By John Mark V. Tuazon
Computerworld Philippines
June 4, 2010

SMBs (small and medium businesses) looking to acquire several units of desktop PCs may want to opt for NComputing’s latest offering, a USB-enabled desktop virtualization kit which can extend the power of one machine to ten other units.

Utilizing virtualization software named vSpace, NComputing—also a provider of thin clients and other virtualization products—is attempting to forge mainstream adoption of desktop virtualization through its latest release, the U170.

The device, a five-inch wide, one-inch thick assembly with various ports for display, USB, audio and video at the back panel, can be attached or mounted over a display, a keyboard, and a mouse, without the need for its own CPU to power it.

The setup works by installing vSpace onto a central machine, connected via USB to up to nine clients, which then deploys sessions to each of the receiving kits, standing as each client’s CPU.

This way, each of the clients with kits can share the resources of just one central machine, a true cost-effective measure especially for businesses with multiple hardware implementations.

Manish Sharma, vice president of sales for Asia Pacific, NComputing, argued that the proposition works now, more than ever, because “machines today are very powerful, but our [business] requirements have not changed.”

“[We] don’t use the power of my machines fully, so inside every machine, there is wasted power. And we still pay for that power,” he added.

Using the solution, Sharma claimed, firms can achieve cost savings of up to 50%, with each unit costing only around $109 each. He added that they have so far deployed 2.4 million of such devices worldwide, 20,000 of which were implemented in the Philippines.

By default, Sharma explained, data accessed and created on client PCs are stored on the host PC, but he said it can be configured to be stored on other PCs or on a central server.

Meanwhile, he refuted claims that since the client PCs are subsisting on shared resources, performance would easily go down, by showing a video demonstrating five high-quality videos being played on five client PCs, with only 50% of memory being used.

Still, he maintained, performance for each client PC depends on the type of application being run. The solution can be extended to its maximum capacity when used only for casual surfing, he said, while power-hogging applications such as AutoCad and other multimedia applications bring the number down to about two or three.

Sharma on the other hand downplayed the fact that hosting several clients on a central hub leaves the host machine vulnerable. “When the host PC goes down, do you all go down? The answer is yes,” he admitted. “However, that is the nature of networks. That’s how it works.”

The NComputing executive said this reality is not a limiting factor for firms, since they can just as easily take out the wires from the compromised host PC and put it on another one. He also said new products from the company will have auto-failover features, which has the capability to automatically route resources whenever a PC bogs down.

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