Intel Aims to Upgrade PCs with Virtual Appliances
Intel is eyeing a plan for using software to boost a PC’s ability to fight hackers, talk on the phone and even capture television programs in the future. The chip maker, which launched its security and manageability-focused vPro brand on April 24, is contemplating mounting an effort to establish a standard method for adding virtual appliances?purpose-built software applications that run on top of their own miniature operating systems inside virtualized partitions?to PCs, a company executive said.
vPro desktops, due in the third quarter of 2006, will be capable of handling virtualization software such as VMware workstation or Xen by XenSource. However, the numbers of businesses that will actually put them to use, broadly, are likely to be small, Ferron-Jones said. Even at a company like Intel, probably less than 5 percent of PC users need multiple OSes, as scenario costs can add up fairly quickly when accounting for virtualization software costs, in addition to those for extra operating systems and applications, he estimated. “The virtual appliance model is designed to be much lower cost,” he said.
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