I was excited to hear that in this morning's ManageFusion keynote, Symantec Chief Operating Officer Enrique Salem announced that Symantec has signed a definitive agreement to acquire industry-leading application streaming vendor AppStream. This should make the SVS Professional product all the stronger, as AppStream has been providing the streaming component of this product already.

You can read the blog from Scott Jones on the Juice site as well.

Recently, Mike Ferron-Jones did an interview with Scott Smith from Intel's feed room. Mike did a great job at explaining the views he expressed in his blog.

Intel employee's Scott Smith & Mike Ferron-Jones recent podcast around the various models for computing. The video is embedded in this blog, and can be viewed here.

The performance studies he references in the video are: Check out some studies on emerging compute models and http://communities.intel.com/openport/blogs/ecmf/2008/01/25/streaming-impact-on-the-server-and-network

This is of course the Intel perspective - does it align with what you see?

I just got back from teaching a class on Emerging Compute Models at the Intel sales conference. A few things really struck me in the messages from the Intel executives, and the reactions and questions from the Intel sales force. None of them really shocked me, but rather re-affirmed some opinions I already held.

1. With only one or two exceptions, every sales rep has accounts that are actively evaluating or deploying some kind of alternate compute model to better manage and secure their clients. I met two that had not encountered it yet, and they covered the Emerging Markets accounts.

2. This sales conference was "university style", where the attendees were free to pick and choose among over 100 sessions on different topics. The sessions we taught were packed - standing room only - indicating that interest in these new compute models is very high. If the sales reps are interested, that means their customers are.

3. I'd estimate that more than 90% of those that selected our session were either from Western Europe or North America. Attendance from Japan, Asia-Pacific and China, the bulk of our sales force, was really low. If you judged from the people in the room, Emerging Compute Models are mostly a mature market, advanced IT trend right now.

4. Just about every executive from Intel CEO Paul Otellini on down talked about changes in the compute model, and Intel products to address the needs of every model - Intel Xeon processor-based servers, PC clients with Intel vPro technology and low-cost components for thin client terminals. I'd say Intel is treating this like an opportunity rather than a threat, and is setting up for success regardless of the model that fits the customers' needs.

From these indicators, my conclusion is that we are in the middle of a permanent change in the application delivery landscape, at least in the mature markets. The technology has caught up with need for better management, lower cost and stronger security, and I expect you'll hear a lot more from Intel about products tuned to these delivery models.