The Number of Cloud-Driven Desktops Will Reach 70 Million by 2015

Welcome to the Wednesday edition of the IP news roundup. Here are the latest headlines on virtualization, unified communications and more:

• With the number of cloud-driven desktops expected to reach 70 million by 2015, the Integration Developer News blog published a list of design considerations for hosted virtual desktops. According to the blog post, “servers must be powerful enough to run enough virtual machines to be economical” while also delivering high performance, and “storage needs to be fast, yet flexible for a cloud environment, and easily provide snapshots.” For more hosted virtual desktop design considerations and challenges, see the Integration Developer News article.
• The secret to being more innovative … don’t watch the news. Innovation is one of the key mandates for IT departments. However, if you feel that you’re lagging on the innovation front, Forbes advises you to turn off the television news. Watching too much news can increase your feelings of fear and drain your energy. To innovate, you need to be more optimistic. According to Forbes, “People who believe they live in a friendly universe are looking for opportunity at every turn. People who believe they live in an unfriendly universe look to be persecuted. They live in fear, and fear is the enemy of creativity.” For more ideas on how the news impacts your ability to innovate, see the Forbes article.  
• Pay attention to these unified communications trends in 2013. A Virtualization Review article advises enterprises to take a hybrid approach to unified communications, as this can help move deployments from the pilot phase to production. According to the article, a hybrid approach “blends the traditional options of on-premises Microsoft Lync deployment with the enhanced optimization provided through a hosted deployment. This allows the core infrastructure and applications to remain in the enterprise under the management of the enterprise IT staff; meanwhile, the media, edge and federation portions of the environment are hosted in the cloud through globally distributed data centers.” For more unified communications trends, see the Virtualization Review article.
• Don’t believe these data privacy and the cloud myths. According to a Forbes.com article, one of the biggest myths is that cloud computing is bad for data security. The article states, “Data security in the cloud depends on three factors: strong internal IT governance, reliable cloud service providers and strong security measures deployed by both. Because service performance is a huge determinant of a vendor’s success, reliable cloud service providers have a built-in incentive to offer better data security than a customer’s own data center.” For more data privacy and the cloud myths, see the Forbes.com article.
• And finally … Search Virtual Desktop published the top five desktop virtualization quotes of 2012. Simon Crosby, co-founder of Bromium, made the list with “If the client device has ever walked into Starbucks, can you ever trust it again?” Although many businesses are turning to private clouds, Crosby warns that even these can have security risks such as unsecured Wi-Fi networks. For more top quotes, see the Search Virtual Desktop article.

What is your take on today’s news? Feel free to share your opinions below.