Now, after much anticipation, Cisco’s VXI consortium has produced a client that will solve this. Enter the VXC 6215 client.

Rather than being a zero client like the previous VXC 2100 and 2200 models, this client contains a local linux image that will allow for local media processing while simultaneously communicating with the upstream VDI infrastructure, whether it be Citrix or VMware View.

Out of the gate this thing will support video termination with Cisco Unified Personal Communicator or any of the Cisco Client Services Framework integrations with Microsoft Lync. Initial protocol support will include RDP7, ICA Agent 11+, XenDesktop 4.x,5.x, and PCoIP compatibility with VMware View 5.x.

This product announcement finally lets us realize what VXI is meant to be. Product availability Q4CY2011 to Q1CY2012.

Most reading this blog post will be quite familiar with the workspace licensing program (CUWL) Cisco introduced a few years back for its collaborative technologies. For those who are not as familiar, the introduction of the CUWL offering marked a shift in Cisco’s licensing model from counting endpoint devices, server instances, and features to a model à la Microsoft where user counts are the key metric.

This shift dramatically simplified orderability for customers and opened doors for them to deploy new services and adopt new features. Now, just like any other licensing model, CUWL is not perfect and we continually voice areas that need further attention. One such area is within the presences and instant messaging arena.

Historically your options under CUWL entitlement were restricted to premise based deployment scenarios – either the Unified Presence Server and Client (CUPS/CUPC) or entitlement to voice enable a Microsoft Office Communicator or Lync client (CUCI-MOC or CUCI-LYNC). This is all in the face of many organizations opting for a hosted solution or enterprise IM as opposed to on premise servers. WebEx Connect often chosen in a foray into hosted presence while also being owned by Cisco, it only seemed logical that Cisco create a path for WebEx Connect entitlement to make its way under the CUWL program.

Well, I’m happy to announce that as of October 17, 2011, WebEx Connect Cloud IM service is available to all new CUWL clients under both the standard and professional editions. Now the obvious next question is “what about existing clients?” – and unfortunately the details of how Cisco is going to handle that are still unclear. I’ll be sure to post commentary on that communication as soon as I receive it.

Some other notable changes to the CUWL program are:

• Addition of 1:10 WebEx Meeting Center cloud port per CUWL Pro user
• Option of adding named host licensing for WebEx Meeting Center
• Addition to client choices including Jabber for Mac, iPhone, and Nokia

As a WebEx Connect customer, we’re excited to have the first support client for the Mac operating system.

Existing WebEx Connect users may download the Mac client through their Org Administration Tool. Other users may download the file from CCO at: http://www.cisco.com/cisco/software/release.html?mdfid=283880684&flowid=29241&softwareid=284006014&release=8.6%281%29&relind=AVAILABLE&rellifecycle=&reltype=latest

As it stands right now, I have created and deployed twelve, count them, twelve virtual machines to support this meager deployment. This sounds like an extraordinary number of servers, and it is, except for the fact that it’s all running on only two UCS B-Series blades and barely touching the CPU and RAM counts. Each blade has a single 6 core processor and 48GB or RAM.

For performance and failover testing reasons, I have all images running from one host and it’s topping out at less that 10% average CPU and 21GB of RAM consumed.

The number of virtual machines and the subsequent installation of each was initially disconcerting. Having said that, through the install process I have gathered a pretty good understanding of each machine and the role it provides. The manner in which Quad separates services would easily allow for rapid growth and roll out capacity to the tens or even hundreds of thousands of users. This isn’t all that surprising when you take into account Cisco’s history or delivering a product for the enterprise market and over time bringing it downstream.

Cisco’s approach to separating services isn’t all that different that say SharePoint; however, SharePoint allows for database, search, web, and cache services to be installed co-resident. Quad is in essence doing the same thing except that its abstracting the services out at the virtualization layer as opposed to a windows service layer. If anything, this gives Quad a bit of an advantage from flexibility and agility in allow services to be moved around or scaled without having to re-spin. 

Now that we’ve completed  the installation phase of this little project, we move into usability testing. Over the next few weeks I’ll be making a number of integrations with Communications Manager for phone services, Unity Connection for voicemail presentation, Exchange 2010 for calendar accessibility, and the WebEx Connect cloud for presence federation. It’s going to be an exciting few weeks. More info to come!

This is all in the face of nearly the entire county where I reside being without power, our corporate office being inaccessible for the day, and more than 1.2 million others throughout the area without power or communication services. So as you go about your day, raking leaves, cutting up brush, refueling your generators, or even responding to the occasional email…just stop and think for a moment – how technology has changed your life or business, and just imagine what could be possible tomorrow.