience of being involved with this project from the start, and it's now coming to completion with production rollout expected early in Q2 2011. Working with NIL has been a great experience, they are a very professional company with rock solid technical skills to back them. There were a number of successfully proof-of-concepts conducted by major companies, and every single one were satisfied, and excited about this new venture. What they liked most was the seamless, and effortless manner in which software could be added, and removed from the desktop through the user friendly portal. The fact that using the new PCoIP protocol makes this work perfectly even over a 3G connection is also a major plus point. Another very exciting feature is the integrated monitoring tool (NIL Monitor), which monitors everything, but this I would have to write about separately, as in itself this is a truly brilliant product on its own.
PCoIP?
As the abbreviation states... PCoIP (PC over Internet Protocol), this new revolutionary protocol was designed to be ably to run your PC (Virtual Desktop in this case) over an Internet connection. It is a very compressed protocol that is designed to only send through the changed pixels on your screen over the network as opposed to traditional RDP which sends updates on the whole desktop through the link, by doing this PCoIP massively reduces the amount of bandwidth needed for desktop streaming, and this makes DaaS possible over cloud computing. With new developments on mobile clients such as Wyse's Pocketcloud, you can now even connect to your desktop from a cellphone. In summary:
DaaS is going to be big, and it's coming. Basically you can connect to your hosted Virtual Desktop from just about any device with an Internet connection, be it a ThinClient, Cellphone, iPad, laptop, or an Internet cafe, the sky is the limit, and it all sits securely, and safely in the cloud, meaning it can't break, get lost, of get stolen!
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