Back in October, I wrote about a partnership that formed between Sentillion and Parallels where the Parallels Workstation product would replace VMware's Player as the virtualization engine powering the vThere product. Today, Sentillion vBusiness, a division of Sentillion, Inc., announced the general availability of vThere 2.0, the company's packaged virtualized desktop solution. vThere leverages virtualization t Back in October, I wrote about a partnership that formed between Sentillion and Parallels where the Parallels Workstation product would replace VMware’s Player as the virtualization engine powering the vThere product. Today, Sentillion vBusiness, a division of Sentillion, Inc., announced the general availability of vThere 2.0, the company’s packaged virtualized desktop solution. vThere leverages virtualization technology to provide remote users with the same operating system and corporate application experience as if physically located in the enterprise, while still having the full benefit of the corporate security infrastructure. This latest version of vThere features functionality designed to improve the end-user experience and the provisioning and distribution of vThere images. “During the earliest development stages of vThere, we made a commitment to reduce the deployment costs, required expertise and performance challenges associated with current desktop virtualization alternatives,” said David Fusari, vice president & CTO, Sentillion vBusiness. “The technological and design enhancements in vThere 2.0 are reflective of this commitment to provide a simple, seamless and secure solution for both end users and IT professionals.”Launched in June 2006, vThere allows businesses to easily provision and deploy desktop virtualization technology to a large number of users. Generally hosted on unmanaged computers, such as a remote user’s home computer or an employee-owned laptop, the packaged environments, called vThere images, create a self-contained, safe and secure corporate computing environment visible on the network domain. This environment, which eliminates the need for server farms, leverages the host hardware, but is otherwise completely isolated from the host, making vThere an extremely effective tool for enterprise desktop management. “With the rise of unmanaged and employee-owned machines accessing the corporate network, vThere’s security posture and policy management capabilities simultaneously address the IT challenges associated with deploying and managing remote access and desktop management solutions,” said Paul Roscoe, president, Sentillion vBusiness. “Through vThere, IT organizations are now able to standardize and centrally manage the corporate desktop and provide remote access without compromising the security of the enterprise or the end user’s experience when interacting with applications.” New features in vThere 2.0 include: Seamless integration of Parallels Workstation for Windows – The tight integration between vThere and Parallels-the underlying virtual engine technology-provides the end user with a seamless solution that simplifies the installation and ongoing use of vThere. Enhanced Image Compression – Improved vThere image compression to provide rapid download of vThere images allows for even faster rollout of the technology to large numbers of remote workers, including teleworkers, branch office employees, contractors, business partners or temporarily displaced employees who require immediate access to corporate applications and data for optimal productivity and business continuity. A securely-hosted Web site for image distribution – Through www.vThere.net, organizations can quickly provision vThere images to remote users. Users can download and access their vThere images through a simple one-click process. Centralized Activation Management – Activations of vThere images can be managed centrally, allowing for license management control, de-provisioning of images and management reporting. Image Revocation services – vThere images can be automatically revoked from the end-user computing device according to system administrator policies for employee termination or as needed. Centralized Policy Management – Improved capabilities for managing security privileges and access policies associated with vThere images, such as file sharing and local USB port access. Location specific computing – vThere will detect whether the image is being accessed remotely or on the enterprise network and manage the network access automatically. vThere 2.0 is now available and the pricing for the solution is $125 per user. And the vThere image creator toolkit is $795 per administrator workstation. Software Development