Latest News from Jeff Fisher

IBM announces DaaS offering

Tue, 01 Sep 2009 15:36:01 EDT

For those of you who missed it, IBM annouced their DaaS offering, dubbed IBM Smart Business Desktop Cloud on the IBM Cloud, yesterday at VMworld. You can find the official release here.

First DaaS Provider in Europe

Wed, 12 Aug 2009 08:44:38 EDT

Desktone recently announced its expansion into Europe with its first DaaS provider in the region - SCC (part of the SCH Group). You can find the release here.

DaaS Podcast

Fri, 17 Jul 2009 10:51:07 EDT

I recently recorded a podcast with Doug Brown of DABCC. You can find it here.

New DaaS Provider in Japan

Thu, 04 Jun 2009 09:11:24 EDT

Today Desktone announced a new DaaS provider in Japan - Marubeni Corporation. You can find the release here.

DaaS Registered Trademarks and Platform Enhancements

Tue, 26 May 2009 11:03:32 EDT

Today we announced that Desktone has secured the registered trademarks for both "desktops as a service" and "DaaS". You can find the release here. In addition, we have formally announced the latest release of the Virtual-D platform and some of its key new capabilities. That release is here.

DaaS Customer Video

Mon, 18 May 2009 21:23:07 EDT

IBM has produced a great video about the success Pike County Schools in Kentucky has had with DaaS. You can watch it here.

Cloud Slam Session Recording

Mon, 18 May 2009 21:10:58 EDT

I wanted to let you know that the recording of my Cloud Slam '09 session entitled, "Cloud-hosted Desktops: The Smart, Low-Risk Way to Enter the Cloud" has been posted online. You can view it here. Enjoy!

DaaS Partner Webinar

Thu, 30 Apr 2009 20:02:01 EDT

Desktone will be hosting a webinar delivered by DaaS® provider ICC Global Hosting on May 13th at noon EDT. ICC will talk about what's included in their offering, the different classes of service they provide and how to get started. If you'd like to attend, please register here and feel free to pass this along to anyone else who might be interested.

Benefit Now with Cloud-Hosted Desktops

Tue, 14 Apr 2009 18:00:00 EDT

The excitement around virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) is being tempered by the concern that VDI can’t be cost-justified if it doesn’t completely transform traditional desktop management – and by the belief that the only way to achieve this is with stateless desktops. The bad news is that truly stateless desktops won’t be commonly available for at least another five years.

Upcoming DaaS Presentations

Fri, 27 Mar 2009 10:16:07 EDT

Just a quick heads up that I will be presenting next week in New York City at SYS-CON's Cloud/Virtualization Conference & Expo and online at the Cloud Slam '09 virtual conference the week of April 20th.

VMware embraces cloud-hosted desktops

Wed, 25 Feb 2009 20:32:16 EST

VMworld Europe 2009, currently underway in Cannes (no, I'm not there), has been an opportunity for VMware to reiterate the key areas of a strategy it unveiled at VMworld 2008 this past fall. So they're talking about vCloud (their service provider strategy) and they're talking about vClient (their enterprise desktop strategy based on View). But what's different from the last event is that they're now also talking about cloud-hosted desktops, which in essence tie the vCloud and vClient initiatives together.

DaaS Partnership

Tue, 17 Feb 2009 08:31:18 EST

Today, Desktone and vmSight annouced the industry's first DaaS ISV partnership. Together, the two companies not only enable service providers to deliver reliable DaaS offerings, but also allow enterprises to consume those services with confidence, knowing that the tools are in place to monitor SLAa and to provide rapid insight into issues that may arise. Another important milestone in the history of DaaS!

"Virtualize. Centralize. Optimize."

Wed, 21 Jan 2009 21:28:34 EST

This post has been a long time coming. It’s basically one of the core philosophies we live by at Desktone and it happens to run contrary to everything else you’ve read about virtual desktops and state separation. At the core of the argument is the premise that deploying virtual desktops and achieving state separation in client operating environments are two fundamentally different objectives. I’m not going to claim that they aren’t related and that ultimately they will cross paths. However, I do believe that viewing them as one in the same has led enterprises down the wrong path and that if we don’t start looking at the two as separate endeavors, virtual desktop computing will never reach its full potential.

DaaS case study published by Forrester

Wed, 21 Jan 2009 20:05:53 EST

I'm excited to report that Forrester Research has published a case study on the DaaS deployment at Pike County Schools. This is the first DaaS-focused report produced by a leading IT analyst firm, so it's a pretty big deal.

For those of you who don't know, Pike County is an early customer of DaaS being offered by IBM. It's been a huge success story, starting with the fact that Pike only began thinking about deploying virtual desktops this past summer. Since then, they've gotten 1,400 of them into production without having to deal with the lengthy technology assessments normally associated with internal VDI deployments. The net result is a substantial decrease in what we call "time to value" (or the time it takes between the decision to green light a virtual desktop deployment until the time the first ones are running in production) and it's one of the areas where DaaS really shines. You can read about many other benefits that Pike uncovered in the case study, including repurposing (or should I more accurately say, resurrecting ;^>) 7-year old PCs that were on the shelf gathering dust.

You can find the report here. Please note that you will need an active Forrester subscription (or a credit card) to access the full study. Enjoy!

DaaS Session at Virtualization Congress

Thu, 08 Jan 2009 09:45:09 EST

I wanted to let you know that we've submitted a session in response to Alessandro's call for papers for his upcoming Virtualization Congress. I thought it would be useful to start sharing our view on how state separation relates to VDI and DaaS. As you probably know, our industry has convinced itself that state separation is not only a pre-requisite but an absolute requirement for doing VDI or DaaS. We couldn't disagree more and will be further explaining our position in upcoming blog posts, articles, etc. In the meantime, please take a look at the session description and if it's a topic you find interesting, don't hesitate to vote it up.

DaaS CIO Perspective - Webinar

Mon, 05 Jan 2009 17:11:32 EST

Hope you all had a nice holiday season. We wanted to let you know that the final webinar in our current series is scheduled for next Tuesday, January 13th at noon ET. We'll have the opportunity to hear from our COO, Paul Gaffney, former CIO of Staples and CIO Magazine CIO Hall of Famer. Paul will discuss the importance of considering disruptive technologies and delivery models like virtual desktops and DaaS, especially in light of the current economic climate. It should be a worthwhile session, as the interview we did with him last summer continues to be one of our most popular blog entries. Please click here to register and feel free to forward this information on to your colleagues. Looking forward to a great final session - we hope you'll join us.

DaaS Customer Spotlight - Webinar

Tue, 02 Dec 2008 14:56:02 EST

Just a quick heads up that we will be holding the 3rd webinar in our Fall/Winter series this coming Tuesday (12/9) at noon ET. We will have the pleasure of hearing from and speaking to Maritta Horne, CIO of the Pike County School System in Kentucky. Pike County signed a DaaS deal this summer with IBM (see this older post for more details on that announcement) and is currently in production. They are reaping considerable benefits from DaaS which Maritta will share on the webinar. Should be another great session - hope you can join us. Please click here to register and feel free to forward the information on to any colleagues thay may benefit from hearing the Pike County story.

Cloud Hosted Desktops

Wed, 26 Nov 2008 08:15:00 EST

It's August 2007. VMware goes public and virtualization, in all its forms, reigns as the leading IT infrastructure megatrend. Fast forward to the summer of 2008 and virtualization is already giving way to the new king of IT media – cloud computing. All of a sudden, the conversations about how virtualization will transform existing enterprise infrastructure shift to talk about how virtualization will enable the adoption of cloud computing in the enterprise.

The logic of cloud-hosted desktops

Mon, 10 Nov 2008 15:08:10 EST

Those of you who track Desktone and this blog know that lately we've been spending more time talking about cloud-hosted desktops. This is obviously due in part to the incredible dialogue that's surrounded cloud computing over the past year. However, it's also because we believe that cloud-hosted desktops can and will fundamentally change enterprise IT's willingness and ability to leverage cloud computing in the near term.

DaaS "Value Chain" - Webinar

Tue, 04 Nov 2008 13:50:36 EST

Our fall/winter webinar series is off to a great start and we held the first event (as previously noted) on October 23rd. I thought it was an excellent session and you can find the recording here. We will be delivering the second webinar next Tuesday, November 11th at noon ET. We'll take the audience through the entire DaaS "value chain", first by having Michael Rose from IDC provide a market overview and then by having a customer (Pike County) and a service provider (IBM) talk about the benefits of DaaS, how the service is delivered and consumed, etc. Finally, we will have Paul Gaffney, our COO, talk about the role Desktone plays in all of this. It's shaping up to be another great event and we encourage you to register and tell your colleagues about it.

Desktops as a Service (DaaS) and Cloud Computing – An Overview

Tue, 26 Aug 2008 08:25:00 EDT

Generally speaking, DaaS is about transforming desktops into a cloud service. However, there are already a number of different approaches to DaaS and they vary considerably. To start, I thought it would be helpful to classify the different versions of DaaS as they exist today. At the highest level, there are two general categories of DaaS – those based on local (or distributed) execution and those that leverage centralized (or remote) execution.