Putting a price on a virtual computer

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the killer web service is Virtualization

Any desktop can be run as a web service using products like VMware. Lets say a court system wants to make its findings available to law enforcement or homeland security. By cloning one of the desktops and moving the file that is created to a server you achieve a killer web service. Any one with the proper access codes can run the service, access data, even update it if authorized. The VMware client is in effect a browser and the VMware server the web server.

Implications for the medical field are also self evident. Again with VMware or one of the 18 or so similar products or with the open source Xen, the VistA medical records software from the Veterans Administation can be made available to every physician with a computing appliance.

VistA is an open source MUMPs based program that has recently been enhance with office software (probably open office). Harvard recently recognized VistA with an award. It was paid for with government grants and it threatens Microsoft's new healthcare division and its own operating system product that was to have been named Vista. (I suspect the name will be changed.)

A recent bill allows Microsoft and the Gates foundation to give physicians tablet or other computers. That kind of a gift was not allowed in the past if the physician was paid by the governement for medicaid or medicare. It is a bad policy IMO but is likely the only way physians will even consider Microsoft Medical Records software from the new health care devision.

The VM strategy also includes backups in the form of snap shots of the virtual desktops where only the diference between the last shot and new one are stored. This is very efficient.

Hardly any users get their entire desktop backed up with the current none VM deployments. In addition, Virtualized machines when hit with a virus or a Microsoft automatic update that fails can be removed and restored from the master clone and the snap shots. This strategy for handling viral attachs and uncontrolable vendor updates is sound on the new multi core, multi-processor chips because VMs on simple X86 hardware can not prevent faulting directly to the hardware level unless Linux, which has been patched to prevent this, is used.

Every business and government agency will need to rewrite their long range information system plans owing to this technology. For example, hardware will need multicore multiprocessing technology and software will need to be writen in Fortran or Java or reworked with tools from Intel so that it can take advantage of real threading and the load balancing that is desirable.

Microsoft's past license restriction for Windows XP professional (single copy on no more than a two processor machine) likely never was enforcable because it did not allow even a backup clone. Yet the license verbage has undoubtedly slowed down implementation of Virtualization and still does because those who have ignored the verbage are reluctant to say so and discuss their findings. I would like the company (Microsoft) to send out notices to all businesses in the mail known to use Microsoft Windows or in some other way ensure that the use of legal verbage to frighten those seaking to better information technology, even get them fired because of fear of a law suit from the monopoly, is reversed.

Frank L. Mighetto CCP

Posted by: mighetto   Posted on: 08/28/06 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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