Your datacenter is full of waste. You have unused storage, unused processor power and unused bandwidth. Yet, platform constraints force you to continue to make costly equipment investments. While diligent capacity planning and management can help take the sting out of future purchases, you still may be overspending. Rather than buy systems when much of your infrastructure is idle, it may be time to virtualize.

Server, storage and desktop virtualization can unlock more of your IT infrastructure’s capacity, delivering a rapid cost savings and ROI boost based on investments you have made already. Using virtualization, you can knock down the walls that block platforms: computing power becomes computing power, regardless of the system that provides it. This delivers unparalleled flexibility.

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With all the communications tools already on the market, it’s still difficult, sometimes, to put the right group of professionals together. The effort becomes even more complex when you include the need to share documents, collaborate on daunting issues or share ideas in real time. Somehow, many of the collaboration solutions fall short of delivering the ability to connect quickly and work together in real time without regard to business units and physical locations. With Cisco Unified Communications, however, you can take full advantage of the deep business and technical knowledge resident in your business, as though everyone involved were sitting in the same room.

In today’s well-connected and hyper-competitive marketplace – regardless of what industry you’re in – the ability to communicate no longer provides a competitive edge. Rather, it’s the price of admission. If you can’t pull together the right group of experts quickly, you risk falling behind … and ceding market share to the competition. It’s too easy to miss an opportunity when the pace of business is measured in seconds instead of days or weeks.

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A new collaboration agreement between Citrix and Microsoft has led to Citrix support for the upcoming Microsoft RemoteFX platform. This newly announced platform will be made available in a future release of Windows Server 2008 R2 service pack 1. It will allow all virtual desktops on a single Windows Server or Hyper-V server to share the power of graphics acceleration hardware built into server and end user devices.

Under the new collaboration agreement, Citrix XenDesktop™ will expand its high-definition HDX™ technology to further enhance the capabilities of RemoteFX and extend them to a broader range of use cases and locations. By addressing the most demanding rich graphics environments, Citrix and Microsoft will continue working together to advance the state-of-the-art in desktop virtualization technology, making virtual desktops a rich, high-definition experience for all users, regardless of their device, location or role.

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The era of the same people sitting at the same desks every single day is behind us. The workforce is now mobile, and the trend isn’t going away. For businesses, this means being able to hire the best talent regardless of location, being able to spend more time with clients and gaining an unprecedented level of flexibility. Yet, it also comes with the challenge of keeping employees connected with the company when they’re waiting in airports, standing in clients’ hallways between meetings and working from home.

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You’re deep into the sales cycle. Your prospect is at the point where tough, detailed questions are the norm, and they’re coming at you at a rapid pace. Every second counts, especially when you’re competing with other companies for a specific opportunity. In fact, your ability to respond is being evaluated, even if informally, and you’re eager to put your best foot forward. At moments like this, Cisco Unified Communications can change your ability to compete profoundly and deliver a return on investment that’s incredibly easy to measure.

When a question comes in from a client, Cisco UC can give you swift and direct access to all the information resident in your organization. If it’s on a server, a desktop or inside an employee’s head, the tools from Cisco can help the right people get together, regardles of where they are located physically, in order to understand the inquiry, formulate the right response and support it with all the data available. Specification documents, presentations, diagrams and performance data – along with everything else you can imagine – can be shared quickly to facilitate planning and discussion.

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With all the information bouncing around about the upside – and risks – associated with cloud computing, it’s easy to get lost in the details. Doubtless, this is the hot new technology, and it’s still in its infancy. As IT professionals move from discussion to pilot and implementation, which we’re likely to see in greater numbers this year, it will be crucial to understand clearly the factors that make cloud computing an attractive alternative … and the risks that can make it inappropriate for some systems or companies.

Check out the short list of pros and cons over at VentureBeat. This is among the best lists we’ve encountered for navigating the emerging world of cloud computing.

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The latest version of the popular Citrix presentation server arrived last week. XenApp 6 is designed specifically for use on Windows Server 2008 R2, and it will integrate with Microsoft systems management tools and App-V application virtualization. XenApp 6 will also include support for video and audio conferencing and a simpler installation process. End-user self-service for application deployment is also available. Thanks to the addition of HDX support to the latest version of XenApp, smartphones are now included in the devices that this application virtualization platform can reach.

The new enhancements to XenApp 6 will be available as an integrated feature of Citrix XenDesktop 4, the top desktop virtualization solution on the market. Since more than half the ROI of a virtual desktop environment comes from centralized application management, the integration between XenDesktop 4 and XenApp 6 offers a substantial opportunity to extend the value of your Citrix virtualization investment. With a combined XenApp 6/XenDesktop 4 environment, you’ll be able to deliver applications as an on-demand service – to any user on any device and across a wide range of physical and virtual desktops.

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Data is growing rapidly, and even as storage technology rises to the challenge, there are plenty of measures you can take to keep your storage costs and infrastructure under control. So, as you see the need to add equipment to address the archiving needs associated with mission-critical applications, compliance obligations and prudent business practices, take a moment to think about how much of that data you actually need to store. You may have duplicates all over your infrastructure, which is increasing your storage needs rapidly. De-duplication, rather than more equipment, may be the key to streamlining your data storage operation.

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The beauty and curse of the open and easy flow of information is that there are so many perspectives to consider. I came across an interesting article on Brian Madden’s blog about reports and blog coverage comparing Citrix XenDesktop 4 and VMware. The Miercom report came out with XenDesktop 4 as the leader in desktop virtualization, though VMware’s Mike Coleman doesn’t agree with the study. Madden does a great job of comparing the findings from these different assessments. It’s a long post, but definitely worth a look.

[Source Brian Madden]