SIMTone Puts the Silver Lining on Cloud Computing - A Closer Look:
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SIMtone breaks their offering down into several sub products. For larger data centers that are looking to manage multiple customer “clouds,” the company offers SIMTone USP (Universal Services Provisioning Platform), a product that allows MSPs to deliver cloud services such as virtual desktops, DAAS and SAAS, Web applications to subscribers, on demand and on the fly, on any device and any broadband connection, via a single user ID. USP is probably the way to go if a solution provider wants to become a self governing MSP, with their own data center offerings. USP is designed to scale reliably using commodity hardware coupled with virtualization and reduces operating costs for MSPs.
SIMtone USP offers a hosted PC environment to subscribers and can work with most popular Internet browsers on traditional PCs or with zero-touch, non-processing terminals (commonly referred to as SNAPs).
The SNAP-based connectivity creates an opportunity for solution providers to sell low-cost devices to their customers to access the hosted environment. Solution providers can also garner integration revenue by setting up existing PCs to work with SIMtone USP. That setup may consist of wiping out the PC's hard drive and just setting up a simple OS and browser to access the cloud-based services.
For organizations looking to host their own cloud-based computing infrastructure, solution providers can choose to sell and install SIMtone VSP, which is designed for businesses to transform existing applications and desktops into “cloud computing-enabled” infrastructures. SIMtone VSP is aimed at organizations looking to manage their own cloud and not be part of a larger, multiple cloud environment.
While the connectivity concept behind VSP is very similar to USP, VSP is geared more towards replicating existing environments (or transformation from traditional desktops to hosted virtual desktops) for a specific client site and not the basic, startup provisioning of new hosted services. SIMtone VSP supports multiple operating systems and applications, which are hosted in virtual environments. Solution providers can configure SIMtone VSP to work with terminal servers, blade PCs and even existing desktop PCs. Solution providers will be able to use the product to quickly build services that are normally found only in a data center and then can quickly migrate and provision end users.
Arguably, the most important element of SIMtone USP and VSP is the XDP 2.0 stateless protocol, which proves to be the secret sauce behind SIMtone’s capabilities. Unlike RDP (or other protocols), XDP 2.0 is designed from the ground up for “stateless” computing. In other words, the protocol is not hindered by many of the subsets of features needed by other remote desktop protocols, and is designed to focus solely on delivery of virtualized desktops to client PCs. XDP 2.0 enables client PCs to support MP3 audio.
Full-frame-rate desktop video and fast USB redirects – thanks mostly to the protocol’s optimized bandwidth utilization. Audio and video performance becomes increasingly important as companies look to leverage desktop VoIP and video conferencing capabilities, both of which were normally beyond the capabilities of traditional hosted desktops.
From a technological standpoint, SIMtone accomplishes everything the company set out to do and the product proves to be a viable alternative to other “cloud-enabled” solutions, such as those from Citrix and Ericom. For the channel, SIMtone offers ample opportunity, but the company does need to offer more channel centric information on its Web site and define pricing.
Currently, interested potential partners will need to contact the company to find out about the channel program, pricing and support elements behind the products and their specific options. All things considered, SIMtone is worth a much closer look for solution providers looking to get involved with the cloud.
