ClearCube Enhances Virtual Desktop To Support VMware
The new products are becoming available at a time when a wide range of other vendors including Microsoft, Redmond, Wash.; VMware, Palo Alto, Calif.; and Citrix, Ft. Lauderdale, Fla. are readying their own virtual desktop technology, said Rick Hoffman, ClearCube president and CEO.
"We are putting a stake in the ground for an end-to-end physical and virtual desktop infrastructure," Hoffman said.
ClearCube, Austin, Texas, this week introduced three new hardware products.
The first is the R1350, a new PC blade based on Intel Core 2 Duo processors. It includes DDR2-667 memory and PCI-Express graphics, and supports both PC-over-IP (PCoIP) and Intel's Trusted Platform Management 1.2.
Also new are two connectivity solutions for ClearCube's PC blades, including the new R1350. These include the I9420, a desktop extension device that allows a longer distance between the desktop clients and the PC blades, and the C7420, a digital fiber C/Port that provides for full performance video unhindered by distance, Hoffman said. Both devices are dual-monitor capable.
The company has also increased the capabilities of its Sentral management solution for both virtual and physical desktop infrastructures.
Sentral 5.6 now includes improved connection brokering with load balancing and policy-based management of connection requests, Hoffman said. The application, which now scales to over 100,000 nodes, also provides user-based or device-based mapping to blades or virtual machines, with Active Directory integration for user-based mapping.
The software also has improved server virtualization compatibilities with VMware Virtual Server ESX, Microsoft Hyper-V, and Xen-based virtualization architecture such as Citrix's XenServer, he said. This allows virtual machine pooling to manage power and resource usage.
The new hardware and software give ClearCube a chance to continue its channel expansion, Hoffman said.
"Eighteen months ago, we were direct-only," he said. "Then we put in place a channel. We believe there's opportunity for ClearCube to provide products to the channel, which can then use the products to provide solutions and services."
There is indeed, said Bob Venero, CEO of Future Tech, a Holbrook, N.Y.-based solution provider and ClearCube partner.
Venero said he has seen ClearCube continue to mature to the point where it will eventually become a software-only company. "The challenge they have is their proprietary blades," he said. "But they use Wyse and other vendors for the end points."
ClearCube's new hardware and software has meant a marked improvement in I/O throughput, Venero said. "Customers will be getting a more true PC experience than in the past," he said. "This has been a big challenge for virtual desktops. But ClearCube is getting closer."
Venero said the vendor's moves to work with server virtualization platforms, especially VMware, is important because of the fast growth of virtualization technology. "It's mandatory today for a company like ClearCube to work well with VMware," he said. "It's such a large part of the market."