Windows 7 Migration Just Got Easier with MokaFive Suite 3.0

Today, MokaFive hit a significant milestone: the release of MokaFive Suite 3.0.

We began pilots over two years ago with some early adopter customers. Since then, these customers have gone into production – in some cases even increasing the size of their deployment – and now they’re beginning to see real, tangible business benefits from a centrally managed, distributed execution approach to desktop virtualization:

• A Silicon Valley-based international law firm saw its employee satisfaction ratings skyrocket
• A Global investment banking and securities firm whose traveling executives can carry one laptop (either a  Mac or PC) for both work and personal use

I point to these customers because their feedback has been absolutely critical for what we are delivering in version 3.0. This is the next-generation evolution of our product. We have made it Windows 7 ready, truly integrated into the enterprise with more policy controls and security features, and we hope to get more leverage from a market perspective with a multi-tenant managed services model.

Full Windows 7 support.

In my recent blog about the costs of Windows 7 migrations, I argued that this massive IT disruption could be a golden opportunity to future-proof the management architecture. And with 3.0, we’ve given IT leaders just that.

Rather than having to go from one desktop to the next and one office to the next over a 12 to 30 month period to manual upgrade machines, enterprises can implement MokaFive Suite to create a full Windows 7 VM that runs on existing hardware – and still access legacy applications – without waiting for the hardware refresh cycle. This means no additional capital costs to migrate to Windows 7, and companies can refresh hardware on their own timeline.

MokaFive’s Windows 7 support is not just a container. We now have full layering support on Windows 7 both in terms of AD domain join layering, OS layering, user-installed apps, data and settings.  We have changed the architecture of the layering so that it leverages some of the inherent features of Windows 7 much better.

Data center to endpoint security.

In the past, we’ve often talked about our seven layers of security, but for MokaFive Suite 3.0, we upped the ante with security at the device level.

With server hosted desktop virtualization solutions, you can secure the data in the data center, but how do you ensure that the browser accessing the VM is not being screen-scraped at the endpoint? Back in August, we announced a partnership with AVG to solve exactly this security gap; MokaFive Suite 3.0 now takes advantage of this full integration. The solution includes a secure virtual encrypted desktop container that can be deployed to the endpoint and further be secured from key-logging and screen-scraping attacks from the host machine by the AVG security scanning capability. Now virtual desktops can be a secure container that can be accessed by many devices, both corporate and personal.

Desktop management as-a-service.

We’ve been talking to some managed service providers that wanted to be able to leverage MokaFive Suite to deliver desktop management services to multiple organizations and their end-users. It seemed like a great idea, so we created a multi-tenant infrastructure as well as new reporting tools and the ability to delegate management to any tenant.

We see 3.0 valuable to three types of providers:

• Outsourced services firms currently using “brute force” to manage desktops for their clients. Now, with a single platform, they can increase the operational efficiency of their delivery model.
• Service providers and carriers that want to expand their footprint with a client or to add a new revenue stream.
• Hosting companies that have no specific desktop management expertise but want to add more services and move beyond providing just rack space.

These are the three big-ticket items in version 3.0, but we have many, many more features. Check out Brian Madden's latest blog post for more info and video interview.

Purnima Padmanabhan, VP of Products and Marketing



Get ready. Start. Migrate.

We’ve entered the final quarter of 2010, the time when Gartner anticipates most Windows 7 migrations will start in earnest. They’ve done extensive number crunching on the costs of Windows 7 migrations, and many other analysts have further reviewed these findings and prescribed their remedy to ease the pains, if not the costs entirely.

Windows 7 migration is expensive.

No matter how one dresses it up, there’s no hiding the plain truth: IT organizations are being asked to budget an extra 20% to 60% to their costs over the next two years. In addition to the well known costs such as new hardware and Windows 7 licensing, there are many hidden costs with Windows 7 migration.

First, there is the cost of identifying which applications to migrate and when? This is a hard, time-consuming task. Even though Windows 7 is supposed to be backwards compatible, the reality is that many applications still do not work flawlessly.

Second, there is the cost of maintaining both Windows XP and Windows 7 environments for a protracted period, which can be up to two or three years for some organizations based on their migration schedule.
Lastly, there is the cost of migrating personal data. In many work environments, there has been a blurring of the personal and the corporate. Windows 7 migration brings this issue to the forefront, since IT has to decide what and what not to migrate.

There is a silver lining. Windows 7 migration also provides the best opportunity to clean up.

While the list of problems with Windows 7 migration seems endless, a migration project provides IT with the opportunity to upgrade its management architecture, enforce better data usage guidelines, and offer greater user flexibility.

The question becomes, which solution can really solve the problem? Virtualizing the desktop can significantly speed up image deployment. Gartner suggests going with a hosted virtual desktop (HVD or server hosted virtual desktop), but at the same time argues that it is expensive, and what you are saving in migration costs you are adding in capital costs.

The alternative approach (MokaFive’s approach) is to virtualize the desktop, but instead of putting it on a server, you send it back down to the endpoint for local execution, thereby eliminating the datacenter requirement. With this approach, you have no additional capital costs. You simply take your existing machines and deploy a Windows 7 virtual machine environment to them. Your users now have Windows 7 environment without having to wait for your hardware refresh cycle. The best part is that the users can still use the Windows XP on their host machine to access legacy applications.

Refresh hardware on your own timeline: Traditionally, with Windows 7, customers are left with the hard choice of either forklift-upgrading their machines or refreshing their hardware. Instead of trying to speed up the refresh, you can use MokaFive to deploy a Windows 7 LivePC on top of your existing machines until they need a hardware refresh. Even if your refresh cycle extends beyond 2014, you will be fine, since your users can be provisioned with a Windows 7 environment on their existing Windows XP machines. Then when the refresh happens on a true Windows 7 base platform, the Windows 7 LivePC can be moved in minutes.

Provide users with platform choice: With virtual desktops, you can now implement programs such as BYOC or offer employees the choice to bring in the much-desired Mac. You can leverage the migration project to get out of the device management business. Let users bring a device, and you manage the secure corporate virtual image on top of the device. Best part, unlike HVD, users are free to work online or offline.
Separate work and personal: Windows 7 migration gives the ideal opportunity to start enforcing best practices around user data. With a virtual desktop approach, users can move their personal data to the host machine, allowing you to lock down the virtual desktop.

Future-proof yourself: In IT, change often means cost and pain. But a hugely disruptive change like Windows 7 is also a golden opportunity to implement a 'future-proof' management architecture. Even if you muscle through a Windows 7 migration by 2014, what happens with the next big upgrade? By upgrading your management infrastructure to a client based virtual desktop solution, you can not only ease the next upgrade cycle but also get huge TCO benefits while at the same providing more choice to your users.

Purnima Padmanabhan, VP of Products & Marketing

Local CPU is becoming MORE important

I caught up this week with Intel's technology evangelist, Charlie Milo, at the Intel Developer Forum, for an update on some of Intel's exciting new technologies, including accelerated 3D graphics, 3D television sets, 3D photos and cameras. One of the items that was showcased at IDF was Internet Explorer 9, which was released by Microsoft in beta yesterday.

Inevitably in our conversation, we discussed the impact of having such a browser; that is, one that renders graphics beautifully on the endpoint, on desktop virtualization. Through that discussion, it became clear that this browser will use a lot more CPU cycles to deliver the high-definition graphics and 3D images that we, the consumers, want. The question then becomes, where do you want this processing power to be executed? On an expensive server sitting in a data center, or on the endpoint?

Rendering rich 3D graphics requires a lot of power and speed, and more importantly needs to be computed close to the user for a rich, interactive experience. The data crunching can happen on the server, but in terms of rendering the graphics, it has to happen on the endpoint.

To me, these rich interactive performance applications further validate the bet we have placed on the client side, where virtual desktops are executed on the distributed resource.

How do you think the coming new browsers will impact desktop virtualization?

  Purnima Padmanabhan, VP of Products & Marketing