VMworld Predictions

As I previously noted, next week’s VMworld will be MokaFive’s first showing in two years. We’re putting the finishing touches on our booth and prepping our demos. While we count down the days, I want to share some thoughts on what I predict will come out of VMworld.

1. Cloudy messaging around cloud. You don’t have to be clairvoyant to see this one. VMworld 2010 will be all about the cloud, so expect to see everyone putting out some “cloud” story—whether they have a cloud offering or not. As such, expect to sift through these myriad messages for what’s real, what’s pure marketing and what’s simply lipstick on a pig. Despite best efforts to align with the cloud story, the plain fact is that cloud is not an all or nothing model.

As an example, let’s look at desktop virtualization—which is, after all, what we know best. While server virtualization is a key component of the cloud-based delivery model, on the desktop side, the cloud discussion can take an interesting turn. Too often, the most obvious approach has been to take a desktop, virtualize it and then put it in the cloud. But, keeping in mind that cloud is not “all or nothing,” how about just centralizing the management in the cloud, but still keeping the desktop with you.

2. VMware goes back to basics. Based on recent earnings and (non) developments and news from VMware, I anticipate that it will go back to its comfort zone and core competency: the server. Like all vendors, VMware fell prey to the trends—and why not, since they have the revenue and clout. But the reality is, VMware’s business is the data center. They will refocus (or reaffirm) their server play, including server-side desktop virtualization (VDI).

3. Open source ecosystem. Expect a lot of smaller open source type plays to jockey for a position to fill into VMware ecosystem either around open source management or open source application development. They’ve seen VMware move into open source software and open source tools, so they will be want to a part to play in this.

That’s it for my predictions. The last food for thought I will leave you with is the VMware vs. Microsoft match up. VMware has openly declared war on Microsoft --but just how exactly will VMware message this at the show. I cannot wait to hear what VMware will say in its keynote.

What do you expect to see or hear at the show this year? I will be hanging around MokaFive’s booth (#1736), so would welcome your thoughts in person. This has always been one of my favorite shows, and I am excited for some real dialogue with some of the best minds out there.

Of course, we will also be demoing the MokaFive Suite, our new multi-tenancy capability and an exciting peek into a new forthcoming product that I believe will be a real game-changer. And we also will be giving away an iPad. Swing by for details.

Purnima Padmanabhan, VP of Products & Marketing

MokaFive, AVG push the secure corporate perimeter to personal devices

Last week, we announced a joint solution with AVG to add one more layer of security to MokaFive which allows distributed virtual desktops to be quickly deployed to and safely run from any machine - corporate or personal. This solution extends MokaFive’s capability of running encrypted virtual desktop containers on the endpoint by further securing them from key-logging and screen-scraping attacks from the host machine with the AVG security scanning capability.

While there are a number of drivers for this integration, the key driver is securing the increasing number of personal devices that are constantly accessing sensitive corporate data. Whether organizations like it or not, they have to support ubiquitous access to stay relevant. Current solutions fall seriously short. Let’s start with VPN. Trying to secure access from personal devices using VPN is futile, since all it does is punch a hole from a dirty container into a clean datacenter. Next let’s look at server based desktops (VDI) and apps or terminal services. In each of these solutions, the data is sitting in a nicely protected container in the datacenter. For added security, let’s assume that there are military guards outside the datacenter. If all this secure data is ultimately being accessed by a browser from a dirty personal machine, then it can be screen scraped. Might as well toss out all the protection. The third approach is to distribute bootable USBs or CDs with a browser. This approach is secure, but cumbersome for the user, and more importantly, the image cannot be managed or updated.

As I have mentioned before, security cannot be talked about in absolutes. But if a company wants to enable access of corporate data from personal machines,; the best solution seems to be to have a secure, managed container provisioned to the personal machine. This is exactly what we are doing with the combined AVG – MokaFive solution. The corporate environment is captured and encapsulated in a virtual desktop (called LivePC in MokaFive parlance) which is then deployed to the personal endpoint. The encapsulation has built-in AV scanning that provides continuous protection from keyloggers and screenscrapers that might be present on the host machine. The scanning is running continuously during VM operation to ensure constant protection. All access to the corporate data is made available only through the VM container. Now, the user has the flexibility to use both corporate and personal environments on their machine, and the corporation has complete assurance that all the data is secured.

With this solution, enterprises can now finally extend the secure corporate perimeter to personal machines. Check out the press release.

Purnima Padmanabhan, VP of Products & Marketing

Manage Desktops from the Cloud

Over the last two years, we’ve been helping our customers -- many of them very large brands with thousands of users -- succeed in rolling out the MokaFive Suite to their employees. Today, we’re taking the first step to make our virtual desktop management solution available to smaller companies – by enabling MSPs to offer desktop as a service with MokaFive Suite Service Provider Edition.

As part of this roll out, we’re opening up our beta program for managed service providers (MSPs) that want to offer desktop management from the cloud. Service Provider Edition includes capabilities that would allow an MSP to manage multiple customers on a single platform. As such, we’ve architected our core offering on a fully multi-tenant infrastructure, added reporting and enabled delegated management for MSPs.

This is great news for MSPs in that it can improve operational efficiencies of their desktop delivery and enable them to offer desktop management as a service at a lower overall cost. Many desktops in the world today are not managed within the enterprise, but managed by outsourced providers. This is due to the economies of scale (and skill) that can be achieved by outsourcing vendors as they pool managed desktop services across many companies.

There are other desktop management service offerings on the market, of course, but most of them have focused primarily on using the VDI-based model where both the desktop execution and management are in the cloud. As we have discussed in previous posts, that approach has inherent deficiencies such as no offline access and a poor end user experience. What we offer with the Service Provider Edition is desktop management services from the cloud, while still allowing for the virtual desktop to be executed locally and to be available online or offline.

That’s why we felt it was important to bring the power of centrally managed, locally executed MokaFive LivePCs to the channel, enabling our MSP partners to offer this technology to their customers.

If you are an MSP interested in joining our beta program, click here.

Purnima Padmanabhan, VP of Products & Marketing

MokaFive at VMworld

This year’s VMworld conference is fast approaching, and we are beginning to feel the excitement as we prepare to participate after a two-year hiatus. Over the past couple of years, we’ve been focused on three key areas: refining our product, gaining customer wins, and raising awareness of MokaFive.

First, on the product front: I am proud to say that over the last two years, the team here has built an enterprise-class product with all the capabilities, scale, security and robustness to manage enterprise endpoints.

Second, a good product translates to customer wins, and we have started to see a big ramp up in production deployments. We've spent the last two years working very closely with our customers to solve the complexities of managing desktops and enabling choice computing for end users. We’re now seeing customers who initially bought into the concept of server-based desktop virtualization saying the model is too complex and not cost effective. MokaFive’s approach of centralizing the management of virtual desktops and having them execute locally at the endpoint - irrespective of the type of endpoint - is actually gaining a lot of traction and truly validating the strategy we’ve established.

Lastly, we recently raised a round of funding this past April to add to our successes. We are now in a place where we can focus on raising awareness of the product and of MokaFive as a company. With a robust strong product and a great, referenceable customer base, I feel we can put our foot forward strongly and confidently.

As we look ahead to VMworld in less than two weeks, we’re excited about the quality of conversations we expect to have with CIOs, IT managers, sys-admins and end users about desktop virtualization.

If you are planning to attend VMworld, come by MokaFive’s booth (#1736) to see a live demo of MokaFive Suite, learn more about MokaFive’s BareMetal Player, and enter to win an iPad. You can also follow our our Twitter stream for updates before and during the show.

We look forward to participating in VMworld 2010! Stay tuned for our next VMworld blog post where I will predict the emerging themes and trends that will be discussed at the VMworld show.

Purnima Padmanabhan, VP of Products & Marketing