University pilots virtual desktop solution

Auckland University of Technology (AUT) is currently piloting a VMware virtual desktop solution for use with its administrative staff, with a view to expanding the project to the broader student population in the next 12 months, reports Computerworld.

“Moving to desktop virtualisation is an opportunity for us to save money that can be used to fund other virtualisation initiatives,” says Calum MacLeod, IT strategy and architecture manager at AUT.

By virtualising the office administration environment and eliminating leasing fees for office computers, he expects to save around $400 000 a year over three years.

A survey of 700 CIOs worldwide has revealed that companies are committing more to the technologies and it's expected to drive much of the purchasing decisions over the next 18 months, says TechWorld.

What's more, it's the UK that's setting the pace for virtualisation, beating the US, France, Germany, and Japan in pushing ahead with the technology. According to the survey, 4% of UK companies intend to increase their spending on server virtualisation.

The research, known as the Citrix Virtualisation Index, finds that IT managers are looking to make major savings from virtualisation as the technology continues to be employed.

Extreme Networks is offering next-generation data centre products to enable the migration to virtualised data centres and new infrastructure solutions that feature high scalability, performance and simplicity, says The Standard.

The new Extreme BlackDiamond 8900-xl modules and Summit X480 stackable switches will address the demand for high performance and increased scale in the data centre network driven due to the adoption of virtualisation and outsourcing of infrastructure to managed hosting and cloud providers.

The benefits of a virtualised infrastructure and cloud-based applications and systems can be realised by the scaling of data centres and both hosting companies and enterprises are making efforts in this direction.