Visions of the future vary drastically in popular culture, the scenes shift and circumstances can be an almost infinite number of possibilities, but what is one constant? At some point, the main character will inevitably interact with a thin-client device during a pivotal moment. It usually takes the form of a handheld screen with access to a limitless amount of media and data from seemingly anywhere.
Storage and compute power is good, and getting better—but I find it hard to believe the entire library of congress, and the tools to manipulate that data could fit on a tablet the size of my placemat. What does that leave? Virtualization and high-speed wireless access. You don’t need to store or process anything on the client, or even go beyond rendering images on the screen. Everything can be stored, provisioned and sent direct to you. The future is beginning to look a little more plausible.
This week, Cisco announced the Virtualization Experience Infrastructure (VXI), enabling rich media communication to virtual desktops. Applications and services can be quickly deployed across your entire workforce, and the many devices increasingly entering our lives. Fundamental to VXI is the secure, reliable delivery of media across the network. Much of it is latency sensitive, such as live video or audio—but regardless of the content, it needs to be delivered on-demand flawlessly.
Mobility is key to this vision, allowing you to truly access your virtual desktop from any device and location your work, or life, requires you to be. With Cisco’s enterprise-class 802.11n Wi-Fi you have the bandwidth required, enabling the backbone of VXI. Reliable and high-speed access alone isn’t enough though; you need the ability to optimize your network:
- Cisco CleanAir allows you to detect and mitigate RF interference, intelligently optimizing your network.
- Cisco VideoStream delivers superior, latency free video across wireless networks.
- Cisco ClientLink delivers performance benefits to older a/g clients and more bandwidth in more places.
The entire credit for this post goes to Scott Simkin
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