I have to admit that I was completely unaware of the power that US Department of Homeland Security has to seize and search your laptop, mobile phone, or hard drive without reasonable suspicion of wrongdoing. Last April, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals confirmed that digital equipment passing into the US is legally the same as a suitcase or bag and therefore subject to random searches. A quick scan of Google shows that the Department of Homeland Security operates outside the Fourth Amendment's requirement of probable cause and a warrant is not needed before invasive search and seizure of persons, houses, papers, and effects is allowed. The recent announcement that Congress is seeking to provide guidelines for US Laptop searches through the introduction of the Border Security Search Accountability Act of 2008 does nothing to protect the individual.
The bill makes no attempt to limit when search and seizure of electronic devices passing through US borders are permissible. It simply requires data that is determined to be commercial trade secrets or privileged information isn't shared with federal, state, local, or foreign authorities unless it can be demonstrated that the receiving agency complies with laws and regulations protecting such information. If there is no way to hide behind the "it's a matter of National Security" façade the owner of the device will receive a receipt for the device and written notification that the data has been copied or distributed. Oh yes, they also get a pamphlet on how to report abuses or concerns about the DHS's actions... I'm not sure just how much use that's going to be!
So, are the US Authorities helping you build a case for installing that video conferencing or Telepresence Suite? If our business is anything to go by, we are seeing more and more enquiries about video conferencing.
But, I hear you say, there are times when travelling is the only option! If that's the case, maybe you should be looking at desktop virtualisation.
VMworld is fast approaching so expect a slew of announcements from the major virtualisation vendors like the announcement made yesterday by VMware regarding their vStorage API set. The vStorage API set provides an interface between VMware's virtual Data Centre Operating System and storage products. It includes APIs for Site Recovery Manager, Consolidated Backup, multi-pathing/load balancing and management of integrated storage hardware platforms.
Since the key storage players, BMC, CA, EMC, HP, IBM Tivoli, NetIQ, nworks, Quest, Symantec and Tripwire are all either certified "VMware Ready" or have stated that they are working towards certification I wonder how the "our products work better than yours" competition between the storage vendors will pan out over the next few months and how Openview and Tivoli storage management products will fit vStorage into their strategies.
The past two years have seen the major players make a combined investment of over £1 billion on technology and acquisitions related to desktop virtualisation. Now that they have the technology will their customers will buy it?
Enterprise desktop computing has its problems; it is difficult to secure Windows desktops and they are plagued by email viruses, spyware and other malware. For these and other reasons, they are expensive to manage.
Will earmarking budget for virtual desktop technologies resolve these issues? Will desktop virtualisation give a solid and early ROI?
Desktop virtualisation moves the user's desktop to the data centre and delivers a copy to the user on demand. The upside for the IT department is that users are blocked from making unauthorised changes to a stable and authorised image. In addition, desktop virtualisation also allows your IT department the ability to separate the operating system from the application layer which should, theoretically protect the core OS from other components. Theoretically, this should result in fewer failures and a significantly lower total cost of ownership.
A recent survey by CIO Magazine, found that 25 percent of enterprise companies are using desktop virtualisation while another 13 percent planned to do so within 12 months. Of the remaining 62%, 37% responded that they are simply not interested in desktop virtualisation.
Until a clear business case, that shows a 12 month return on investment, emerges; most large enterprises are likely to hold off implementing a full blown desktop virtualisation strategy. This, of course is a major opportunity for the mid- and upper mid-market where the appetite for using technology to drive cost down while increasing profitability and customer service is much higher.
