When I was in elementary school, each year, we were administered a standardized test called the “California Test of Basic Skills” or CTBS.  This test involved using “number 2” pencils and filling out a form with boxes from A to E.  I remember thinking that if I didn’t know the answer, I should guess “C” because it’s in the middle.  Today, I can’t remember the last time I actually used a pencil.  However, many schools still use this antiquated way of administering standardized tests to students.

This is all about to change in the next couple of years.  According to the San Jose Mercury News, California, as one of 45 of the 50 states in the U.S. participating, will move toward a broad state-led program called the “Common Core State Standards Initiative.”  This initiative requires the standardization of testing across states by the 2014-2015 school year to ensure consistent performance assessments.  Quoting the article:

“Multiple-choice, fill-in-the-bubble tests alone simply cannot do the job anymore, and it’s time for California to move forward with assessments that measure the real-world skills our students need to be ready for a career and for college,” said California School Superintendent Tom Torlakson.

These next generation assessments will be computer-based and Pearson TestNav™ is a leading test delivery platform in K-12 schools that delivers over 4 million tests annually.  VMware is pleased to announce that our VMware® Horizon View™ desktop virtualization solution has received “TestNav Qualified” certification, ensuring that TestNav tests administered using Horizon View are delivered securely, error-free, and with a good user experience.  In fact, many schools have already deployed the TestNav platform with Horizon View and achieved great results:

“We’ve had tremendous success using VMware Horizon View for Pearson TestNav. Testing season brings a lot of stress to not only students but the staff as well. VMware Horizon View allows IT departments to facilitate these tests in a high availability environment, which is extremely comforting.”

- Brooks Moore, DCS Technology Help Desk Manager, Aledo Independent School District

“Using VMware Horizon View with the Pearson TestNav test delivery system ensures that our tests are administered in a secure environment that preserves the integrity of the results. Test environments are booted directly to our computer labs and if any attempt is made to escape out of the test, the test taker is locked out of the test. We initially rolled out VMware virtual desktops on a small scale in the Summer of 2012 but with the success that we’ve had, we now plan on rolling it out to all computer labs within our district.”

- Chad Branum, Executive Director of Technology, Coppell Independent School District

The good news is that these next generation assessments will hopefully give educators a clearer, more consistent understanding of how students are performing so that they can take corrective action where needed.  The bad news is that guessing “C” may no longer be an option for students in the coming years.

For more information about VMware and education, visit our website at: http://www.vmware.com/solutions/education/index.html

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How will this improve patient care?

VMware® AlwaysOn Point of Care™ architecture helps solve customers’ problems by providing ready access to patient information from any terminal or mobile device. This allows clinicians to make informed decisions regarding treatment plans while protecting the confidentiality of patient information. Providing access to clinical applications in a virtual environment, healthcare providers maintain continued access to their desktop as they move from patient to patient, floor to floor, or building to building. Just like any sector, technology dictates a successful organization. And healthcare is no different. Medicine is changing, and a virtual desktop can mean all the difference in a patient’s outcomes.

Why did NetApp introduce VMware AlwaysOn Point of Care for healthcare?

We recognize the technology that is transforming the medical profession, and NetApp constantly strives to keep the data storage architectures up to speed with the latest technology. The NetApp reference architecture for VMware AlwaysOn Point of Care is purpose-built for healthcare organizations to address the high-availability and disaster recovery needs of mission-critical clinical desktops. To reduce deployment risk, NetApp has designed, developed and lab tested a validated configuration that combines VMware Horizon View™ AlwaysOn Point of Care, NetApp® storage, Cisco® Unified Computing System™, F5 BIG-IP Application Delivery Controller, and Imprivata single sign-on solution, for delivering clinical desktops and patient care applications as secure, non-stop services. This combination of technologies makes it possible to deliver high-performance workspaces over high latency and low-bandwidth connections. This helps healthcare organizations integrate their networking, computing, storage and virtualization resources.

What makes VMware AlwaysOn Point of Care different and distinct?

VMware AlwaysOn Point of Care provides a virtual desktop environment that is secure, cost effective, and easy to deploy, providing clinicians with:

• Non-stop access to desktop with fast logon times
• Desktops that follow the user in the event of a site failure Connectivity to desktops from any endpoint device from anywhere
• A familiar interface to sustain the same application workflow Knowledge that they are viewing the correct patient at the correct time and correct location, resulting in increased patient safety

This helps solve customer problems by providing high availability to clinical applications within the provider environment, delivering response times that meet or exceed application requirements and provides the appropriate security and compliance measures demanded by healthcare environments.

How can VMware AlwaysOn Point of Care help hospitals comply with the HIPAA and HITECH act requirements?

Many hospitals are looking for a cost-effective data storage infrastructure that is easy-to-deploy, and maintains patient privacy with its secure access. NetApp storage and management solutions work in concert with VMware AlwaysOn Point of Care to provide simplified and centralized medical data sharing and archiving across the continuum of care. NetApp helps you reduce compliance risk through improved recordkeeping, monitoring, and oversight. Clinicians can dedicate quality time to patients, knowing that IT has the right controls in place to ensure that state and federal compliance requirements that affect patient care and privacy are met (such as HITECH, HIPAA, PCI DSS, SOX, the EU Directive, the Affordable Care Act and others).

Link to NetApp Reference Architecture for VMware AlwaysOn Point-of-Care – Technical Report

Link to NetApp Reference Architecture for VMware AlwaysOn Point-of-Care – Solution Brief

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There are two things I normally notice when I visit the doctor – 1) a massive stack of paper medical records and 2) long visit times…

The need…

I’ve always been huge fan of adopting and evolving the IT services utilized in the medical industry.  Here we have an industry who is pushing the forefront of technology for the analysis and treatment of patients – but plagued by archaic IT and paper based records.

In comes the consumerization effect…

The Consumerization of IT has been a big trend for businesses in the last years, essentially giving the “end-user” the ability to have flexibility over devices.  When it comes down to it there are a few key things people care about:

Patients:

• Analysis & treatment
• Quick visit times
• Privacy

Medical Practitioners

• Mobility
• Flexiblity
• Availability

IT

• Security
• Policy & Control
• Compliance

However, a key concern with consumerization is always about keeping data secure and mitigating any potential security risk.  With EMR and VMware® Horizon View™ this is now possible.  Virtual desktops allow IT to centrally manage and host desktops and data from a secure location and then expose these services to end-user devices over encrypted and private networks.

The impact…

Doctors and healthcare providers are always on the move and constantly moving from patient from patient to keep up with patient demands.  Now, what if they had the ability to look at the next patient’s medical records while walking down the hall on a tablet or mobile device?  The ability to view a digital x-ray immediately after its taken?  Mobile crowdsourced collaboration with fellow medical professionals?

What you get is increased efficiency (aka patient turnover), flexibility of devices for doctors and medical professionals and, most importantly, a happy patient.

The answer…

The VMware® AlwaysOn Point of Care™ solution bridges the gap between virtual desktops and EMR solutions.  With VMware Horizon View becoming the first validated VDI solution to achieve “Target Platform” status for Epic , VMware is helping revolutionize how medical practitioners deliver services.

So what is it and how did we get here?  To help highlight the solution I’ve broken it up into the following steps:

Step 1: Make the records electronic → Electronic Medical Records (EMR)

Step 2: Enable for secure and mobile consumption → VMware Horizon View (VDI)

Step 3: Make sure it’s highly available →VMware AlwaysOn Architecture

Result: Delivery of efficient patient services → VMware AlwaysOn Point of Care Solution (EMR + VDI)

To learn more about the solution visit the VMware Solutions for Healthcare Page.  To learn more about the Nutanix + VMware solution for AlwaysOn delivery check out the following Nutanix AlwaysOn Solution Brief.

Final thoughts

I’ve always envisioned a doctor’s office where I can be automatically checked in upon arrival, where doctors walked around with tablets allowing them to access my medical records and view digital x-rays in real-time.  With the VMware AlwaysOn Point of Care solution with EMR, this can finally be a reality.

To learn more or if you have any questions feel free to reach out to me on Twitter.

To learn more about how else Nutanix and VMware can meet your needs, please visit us online and follow us on Twitter: @Nutanix and @vmwarehit

by by Pam Takahama, Director of Solutions Marketing, Riverbed Technology

Healthcare turning to VDI to improve patient care

I recently took my daughter to the doctor for an earache, and chuckled when the pediatrician reached into his lab coat for what I thought was an iPad to write up a prescription only to realize it was, ahem, a good ole’ fashioned pad of paper! Spending another 45 minutes filling the prescription had me wondering how far the healthcare industry has come in the last 10 years. Notwithstanding the isolated throwback to the pencil and paper era, the reality is that the healthcare industry is reinventing itself, and in the process reshaping our experiences, and reorienting our expectations from how care is managed, to how it is paid for, to how it is delivered.

Many healthcare organizations are working to embrace innovative solutions like virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) to improve patient care and provide clinicians 24/7 access to their most current patient data and resources — even during unplanned downtime.

Recently, Riverbed and VMware announced a joint solution that integrates Stingray Traffic Manager application delivery controller (ADC) with the VMware® Horizon View™ AlwaysOn™ Desktop solution. The joint solution ensures end users have continual access to a secure virtual desktop no matter what device they use and no matter where they are.

Moreover, this tested and validated solution augments VMware’s latest announcement with a leading electronic medical records (EMR) software provider for a virtual clinical desktop. Designed for the cloud from the ground up, Stingray™ Traffic Manager will improve overall performance for clinical desktops by delivering around-the-clock access to data and applications even if a primary site fails or is compromised by other unplanned events, all while meeting industry compliance regulations. Customers will be able to quickly modernize their computing environment and provide a highly available cloud-based desktop.

Rx for AlwaysOn Desktop

As healthcare organizations seek to deliver robust and proven desktop solutions to improve how care is managed and delivered, they should consider the advantages that Stingray Traffic Manager offers to help lower costs while ensuring high availability and securing computing endpoints:

Accelerate virtual desktop performance. Offloads performance-draining tasks such as SSL and compression accelerating services, increasing capacity and optimizing implementations. Also, administrators can cache commonly requested content and optimize VDI traffic delivery, enabling healthcare clinicians to gain fast and easy access to their applications and data.

Provide 24/7 access to virtual desktops. By intelligently shaping and directing traffic and avoiding failed or degraded servers, Stingray Traffic Manager ensures users are always routed to the closest available site based on the end user’s geo-location, including continent and country, IP address, and site availability.

Secure virtual desktops. Helps to preserve and maintain a highly secure virtual desktop environment by configuring the solution to admit certain traffic types only, and operating as a deny-all gateway. These capabilities ensure full control over how traffic is internally routed. Additionally, high-performance inspection interrogates any part of a request or response before applying global filtering or scrubbing policies.

Gain better control of VDI environment. Easily manage how users interact with the applications and the infrastructure that they depend on. Administrators can also use Stingray Traffic Manager to shape, prioritize, and route traffic; drain infrastructure resources prior to maintenance; and, upgrade user sessions across application while preserving user performance.

So the next time I’m at the pediatrician’s office and he whips out a pad of paper again, I may have to bring new meaning to an old adage and tell him that “an Apple” a day may help keep the paperwork away.  Click here to learn more about the joint VMware and Riverbed AlwaysOn solution.

Healthcare providers face a unique challenge: continuously deliver quality patient care that is both effective and affordable. Today, this depends largely on technology – from diagnostic systems to patient record systems accessible by health care professionals dispersed amongst hospitals, clinics, and pharmacies.

Today these organizations increasingly rely on new software solutions from companies like Epic Software to manage every aspect of patient care. Epic infrastructures are the gold standard today, assisting health care organizations around the world to improve patient care through accessible and reliable health care systems.

It is critical that such applications are supported by an equally accessible and reliable IT infrastructure. To assure a high level of quality from top to bottom, Epic carefully certifies IT infrastructure providers that support a disaster-resilient, highly available, secure and increasingly mobile deployment.

Because of its focus on quality, resilience and affordability it has become a great honor to achieve full target platform status with EPIC. And that’s what happened recently with VMware® Horizon View™ – the first desktop virtualization solution to have achieved this status. Using VMware’s AlwaysOn™ Desktop for Healthcare reference architecture, F5 partnered with VMware for this historic launch.

VMware and F5 have long been offering joint solutions targeting desktop virtualization with a focus on resiliency, scalability, availability, security and performance. Together, along with partners such as NetApp and EMC, these joint reference architectures are the basis for secure, fast and available virtualization infrastructures capable of meeting the most demanding standards, such as that of Epic Software.

F5 is also establishing and documenting jointly with Epic a set of best practices for application delivery, designed to improve the scalability and availability of the most common HTTP, SSL, and FTP Epic components. F5 will be providing these best practices both as technical documentation as well as an iApp, to streamline deployment of these critical healthcare systems.

We’re excited about this announcement and extend a hearty congratulations to VMware on this notable achievement.

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In the past several years, many customers have turned to desktop virtualization in an effort to drive down costs and improve operational efficiencies.  This year, however, the tide has shifted. In a survey recently conducted by Forrester Research, Inc., and blogged about by David Johnson (Has VDI Peaked? A Change in the Adoption Drivers Sheds New Light, And New Life, April 1, 2013), the number one trigger for customer interest in VDI was actually around the need to support employee access across locations.

Interestingly, the drivers associated with reducing costs and improving manageability have not gone away. These are still very much on the minds of IT as they turn to VDI, thin client or blade PC technologies-but the need to support BYOD and device diversity has become a major focus of a large number of organizations-with many turning to desktop virtualization as a key technology enabler to help them address these requirements.

And while many customers have already made the move and are seeing real benefits, there are a number of organizations that have not. An inability to build the business case is often cited as a barrier, but as Johnson also points out in his blog-many organizations also feel that they don’t have the skills or resources on hand to dedicate to VDI projects.

VMware and Cisco recently partnered up to help take these objections off of the table. Together, the two companies have tested and validated a range of VDI architectures designed to meet the needs of organizations across a wide variety of use cases. These fast track architectures have not only allowed customers like COLT and University of Colorado Boulder to get started simply and cost-effectively but they also provide new customers with the ability to start small and effectively scale on demand.

As storage represents the largest cost outlay to any VDI implementation (Morgan Stanley, 2011), key to these validations was looking across a wide range of storage options including direct attached storage or “on-board architectures” with vendors like Fusion io, hybrid SAN or “simplified architectures” with companies like Nimble Storage, Nexenta, Atlantis Computing and Tegile and “converged architectures”  with NetApp and EMC to help ensure great performance at lower costs.

Additionally, we also looked at storage optimizations native to VMware vSphere and VMware® Horizon View™, including unique features like SE Sparse, Storage Accelerator or Content Based Read Cache, VAAI and Storage Tiering  to help customers further drive down costs and improve user experience.

The result is a wide range of prescriptive, highly automated design options (with plug-ins to VMware vCenter) that will allow customers to more efficiently and cost-effectively tackle VDI and address workplace mobility.

To hear firsthand, how organizations like yours are reaping the benefits of VDI deployed using VMware Horizon View with Cisco UCS, join us for this informative webcast.  You’ll hear from featured speakers from Wipro and UC Boulder, sharing valuable perspectives that can accelerate your ROI on VDI

Webinar: “Customer Insights: Desktop Virtualization On Your Terms”

Or reference the following resources:

VMware Fast Track Program

Cisco and VMware Horizon View Technical Whiteboard

Cisco and VMware Horizon View Promotional Bundle

www.cisco.com/go/vdivmware

Check out these other blogs for reference as well!

Jim McHugh’s Blog “Desktop Virtualization On Your Terms – Flexibility and Choice with Architectures That Fit”

Rick Snyder’s Blog “Accelerating Your Success with Cisco Desktop Virtualization Solutions”

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Virtual desktops are gaining great traction in healthcare, a fact supported by the announcement that VMware® Horizon View™  has been awarded Target Platform status for Epic Hyperspace

The reason for this uptake, is that desktop virtualization is delivering compelling value across the spectrum of healthcare users and decision makers.

Imprivata and VMware have partnered closely in a number of healthcare environments including Johns Hopkins and Metro Health to deliver a combination of functionality that streamlines clinical workflows, helps meet compliance goals and provides flexibility for users and IT.

Lets take a look at the 2 predominant workflows that we see in EMR environments and consider some of the benefits. The first workflow is the workflow that we see in inpatient settings, the roaming desktop workflow. Here we have care providers moving quickly between nurse’s stations, patient rooms, treatment rooms, physician’s lounges etc. The combined Imprivata OneSign and Horizon View environment enables users to simply tap a badge and bring their desktop with them exactly as they left it. Not having to re-launch the EMR application, not having to re-navigate to the patient record. When you consider that care providers may log into different devices up to 70 times in a shift, OneSign authentication combined with desktop roaming is (arguably) the most compelling use case for this technology in any industry, creating compelling time savings and enabling providers to focus on patients, not technology. For IT you have the benefits of centralized data, no PHI left on the endpoint devices to potentially walk out of the hospital with a stolen computer, helping to limit the number of ways data breaches may occur and helping to reduce the potential for hefty PHI breach fines. For clinical leadership, they have care providers that feel that IT is doing something to help them, providing them with a system that works with them, not against them and helps encourage the use of the EMR and work together towards Meaningful Use dollars.

The second workflow is what customers refer to as Epic Secure. This is the workflow used in exam rooms, in ambulatory settings. In this workflow, Horizon View is working in kiosk mode – a shared desktop running nothing but this application. In this workflow, the integration with Imprivata OneSign enables doctors and nurses to keep the application “hot” as they both consult with a patient. The badge tap logs the nurse into the application, they find the patient chart, update the chart, and another tap secures the application. When the doctor then comes to see the patient their badge tap signs them into the application keeping the same patient record on the screen, they can see the latest information without further navigation. The flexibility of the combined Imprivata and VMware Horizon View solution ensures that the technology supports the clinical workflows. When this is the case, adoption is increased, often spreading by word of mouth changing support calls from “I’m having a problem” to “How do I get that?”

On a recent customer visit I had the head of the IT team tell me that the adoption of zero clients had taken client device replacement down from a 2 day process to a 30 minute process. How? He stated that when they received a call to the helpdesk, they would have to identify the machine, find its location and its role. Then find the base image for that machine, then install any other software required, then swap it for the broken device. After that would be a period of troubleshooting as users came along and tried to use it and problems almost certainly arose. With a zero client, after the call came in then went to the location, plugged in the new device, made sure it came up, and left. A huge IT time saving, and a huge increase in convenience for users getting their workstations available in minutes rather than days. With the unique No Click Access support from Imprivata, oh, and add in the cooling and power consumption benefits for good measure, zero clients add yet more value recognizable by users, IT and leadership alike.

The next big thing? What we are hearing from customers is Electronic Prescribing for Controlled Substances (EPCS). Many customers are planning their move to Epic 2012 as they move towards EPCS and may consider this the time to take advantage of the Target Platform status of Horizon View. Imprivata is the only solution to support all two factor authentication modalities certified by the DEA adding EPCS to the growing list of benefits of desktop virtualization in healthcare.

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Today I’m very excited to announce the immediate availability of two VMware Ready devices – LG Intuition and Razr M by Motorola – on Verizon Wireless.  These devices are now equipped with VMware’s virtualization technology required to run our dual personal solution, VMware Horizon Mobile.  This is an important milestone for VMware as we deliver on our end-user computing vision of managing users, not devices.  We will continue to work closely with Verizon Wireless to enable a broad set of new and existing devices to be VMware Ready. You might be asking yourself what is a VMware Ready device?  Well, in this blog I will provide a quick overview of Horizon Mobile and VMware Ready program.

VMware Horizon Mobile Overview

Perhaps even more profound than the BYOD trend is the change in how employees use their devices.  Irrespective of who actually buys or owns the device, the corporation or the user, most employees tend to download personal apps onto these devices – Facebook, Angry Birds, Temple Run, etc. coexist with work email/PIM.  It is fair to assume then that most devices will have both personal and corporate content (apps, data and services).

Given that the usage paradigms have changed, IT needs to rethink security and manageability of mobile devices.  The old BlackBerry model of locking and wiping the device is no longer in line with how employees use their devices.  IT administrators can now leverage VMware Horizon Mobile to isolate personal content from corporate content and only manage the corporate content on the device.  The corporate content resides in a “workspace” whose lifecycle and usage is managed by IT.  IT can customize what apps are in the workspace and what policies are applied to the workspace, provision the workspace to the user’s device over the air (OTA) and then manage its lifecycle remotely.

If you look at the latest mobile OS market share information, Android is way ahead of other mobile operating systems but if you consider the enterprise subset of that market share, iOS is the dominant platform.  One of the reasons for Android not being dominant is its fragmentation, which makes it very difficult for IT to wrap their hands and heads around a comprehensive security and manageability story for Android devices.  VMware Horizon Mobile leverages device virtualization to normalize that fragmentation and allows IT to deploy and manage its own Android workspace that looks and behaves the same on any Android device.  However, in order to run this solution, you must have a VMware Ready device and hence, the importance of today’s announcement.

You can see the product in action here.

VMware Ready Program

VMware Ready designates VMware’s highest level of endorsement for products and solutions created by our established partners – and on the mobile side, a VMware Ready device is required to experience our dual persona solution.  In the US, VMware is partnering with Verizon to enable a broad set of new and existing devices to become VMware Ready and it’s important to note is that existing in-market devices can be updated over-the-air (OTA) to become VMware Ready devices.

Indeed this is the case with LG Intuition and Razr M by Motorola.  Both of these devices have been in the market for several months and recently received a software update.   The update pushed out by Verizon included the right VMware technologies to enable them to run a second instance of Android and thereby, our Horizon Mobile solution.

Our customers should expect popular in-market devices will receive similar software updates resulting in a broad set of VMware Ready devices in the market.  In fact, we anticipate many new devices will also launch as VMware Ready devices.

We’re looking forward to seeing many more VMware Ready devices in the market and if you’re an Android OEM interested in getting involved with the VMware Ready program, please contact us at mvp-oem-public @ vmware.com for more information.

On a more personal note…  Over the weekend, I had some time to review some of the strategy documents and initial business plans that I put together when we first started on the mobile initiative.  It is personally gratifying to see first hand how all this has come together and reflect on the journey that got us here.

It’s been a great experience getting to this point and we’re proud to walk hand in hand with LG to deliver the first VMware Ready device on Verizon Wireless.  My sincere thanks to all the wonderful folks at LG who partnered with us and worked tirelessly through the various stages of our product development and betas to enable the LG Intuition as the first VMware Ready device on our partner’s network.

So what do you think of our approach to managing enterprise mobile users? Do you like the idea of managing just the corporate workspace and not the entire device? Share your thoughts with us in the comments section below.

A quarter has almost passed since we first introduced Horizon Suite and VMware continues to be the only vendor in the market offering a suite with a level of integration unmatched by any other solution.

The industry is beginning to acknowledge our efforts and leadership in end-user computing, most recently in CITEworld with an article titled “The audacious vision of VMware Horizon: Manage access, not devices,” among many others that have also highlighted our brave new approach. But it doesn’t stop there.

VMware Horizon Workspace has also been selected to be a contestant in the “CTIA 2013 Emerging Technology ‘Online Pick’ Award” which is another testament to the groundbreaking work the VMware team has done in developing a new approach to managing enterprise mobility, balancing personal and corporate workspaces, and securely offering online/offline collaboration. However, what’s unique about this award is that each one of you can directly help make it a winner.

This award allows online users everywhere to vote for their favorite solution up until the deadline on Monday, May 20 at 5 pm PT. Voting is very simple and takes less than 2 minutes.

So let’s see if we can get critical mass from everyone who believes it’s time for a new approach to end-user computing, that the traditional desktop management model needs to be refreshed, that enterprise mobility and management needs to be re-thought, and being forward thinking and innovative should be rewarded.

Please take 2 minutes of your time to vote following the instructions below and help bring home the trophy!

How to Vote

1. Click on the voting link: http://ctiait.ctia.org/etech/2013/public/index.cfm/viewEntry/740
2. In the upper right hand corner of the page, click on the red hyperlink Sign Up/Sign In to vote
3. Follow the instructions on the next screen asking for your email address and CAPTCHA verification
4. In the upper right hand corner of the page, click on the red hyperlink Click to Vote for this Entry

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