Hosted Call Center Featured Article

Connection Broker 6.4 Desktop Virtualization Support Solution Unveiled by Leostream

By Brendan B. Read
Senior Contributing Editor

Desktop virtualization enables cheap, flexible energy-efficient, e-waste minimizing and, done right, secure computing by supporting thin-client i.e. "dumb terminal" access to applications by enabling their centralization on one or two machines, linked by networks. Why spend massive sums to equip employees like contact center agents (or for that matter, journalists and PR reps) with fully-equipped PCs whose processing power they barely tap?

Leostream has now made desktop virtualization even more effective with its new Connection Broker 6.4 solution. It brings greater support, management flexibility and branding control to hosted virtual desktop infrastructures (VDI).

The Leostream Connection Broker is the software management layer that ties desktop images in the data center to appropriate end-user devices - thin clients, laptops, workstations or Web pages - delivering a user experience the maker says is as good as or superior to that of a conventional desktop. It enables companies to deploy hosted VDI easily, while achieving the greatest return-on-investment, it says, from existing technology resources.

Among the new features of the Leostream Connection Broker 6.4 are:

*          Updated SQL Server support. The Connection Broker now fully supports external databases stored in Microsoft (News - Alert) SQL Server 2008

*          Optimum branding and custom web browser look-and-feel. Custom logos and favicons can be specified on the Leostream Web Client and Administrator Web interfaces, allowing for seamless appearance and greater branding control. Leostream Connection Broker "skins" provide additional controls to specify colors used on forms, including all text and links

*          Greater flexibility for resource assignment. This includes policies: desktop filters can now be applied across all pools in a policy or on a pool-by-pool basis, providing fine-grained controls over which desktops are offered to each user. It also includes authentication: policies can be assigned to users based on advanced LDAP filter expressions, providing policy assignment based on the user's membership in multiple authentication server groups

*          More powerful monitoring capabilities: New logging events allow SNMP servers and syslog to be used for tracking pool thresholds and Leostream Connection Broker metrics. System administrators are instantly alerted when pool levels reach lower thresholds.

The Leostream Connection Broker is vendor-independent, providing support for VMware, Citrix, Microsoft and Xen.org hypervisors, as well as for hosted applications and sessions, physical desktops, dedicated blades and other systems.

The Leostream solution is gaining adherents. Portugal Telecom (News - Alert) (PT), the largest telecommunications provider in Portugal, with additional operations in Europe, South America, Africa and the Caribbean, recently deployed the Leostream™ Connection Broker to connect 5,000 end-users at its contact centers to virtual desktops.

PT had turned to a hosted VDI model says Leostream to solve a problem it was facing in its contact centers. These operations have a large number of workers, and head count rises and falls dramatically depending upon marketing campaign activities and support staff requirements. Additionally, when a new marketing campaign is set to launch, IT may only have a week or two to set up hundreds of desktops and perhaps thousands of accounts for the subcontractors who handle the phones.

With the management of physical desktops cumbersome, time consuming and expensive, PT needed a solution that allowed IT to perform desktop maintenance and provision more quickly, simply and efficiently. For help, PT turned to V2S and Compta, two trusted IT consultancies based in Portugal. They recommended deploying the Leostream Connection Broker. And based on the success of this deployment, PT now plans to extend the solution and replace all of its desktops, eventually covering all 9,000 end-users at the organization in its hosted VDI. 

"Leostream has more than 220 large-scale VDI deployments under its belt and enhancements to our product are based upon customer feedback from 'real world' situations," said Michael Palin, CEO of Leostream. "As the industry has found, best-of-breed technologies such as ours are the only way to ensure large-scale virtualization success. With our vendor-neutral approach, we're also often called in to help deal with the diverse technology environments that overwhelming exist today. Our goal is straightforward: continue to lead the industry in providing a vendor-neutral connection broker that truly makes hosted VDI work for enterprises."