Clearspace Server Syndication Feed

Intel and Dell Case Study for Renewable Energy Systems (RES)

webadmin@intel.com — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 08:18:05 GMT

Wind farm developer assesses sites 20 times faster and cuts power use by around 75 percent with Dell blade cluster using Intel Xeon processor technology.

Your Questions Answered LIVE on New Core(TM) i5 and i7 vPro(TM) processors

webadmin@intel.com — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 09:44:17 GMT

Coming soon! Live chat with Intel® Technology experts.

~ February 17, 10:00 - 12:00 BST ~

Join us on February 17th for an interactive live chat with Intel experts on the New Intel® Core™ i5 and Core™ i7 vPro™ processors.

Find out how PCs powered by the NEW Core™ i5 vPro™ and Core i7 vPro™ processors help business cut costs and increase efficiency by taking advantage of intelligent performance and unique hardware-assisted security and manageability features.

During the event, you’ll have the chance to ask our experts your questions in real time.

Click here to find out more about the New Core i5 and i7 vPro™ processors and receive a ‘save the date’ calendar invitation.

As members of IT Galaxy, you have the opportunity to get your New Core i5 and i7 vPro technology questions first in the queue. Ensure they get answered by simply commenting on this blog.

MEET THE EXPERTS...

Stuart Dommett - Business Development Manager
Bio: With 20 plus years of IT technical and management experience, Stuart’s recent roles in Intel have included European Product Manager for Intel’s vPro Technology. He is now driving technology adoption and business development for the UK System Integrator market sector.

Martin Lloyd - Enterprise Architect
Bio: Martin Lloyd is an Enterprise Architect working within Intel's Worldwide Solution Architects organisation. Martin has worked for Intel for 9 years across several business areas including software development and consultancy. For the past three years he has worked alongside Intel’s global IT Outsourcing partners to integrate and enable Intel vPro platform technologies into new and existing enterprise client solutions and managed desktop service offerings.

Steve Cutler - Technical Marketing Manager
Bio: Steve has been with Intel 23 years and worked in multiple roles covering business clients, servers, infrastructure, embedded, communications and HPC. His current role is ensuring that the IT ecosystem in Europe is able to effectively build new value add services around new technologies Intel is building into Business Clients. Main focus here over the last two years has been with the vPro platform and in particular with Active Management Technology.

Rob Sheppard - Product Marketing Manager
Bio: Rob is the product marketing manager for Intel’s Business PC’s and Digital Office Technologies in EMEA. He joined Intel in 1982 and has held various technical and marketing management roles during that time. Over the past 3 years Rob, and team, has been responsible for bringing Intel’s vPro™ technology to market in EMEA. Rob has a joint honours degree in Computer Science and Electronic Engineering from the University of Birmingham, England.

Mark your calendar, post your questions, and join us!

Your IT Galaxy Team

"The Truth about Client Computing and Virtualisation” Your questions answered.

webadmin@intel.com — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 10:42:29 GMT

Read Jim Henrys’ answers to your questions during Tuesday’s Virtualisation round table discussion.

Q: Dan Robinson: How would laptop users fit into a virtualised desktop (VDI) environment?

A: Looking ahead… in theory once a desktop is instantiated as an x86 virtual machine it can be moved from a server to a client device (as VMs can today be moved from server to server in dynamic resource pools); thus a desktop in a VDI environment can be migrate to a client device where it can then be used in both connected and disconnected states.

Q: Manek Dubash - How important is flexibility of device at the desktop - should all be locked down or should end users get to choose their own devices?

A: In today’s environment a standardized “one size fits all” approach has been adopted to make the image build & validation process & support model one which is manageable. This approach is somewhat device centric. Looking forward, virtualization offers us a way to become more user centric. For example, an individual in the enterprise may be using multiple devices for IT purposes – be it laptop, netbook or one of the emerging MID devices – and they want to access the same IT from each device. Virtualization offers the potential to virtualize an individual’s desktop/profile to a standardized x86 machine which can then migrate from device to device effectively “following them around”. As IT would only have to concern them about validating an image for standard Virtual Machine it offers, again potentially, greater flexibility of device and form factor. Client side hypervisors, the missing ingredient needed to make this happen should become available in during 2010.

Q: Manek Dubash: What's the impact of so-called green computing on desktop virtualisation?

A: Proponents of server side desktop virtualization would argue that a Thin Client device used to access a virtual desktop is consumes less power than a traditional PC. The thin client advocates will often use old, unmanaged desktops in power comparisons, which naturally paint PC-based computing in the most unfavorable light. Also, beware of vendors that use the PC’s maximum power to calculate its power consumption. PCs operate at maximum power only under peak workloads, such as video encoding, and spend most of their time at idle power. Further, you must look at power consumption of the complete end-2-end solution, not just the end point. Hence, to get a true picture the data center PUE and virtual desktops that can be hosted per server also need to be factored in.

Q: Chris - How can virtualization help startups from the word go, and would it be advisable to develop for it?

A: If starting up a new business today how would provision IT? There are vendors providing Software as a Service SaaS (e.g. salesforce.com), Platform as a Service PaaS (eg. Azure) and Infrastructure as a Service SAAS (e.g. Amazon EC2) with PaaS and SaaS models often based on server virtualization to be dynamically provisioned and scaled. With the advent of Client Virtualization the opportunity arises to provide Desktop as a Service – something for the SI community to explore. What will be interesting is seeing as a startup matures at which point it starts to bring key IT functions in-house as it is something that gives a competitive advantage; likewise when does an enterprise look to outsource non-competitive advantage IT functions?

Q: Anon - does the hardware make a difference? I see a lot of technology now having to be built into the thin client to compensate for graphics across the network, surely a PC still is better for this

A:Yes, the hardware makes a big difference to both the user experience and to IT. From the user side the advent of rich content such as Unified Communications (voice, video, collaboration); visualization (the emergence of the 3D internet) and rich applications (sliverlight, flash) which improve productivity need the powerful client side compute capabilities. Network load and graphics processing server-side can cause significant negative impact on the infrastructure – hence thin vendors have started looking at need for hardware acceleration technologies. Further, the Thin Client vendors have “thin clients” with 1GHz+ CPUs and embedded Windows XP operating systems to deal with these types of scenarios… begs the question “how thin is thin?” From the IT perspective Intel has a suite of capabilities that fall under the Intel vPro badge that improve/secure client side virtualization. Namely VT technology to ensure near native performance (to optimize and reduce the load of the overhead needed to run a hypervisor) and Trusted Execution Technology that can protect client side virtual machines from security threats.

Working from home is not the same as being able to work from home by Tristan Wilkinson

webadmin@intel.com — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 14:48:49 GMT

Are you enjoying the snow? I didn’t think so. The first day is great, everything looks different, the kids stay home and everyone has a collective sense of hunkering down and making the most or it. The first couple of meetings that get cancelled can be rescheduled, that journey to a customer or supplier will have to wait until the next week but the impact is limited.

Then that first day turns to a few days and the work is starting to pile up. That customer meeting that took three months to arrange really needs to happen, the planning session to agree the next quarters targets is now overdue, the supplier payments need to be reconciled. Now the snow is becoming a bit of a drag.

I’m very lucky not only do I work in a role that is independent of location, but my employer has also provided me with the tools and has a culture to allow me to have flexibility over where and when I work. This type of policy may not be suitable of all types of business or all types of roles but the ability to maintain at least some level of productivity is an important part of the modern workplace.

It’s not just snow that impacts our ability to get into the office, transport disruption, medical emergencies and acts of terror can all create unplanned disruption to the normal flow of the workplace. A small company I work with have had their entire accounts department stuck at home for nearly a week now, they have no ability to remotely access their systems and as a result the pay run for their staff may be delayed, their suppliers aren’t getting paid and they aren’t processing their income either, this can have a real impact on the cash flow of a small business.

The Government have just announced a consultation that relates to next generation broadband infrastructure, we hope that the resulting recommendations will enable the country to take these types of events in our stride, no matter where in the country you live.

Key considerations for working from home:-

System security
Access rights
Infrastructure
Company policy / HR guidelines
Laptops and other tools for access

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/8421373.stm

http://www.berr.gov.uk/files/file54154.pdf

https://www2.bt.com/btPortal/application?event=bea.portal.framework.internal.portlet.event&pageid=mb_pns_catalogue&portletid=mb_pns_catalogue&portletns=pns_catalogue&wfevent=link.Category&productCategory=categories/bt_corporate_solutions_workforce.xml&siteArea=mb.corp&origin=content.jsp&PorS=solutions

So, what's your take on working from home? Tell us your thoughts and reasons for or against it!

Choosing the right hardware for Virtualisation - IDC Whitepaper

webadmin@intel.com — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 16:16:53 GMT

Currently, virtualization is one of the most talked about new technologies in IT infrastructure. This IDC white paper explores how the ability to virtualize servers and reclaim, up until now, excess capacity has caught the interest of datacenter managers who are facing difficult power and cooling problems, the need to add more IT capacity to react to marketchanges, or a lack of significant capital resources. Read more on how the server virtualization is changing the market place.

Intel goes from black sheep to white hope of technology

webadmin@intel.com — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 15:36:11 GMT

The green shoots of recovery were encouraged by Intel's results despite the shadow of a EU fine hanging over the US chipmaker.

Read more here on what Graeme Wearden, of The Guardian, has to say on the EU ruling for Intel, a possible recovery of the market and roumours that Apple is finally ready to launch a tablet-like device ....

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/jul/15/intel-is-white-hope-of-technology