Amazon WorkSpaces Speeds The PC's Demise

Amazon offers up a VDI-like client "desktop" complete with business applications, available via the cloud, of course.

Kurt Marko, Contributing Editor

November 18, 2013

1 Min Read

Apparently, Amazon isn't content with taking on the enterprise server market and the likes of HP, Dell and IBM in the data center. Now, with WorkSpaces -- introduced at Amazon's re:Invent conference last week -- the cloud computing giant is going after what's left of the PC business with a new VDI-like alternative.

On reflection, WorkSpaces is a natural fit for a company that's been serving up millions of virtual server instances for years. Why not tweak the hardware, add a little software with a focus on mobile devices, stir in a new pricing model and unleash a service that undermines the need for an actual PC?

Technically, WorkSpaces is nothing new. Amazon's service is just pushing pixels over the wire using a cloud-optimized network protocol. This approach makes sense when your endpoint is often a smartphone or tablet while the system actually crunching application code is a virtual Xeon core with almost 4 GB memory and 50 GB of storage.

Read the rest of this article on Network Computing.

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About the Author(s)

Kurt Marko

Contributing Editor

Kurt Marko is an InformationWeek and Network Computing contributor and IT industry veteran, pursuing his passion for communications after a varied career that has spanned virtually the entire high-tech food chain from chips to systems. Upon graduating from Stanford University with a BS and MS in Electrical Engineering, Kurt spent several years as a semiconductor device physicist, doing process design, modeling and testing. He then joined AT&T Bell Laboratories as a memory chip designer and CAD and simulation developer.Moving to Hewlett-Packard, Kurt started in the laser printer R&D lab doing electrophotography development, for which he earned a patent, but his love of computers eventually led him to join HP’s nascent technical IT group. He spent 15 years as an IT engineer and was a lead architect for several enterprisewide infrastructure projects at HP, including the Windows domain infrastructure, remote access service, Exchange e-mail infrastructure and managed Web services.

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