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Provision Networks Showcases Version 5.8 of Acclaimed Virtual Access Suite

Provision Networks, a global provider of enterprise virtual desktop deployment and application delivery solutions showcased today at VMware TSX in Nice, France the much anticipated version 5.8 of the Virtual Access Suite (VAS).

The latest release is aimed at large-scale enterprise desktop deployments and is the only commercially available solution that:
    -- consolidates the delivery of applications (including application streaming support)
    -- consolidates the deployment of desktops from:
          * terminal servers
          * blade or physical PCs
          * virtual infrastructures

"Release 5.8 of the Virtual Access Suite offers a unified management framework for delivering hosted applications and deploying desktops from a centrally managed infrastructure consisting of Windows Terminal Servers, as well as physical and virtual machines running standard Windows desktop operating systems such as XP and Vista," said Peter Ghostine, co-founder and CTO of Provision Networks. "This is our most comprehensive offering to date, however our roadmap is choke-full of innovations."

ENTERPRISE VIRTUALIZATION EXPERTS, RAPIDAPP, ADOPT THE NEW PLATFORM AND SET TO DELIVER QUICKSTART SERVICES FOR THE VIRTUAL ACCESS SUITE
"RapidApp and Provision Networks share the common conviction that enterprise desktop virtualization is real. We are embarking on this new venture with the firm belief that Provision Networks is uniquely positioned to deliver true enterprise virtual desktop infrastructures today. Our expert application delivery and virtualization technologists have been simply wowed with this latest release of the Virtual Access Suite," said Mitch Northcutt, President and CEO of RapidApp.

VIRTUAL ACCESS SUITE v5.8 NEW FEATURES AND ENHANCEMENTS

Support for physical machines, including Blade PCs from HP, IBM and Dell:
- Physical machines such as Blade PCs may now be logically grouped, pooled, and managed in the same manner as virtual machines.

Non-Power-Managed Operational Mode:
With this new mode, virtual machine power states are not managed. Instead, virtual machines are always assumed to be powered on. This operational mode does not require the presence of VMware's VirtualCenter and is especially suited for physical desktops, blade PCs, and virtual machines hosted on other virtualization platforms such as Microsoft Virtual Server and Xen-based solutions.

Enhanced Management Console:
An enhanced management console delivering an intuitive user interface, multiple administrator access, and a more efficient mechanism for assigning resources to end-users and clients by way of access control lists.

Enhanced Discovery Modes:
Multiple discovery, enumeration, and import mechanisms of physical and virtual machines, including:

    1. Enumeration of desktops in an existing Windows domain infrastructure.
    2. Enumeration of virtual machines from the VMware VirtualCenter
       inventory.
    3. Manual import of physical/virtual machines by name, name range, IP
       address, or IP address range.

Unprecedented Levels of Scalability and High Availability:
The ability to enable local datastore caching on all provision-managed servers, including Connection Brokers, Terminal Servers, and Universal Print Servers. By maintaining a locally cached copy of the Provision central datastore, higher levels of availability and service continuity are achieved.

Upgrade Automation:
Provision Tools self-upgrade. The 'Provision Tools for the Virtual Desktop' are installed inside each VM. Whenever a new update becomes available, it can be automatically upgraded from within the Provision Management Console.

Expanded Client and Device Support:
    Provision RDP client for Linux
      - support for Novell SLED 10
      - support for HP t5125 and HP t5725 thin clients
    Provision RDP client for Windows CE
      - support for HP t5520, HP t5530 and t5720 thin clients
      - support for ComputerLab International MT1200c, MT1500g and ET4500g
        thin clients
      - support for IGEL CE thin clients
      - snap-in for Neoware CE thin clients
    Virtualized VAS web client
      - access the Provision Networks infrastructure from a kiosk or any 32-bit Windows client device without client installation or administrative privileges. The Virtualized VAS client is powered by Thinstall and can be taken along on a USB stick, iPod or cell phone/PDA with a hard drive.