Sun Microsystems has taken the "hot desk" technology in its stateless enterprise appliance Sun Ray to another level - by taking the card out of smart card. New Sun Ray Server software allows users to "hot desk" without the smart card investment.
Stefano Mattiello, managing director of Sun Microsystems SA, explains that although the smart card technology is a highly desired feature to many users, excluding it provides for increased flexibility and further reduces costs.
"Sun Ray's hot-desking features enables users to instantly call up sessions from any Sun Ray system in a workgroup without logging on. These features have been extremely popular with various tertiary institutions and financials. Taking out the smart card does not reduce these "hot desk" features, but rather increases the appliance's capabilities." Other enhancements to the appliance include improved network configuration flexibility and increased management capabilities. The Sun Ray Server Software 1.3 supports customers across qualified virtual local area networks (VLAN), while the new Packet Reporting Tools enable administrators to meet the necessary service requirements while maintaining the VLAN environment.
In addition, administrators can use the new tools to configure, monitor and deploy systems resources more effectively. "Sun Ray systems can now be configured to launch and restart applications automatically without a user log-in. This means administrators can control or limit which applications users can access," says Mattiello.
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Simplifying the desktop and lowering the total cost of ownership, Sun Ray appliances not only bring the power of the server to the desktop, but are also easy to set up and deploy. Sun Ray appliances are stateless devices that consolidate resources on the server and require no client administration or upgrades. The Sun Ray systems enable users to gain instant access to existing applications and resources on the network, regardless of the underlying platform including Sun's Solaris Operating Environment, Java technology-based, multimedia or Windows NT applications.
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