Sun Ray Software 4

The unique Sun Ray Software architecture removes management of complex PC or embedded OS thin clients from the desktop equation by offering a complete virtual desktop. The architecture consists of two parts: Sun Ray Virtual Display Clients and Sun Ray Software. The environmentally friendly Virtual Display Client is a low-cost device that, when plugged into the network, delivers a secure, network desktop. Sun Ray Software has three core components: Sun Ray Server Software, Sun Ray Connector for Windows, and Sun Desktop Manager.

Sun Ray Server Software Acts as a broadcaster, delivering customized content to each Sun Ray client on the network. Channel 1 might be Microsoft Windows, Channel 2 might be Linux, and Channel 3 might be the Solaris OS. It provides user authentication and encryption between server and client, as well as user session management. This not only enhances security, but also helps reduce complexity and administration of the IT environment. Sun Ray Server Software provides automatic load balancing, optimizing performance by distributing sessions across servers in the group. Load balancing takes into account each server's load and capacity, the number and speed of its CPUs, so that larger or less heavily loaded servers bear more of the load.

Sun Ray Connector for Windows Enables a direct connection to Windows Terminal Services, so that Microsoft Windows applications can be displayed on the Sun Ray client. In Controlled Access Mode, customers can provide full-screen, Microsoft Windows desktops to Sun Ray clients, with all the security and mobility benefits unique to the architecture. Sun Desktop Manager Returns desktop control to system administrators by providing a Web-based tool to centrally control the Solaris OS desktop and applications. Because it removes complexity and increases management efficiency, this helps reduce costs and administration workload relating to desktop infrastructure.

Sun Ray deployments have provided customers with up to a 76 percent Return on Investment vs. other desktop alternatives. See the Forrester Research Total Economic Impact Study for more information (Download the Study).

Sun Ray technology eliminates desktop upgrade fatigue, the never-ending cycle of new PCs. Complex PCs and other "thin clients" have a local OS and local applications, which require different amounts of memory (RAM), CPU power (MHz/GHz), operating system patch levels, application patch levels which get you, the customer, caught in a never-ending cycle of application upgrades that then force new memory or CPU hardware upgrades on the desktop client.

Sun Ray technology frees your organization from desktop upgrade fatigue by centralizing your desktop computing on Sun Ray servers. A desktop application upgrade, memory performance upgrade, or OS upgrade is as simple as upgrading a few servers. All Sun Ray clients will have instant access to the upgrades made on the servers.

Sun Ray clients also have environmental benefits. The Sun Ray 2 clients only consume 4 watts of power -- similar to a night light. Unlike PCs that typically have a 3-year lifespan, some Sun Ray customers use their Sun Ray clients for a decade -- thereby reducing the amount of landfill waste and saving money. As a matter of fact, the Sun Ray 2 and Sun Ray 2FS clients have a mean time before failure of 22 years!

Protecting your critical business information is vital to your success. Sun Ray technology virtually eliminates the risk of desktop virus infections and can help protect corporate intellectual property with a more secure desktop solution.

Flexibility and choice are important components of any desktop solution. Sun Ray technology provides a choice of desktop environments Windows, Linux or Solaris OS, as well as choice of x86 or UltraSPARC server hardware.

The focus of our release is multimedia. One of the biggest challenges in any thin client environment is around multimedia performance. With this release, we are increasing the video performance of Windows Media Player in the Sun Ray environment. The multimedia enhancements take advantage of the client side processing power of the Sun Ray hardware by decoding the video streams on the clients vs. the Sun Ray server. This conserves network resources because users no longer need large amounts of bandwidth to decode video streams on the server.

Sun Ray Software is ideal for users who want to access Sun Ray hardware in an ultra thin client environment. Sun Secure Global Desktop Software is ideal when the solution demands access from a diverse and mixed client platform base (Windows/Linux PCs, Solaris OS Workstations, Windows CE/Linux thin clients, PDAs, or Sun Ray clients) or when a broader array of server based applications on various operating systems is needed (Windows, Solaris OS, Unix, Linux, AS/400, 3270, etc.). Sun Virtual Desktop Infrastructure Software can deliver virtual desktops to PCs, thin clients, Sun Ray virtual display clients and even some mobile devices. The core functionality of Sun VDI Software 2.0 is provided by Sun Ray Software and/or a single purpose version of Sun Secure Global Desktop Software. In addition, the Sun Virtual Desktop Connector provides the required "brokering" services in a server-hosted desktop environment.

The Sun Ray Appliance Link Protocol (ALP) is a fast and highly efficient solution used to deliver virtual desktops over local and wide area networks. Sun Ray users experience consistently improved performance with the Sun Ray ALP versus competitive remote display protocols, especially over the WAN. The display portion of the Sun Ray protocol is UDP based. Other technologies such as DNS, IPTV, VoIP and video teleconferencing for example also use UDP instead of TCP because they have real-time delivery requirements that TCP cannot reliably satisfy. TCP based protocols guarantee delivery of every single packet, which is crucial if you're transferring a file. But it's not crucial at all if you're looking at a moving image that's updating frequently...if you miss a packet, a new one will be along very soon to update that section of the screen. UDP is a faster and more efficient transport, at least for applications that do not need guaranteed delivery. Since most users are updating their screens somewhat regularly UDP makes for an excellent choice when drawing the screen. It is important to note that the Sun Ray ALP is not entirely UDP based. The Sun Ray authentication protocol is TCP based and it handles session identification and server location. The remote device protocol is TCP based which handles services and devices such as printers, smart cards, USB Mass Storage, serial devices, parallel devices, and libUSB devices. Because TCP is a reliable protocol, it ensures that data arrives at its destination intact. As a result, it exchanges a relatively high number of packets over the network. UDP does not have this overhead and is considerably faster than TCP.

When you purchase your Sun Ray Software 4 license, you should choose a basic, standard or premium support offering as well. Alternatively, you can choose to purchase a Sun Ray Software 4 standard or premium subscription and pay annually for the bundled software and support offering. A support contract is highly recommended as it gives you access to software patches, updates and upgrades.

Your customer can use Nortel's client gateway today. Sun Ray users who require remote access over the WAN are required to deploy Nortel VPN hardware routers such as the Nortel VPN router 200. Visit the Nortel site for more information. In addition to the Cisco EzVPN infrastructure, users can now select a Juniper VPN solution. Specifically, customers can use the IPsec based ScreenOS family of Juniper gateways.