Quoting the press release:

Leostream Corp. (www.Leostream.com), a leading provider of Virtual Hosted Desktop Management software, and physical to virtual conversion tools, today announced it will pull the wraps off its latest generation Connection Broker for Virtual Infrastructure at the IBM System x Conference. Connection Broker controls access to desktops that are running in virtual machine environments. The event is set for August 1-4, 2006, at the Hilton Chicago.

"Connection Brokers act like ushers at a theatre - instead of checking your ticket and showing you to your seat, they check your identity and show you to the right remote Windows Desktop," said David Crosbie, Leostream CEO. "The benefit of giving users a Windows Desktop running inside a virtual machine rather than running everything on the desktop is the enhanced level of security and reliability. This is particularly relevant in industries such as healthcare, insurance, and banking."

Leostream's Connection Broker adds functionality to VMware's Virtual Desktop Initiative and IBM's Virtualized Hosted Client Infrastructure (VHCI) with features such as remote desktop protocol management, desktop pooling, stickiness, thin client integration, as well as monitoring and reporting.

The new release simplifies the end user experience by enabling single sign-on and auto sign-off from both Windows XP machines and Wyse S10 thin clients. Users can simply enter their username and password and almost immediately connected to a remote Microsoft Windows XP desktop using a wide range of remote desktop protocols - from Microsoft's RDP to Citrix's ICA as well as VNC and VMware'e Remote Viewer.

Leostream's Connection Broker is a management layer that manages the virtual machine environment via VMware's VirtualCenter (version 1.4 or 2.0) while controlling access to remote desktops running with the virtual machines. As it is not in the data path it can scale to tens of thousands of virtual machines. VirtualCenter manages the virtualized environment and is used by server administrators. The Connection Broker manages the user environment and is used by the desktop administrators.

"We have learnt from our existing Virtual Hosted Desktop deployments that ease of use is everything - end users want one step access to their remote desktop, while system administrators want a system that works out of the box and can be up and running in a morning," added Crosbie.

Leostream distributes its Connection Broker as a Virtual Appliance. Additional information and free trials can be obtained from their website www.leostream.com

Attendees of the IBM System x Technical Conference will receive hands-on experience with the newest IBM System x, xSeries, BladeCenter servers and the enhanced IBM X3 Architecture. These technologies bring industrial-strength capabilities to the x86 server environment. Attendees will also get up to speed on new xSeries and BladeCenter storage, networking and software technology advances, including installation tools, new features, and systems management. For more information visit: http://www.ibm.com/us/

Leostream is a VMware VDI partner and an IBM ISV Business Partner.