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VIRTUALISATION New Vista licences cover thin clients
VIRTUALISATION New Vista licences cover thin clients | New Vista licences cover thin clients |
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| by Stephen Withers | |
| Tuesday, 03 April 2007 | |
  
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Separate arrangements cover the two cases. The revised Windows Vista Enterprise licence allows processing or storage to be carried out remotely from the user. Such a scheme can be convenient for physical security reasons (it's generally easier to secure one data centre than multiple offices) or to take advantage of the relative ease of management of blade servers and SANs compared with individual desktop PCs. Another reason for adopting it is that it allows a personalised Windows environment to coexist with hot-desking and situations where a mobile (but on-premises) user doesn't want to carry a notebook or tablet but would rather use whichever PC or thin client is in the room he or she is currently occupying. Organisations wishing to run multiple Vista desktops on server-based virtual machines require a Vista Enterprise Centralized Desktop licence, which commands an additional per-device fee. This can be seen as an indication of Microsoft's acceptance of virtualisation. The company is expected to release its own hypervisor next year, but for now the market is dominated by VMware. It also makes it easier for organisations to switch to Vista without a full-scale refresh of desktop hardware. Instead, existing PCs effectively become terminals to Vista on virtual machines running within servers. Both licences are only available to organisations signed up for Software Assurance, a scheme that allows licence fees to be spread across up to three years as well as giving the right to use any new versions of the licensed products released during the term of the agreement.{moscomment} |
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