VIRTUAL DESKTOP TOOLS, DESKTOP
Businesswire | May 24, 2023
MacStadium, the industry-leading Mac private cloud and software-as-a-service provider enabling macOS workloads, today announced Orka Workspace™ with Pulse, a new system for virtual macOS desktop delivery that enables high-definition audio and visual streaming on Orka Workspace™ virtual Mac desktops via any HTML5 supported browser.
Orka’s new Pulse feature is the first application of WebRTC on macOS VDI and is now available in Preview within the Orka Workspace™ solution. The new system for virtual Mac desktop delivery leverages a reimagined transmission protocol to create low-latency, high-performance macOS workspaces required by developers worldwide. It also leverages the industry-leading WebRTC technology, which is backed by Apple, Google, Microsoft and Mozilla and is used by many leading B2B web applications. Customers can toggle Orka Pulse™ on or off, as needed to experience the new protocol.
“We are excited to deliver all Orka Workspace customers with access to the new Pulse protocol,” said Chris Chapman, MacStadium senior vice president and CTO. “With the new Orka Pulse technology, Orka Workspace joins the ranks of other B2B web-based applications such as Zoom, Salesforce and Slack that are using WebRTC technology to drive modern business communications.
In 2021, Gartner predicted that demand for desktops as a service would increase by 150 percent from 2020 to 2023. This reinforces the increased demand for remote work and technology like DaaS, which is required to enable secure and scalable distributed workforce. As more companies continue to adopt DaaS applications, MacStadium’s Orka Workspace works as an all-encompassing solution for virtual desktop capabilities.
Many B2B applications use the foundations of WebRTC to deliver audio and video communications over the web, but prior to Orka Pulse, packaging and transferring an entire desktop presents challenges particularly for a macOS desktop.
“Pulse provides a foundation for the transmission of real-time audio and video necessary for macOS virtual desktops to work as they should. But using WebRTC for macOS presented unique challenges that required our team to redesign some of the components with integration to macOS APIs to deliver that uniquely Mac video experience users know and love,” Chapman added. “We even published some of our work on the updated Swift RTP as open-source code to enable more macOS, WebRTC tools and development.”
Orka Pulse enables faster releases by providing remote developers with access to more powerful Mac virtual workspaces, allowing them to work at a faster pace with more flexible resources. Users can interact with a remote Mac device with the ability to stream 1080p video and no need for local installs or plugins as Orka Pulse requires only a HTML5 browser. Additionally, the solution provides end-to-end encrypted user sessions that are managed by organizations’ IT teams and can be terminated on-demand if risks are identified.
The announcement comes after MacStadium recently made public its Orka Small Teams edition, a self-service purchase option, giving DevOps teams immediate access to the industry’s leading enterprise-grade macOS virtualization and orchestration tool. As tech companies look to streamline operations and maximize their resources, this automation is critical to remain competitive.
MacStadium’s unveiling of the new Pulse feature coincides with the team’s attendance of MacAD.UK in Brighton, U.K. from May 22 - 24. At the conference, MacStadium’s Chapman will present on the topic of unlocking Mac virtualization for organizations everywhere. Additionally, attendees can visit MacStadium’s booth to learn more about this exciting product update and sign up for a complimentary trial of Orka Workspace with Pulse.
About MacStadium
Founded in 2011 and headquartered in Atlanta, MacStadium is a private cloud and software-as-a-service leader delivering scalable and secure enterprise cloud solutions exclusively for macOS. The company’s suite of advanced software-enabled infrastructure, combined with its innovative technology, delivers the security, performance, reliability and flexibility its DevOps customers require for successful app development on Apple devices. Powered by MacStadium, Orka® (Orchestration with Kubernetes on Apple) platform is the only virtualization layer available for Mac build infrastructure based on popular Docker and Kubernetes technology. MacStadium is a Summit Partners portfolio company with multi-site operations in the U.S. and EU. Please follow the company on social @macstadium or visit macstadium.com.
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VIRTUAL DESKTOP TOOLS, SERVER VIRTUALIZATION
businesswire | March 29, 2023
Lightbits®, the innovation leader in simple, flexible, and cost-efficient data platform solutions for any cloud, has announced that it has been accepted into the Microsoft for Startups Founders Hub, a program designed to enable organizations to ideate, develop, grow, and scale their offering on the Azure cloud platform by providing the necessary resources for every stage of their cloud-first journey.
Microsoft Azure is a secure and compliant cloud platform trusted by organizations small and large, including 95% of Fortune 500 companies. As a member of the Microsoft for Startups Founders Hub, Lightbits will optimize its cloud solution so that organizations running on or planning to migrate their IO-intensive workloads to Azure can do so with the confidence that it’s on a scalable, efficient, and highly performant platform.
The Lightbits Cloud Data Platform on Azure delivers agility, flexibility, high performance, and predictable and lower costs enabling migration of transactional and other latency-sensitive workloads to the cloud. The software-defined scalable architecture allows dynamic scaling of storage performance and capacity with consistently low latency and works within most orchestration environments such as Kubernetes, VMware or OpenStack. It offers the ability to provision high-performance persistent volumes to applications, protecting data from failures, while at the same time offering the rich data services enterprise IT organizations desire. Lightbits is easy to use, plugging directly into Azure Virtual Machines (VMs), and supports hybrid deployments offering the flexibility to port the license between on-premises storage servers and Azure storage-optimized VMs.
“Prior to Lightbits, organizations supporting IO-intensive applications such as SQL and NoSQL databases had two options to achieve their performance requirements on Azure: use VMs with local NVMe devices or scale out the VMs and provision more cloud-native storage. Neither option was ideal since it lacked data protection at the storage level and significantly increased overall costs,” said Kam Eshghi, Co-Founder and CSO at Lightbits. “If performance, cost, scale, or data services were limiting factors for organizations migrating their storage-intensive workloads to Azure, Lightbits removes all of those constraints and offers a better cloud experience. I’m confident that our partnership-driven approach and involvement in the Founders Hub will result in a well-architected complete data platform for Azure.”
About Lightbits Labs
Lightbits Labs® (Lightbits), is remaking modern cloud infrastructure on a global scale and offers a Complete Data Platform for any cloud in VMware, Kubernetes, and OpenStack orchestration environments. It’s being used by Fortune 500 organizations because it enables organizations with a cloud-first strategy to move IO-intensive database, analytic, transactional, and streaming workloads to the cloud at their pace and on their terms. As trailblazers in this field, we deliver high performance and consistently low latency on the cloud equivalent to on-premises systems but with predictable and lower costs that cloud-native block storage solutions cannot provide.
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VPN
Businesswire | May 11, 2023
OpenVPN is proud to introduce Device Identity Verification & Enforcement (DIVE) to their cloud-based solution, CloudConnexa™ (previously known as OpenVPN Cloud). This powerful new feature will take your ZTNA structure to the next level.
With the rapid growth of remote and hybrid workforces, providing secure access from a mix of BYOD and corporate-owned devices has become a critical component of ZTNA. DIVE on CloudConnexa gives Administrators the power to leverage one of the key principles of ZTNA — least privilege — granting access only to the resources a user should have, exclusively from the devices they are authorized to use.
"The growth of remote workforces and the rise in mobile devices accessing company networks makes providing the appropriate access based on user and device identity a critical component of ZTNA," says Francis Dinha, CEO of OpenVPN. "The DIVE feature on Cloud Connexa makes it easy for admins to verify device identities before granting network access."
DIVE boosts the ZTNA essentials Cloud Connexa already provides — hiding your applications from public view, using digital certificates for users and devices — by giving Admins the option to manually add authorized device identities (UUID) as well as lock digital certificates, automatically, to specific devices. A user trying to access the network with an alternate device, even with an authorized connection profile, will be blocked. By limiting authenticated user access to trusted devices with unique device identities, DIVE minimizes your attack surface and reduces the risk of unauthorized network access when you use Cloud Connexa.
"Even if an authorized always-on IoT device's connection profile is compromised,” explains Dinha, “a bad actor will be unable to connect using the stolen profile. This additional layer of security is invaluable to IoT network security.”
With DIVE on Cloud Connexa, admins can finally build ZTNA using defined access control policies for users and devices. This means organizations now have more power than ever to strengthen their security posture, reduce their attack surface, and make sure their network is truly secure.
About OpenVPN, Inc.
Unlike older approaches that require a mixed bag of networking and security products, CloudConnexa from OpenVPN consists of a simplified, cloud-delivered service for a fraction of the cost. And if you prefer a self-hosted solution, Access Server gives you complete control over the solution’s deployment, configuration, and management.
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