PRESS RELEASES 
SIMtone Corporation Announces Availability of SIMtone VSP 2 Product Line and New Carrier-Grade Cloud Service Management Edition
Durham, NC (November 11, 2009) – SIMtone Corporation, a privately held company delivering Universal Computing, today announced the availability of its Virtual Service Platform (VSP) Version 2 that includes the new VSP Service Provider Edition (SPE) -- specifically designed for hosted Tier I carrier and service provider infrastructures.
SIMtone’s VSP Version 1 featured rapid enablement and seamless access to virtual PCs and virtual desktops with workload placement and balancing. With VSP Version 2, SIMtone provides automated provisioning, migration productivity and optimization and services enrichment, and expands the virtual PC and virtual desktop support options to include Linux desktops as well as individual Virtual Service Applications (VSAs). This release also includes numerous de-duplication management options which significantly improve controls and optimize resource consumption and improves quality of service. Additionally, VSP Version 2 provides IT organizations the ability to rapidly enable secure on-the-fly access from anywhere to corporate PCs allowing users to access their desktops from home utilizing their own PC or Mac without any cumbersome security configurations.
SIMtone’s VSP SPE enables service providers and telecom operators to scale and inexpensively offer and deploy any type of consumer-grade virtual PCs and SaaS services as well as business-grade virtual desktops and services.
The new VSP Version 2 product line offers enterprises and small businesses an option to benefit from any service provider’s cloud infrastructure while running their computing resources and data on their own premises, overcoming the security concerns and challenges of public and private clouds.
According to Gartner analyst Alex Winogradoff’s recent report, Dataquest Insight: How and Why Telecommunications Carriers Must Pursue Cloud Services Opportunities Now, “telecommunications carriers need to effectively leverage their hosting and data center infrastructure assets now if they are to play an important role in the cloud services supply chain.”
SIMtone’s VSP SPE allows carriers and service providers to build, configure, manage and deliver virtual hosted services on-demand, with unparalleled system and network resource efficiency. The VSP uniquely addresses carriers and service providers’ virtual services management and rapid rollout needs, offering unmatched scalability, self-optimization, automation and self-service support features. The VSP SPE includes a “next-generation stateful persistence” option enabling service providers to offer their subscribers an “instant on” capability without tying up resources while the user is disconnected. With this feature, users begin their next session at the exact keystroke they left from the previous one, without requiring to hold their session active while disconnected, hence reducing resource utilization, costs and power consumption.
Additionally, the VSP SPE, automatically provisions virtual PCs and SaaS services upon user sign-up and includes a customizable subscriber reference portal. The VSP SPE supports SIMtone’s core USP network service management features allowing users to self-administer their virtual PCs, desktop and SaaS configurations from any device and without needing a PC. Using this portal and the new automatic configuration, imaging and provisioning functionality, a subscriber can sign up, configure and access their virtual PCs, enterprise desktops or SaaS applications from anywhere in seconds, without requiring any human intervention inside the data center virtual service infrastructure of the carrier.
The VSP Enterprise Edition (EE) and VSP Edition allow enterprises and small business to enjoy the benefits of cloud computing while keeping the servers on their premises under their control. The VSP EE enables a service provider to offer enterprises a way to rapidly and inexpensively deploy virtual desktops and services and offer a single common secure seamless access to their virtual or physical desktop from inside the company firewalls or while on the road or from using the employee’s personal unmodified computer. The VSP EE is intended for companies supporting over 50 users to thousands and includes high availability and scalability configuration options necessary to maintain service level agreements. Service providers can also configure dedicated VSP EE services within their cloud.
The VSP Business Edition (BE) enables service providers to support small businesses or departments that want to manage their virtual desktops on their own premises but want to enjoy unfettered, secure mobile and remote access without the associated complexity and costs. The VSP BE is designed to support up to 50 concurrent virtual and/or physical desktop users. It is designed for rapid installation and runs in unattended mode.
According to IDC analyst Melanie Posey’s report titled, Telcos in the Cloud: Claiming a Seat at the Table, “telcos are beginning to insert themselves into the cloud conversation by approaching the cloud in a way that highlights their current network assets and network-related capabilities…..Telcos have numerous avenues to attack the cloud opportunity: retail services for enterprises and consumers, wholesale/enablement services for software developers and other cloud service providers, and ecosystem-oriented services that have the potential to transform telcos' own business models and offer ways to play direct or indirect roles with various participants in the cloud services supply chain.”
“Cloud computing offers carriers and service providers of all sizes a unique opportunity to increase their service offering agility and significantly improve their operational efficiencies while reducing costs and improving service and accessibility,” explained Kurt Ziegler, SIMtone’s Chief Development Officer and Senior EVP of Software Products. “With the SIMtone VSP SPE now available, service providers can offer their subscribers a powerful, inexpensive and scalable way to offer rich-content cloud services to all their subscribers, including those who don’t own PCs or expensive smart-devices, and realize the economic and service level improvements associated with moving existing desktops and applications to the server-side. SIMtone software products are focused on service level improvement, resource optimization, complexity elimination and service delivery agility which enables both providers and subscribers to benefit from virtualization while enabling secure on-the-fly access from anywhere using any edge device.”The SIMtone VSP SPE runs on VMware ESX and provides secure connectivity to any Windows XP, Vista, Windows Terminal Server, Linux hosts or virtualized service and includes all the functionality to provision, deploy and run the virtualized service on VMware ESX server farms. The SIMtone VSP SPE also includes rapid deployment and self-administration capabilities including a user-initiated provisioning portal. SIMtone’s VSP product line is the host management component of SIMtone Corporation’s Universal Cloud Computing Platform, available in three editions: VSP Business for small and medium enterprises, VSP Enterprise for large enterprises, and VSP Service Provider for carriers and service providers.
About SIMtone Corporation
The SIMtone Corporation makes Cloud Computing universally simple. The company has developed and commercialized the patented SIMtone Universal Cloud Computing Platform that allows network operators and businesses to host, manage and quickly provision any Cloud-hosted services, and ubiquitously deliver them to zero-touch terminals that can be standalone, low cost hardware appliances, or software terminals usable via browsers or on PCs, thin clients and mobile devices. With the SIMtone, Cloud services such as virtual desktops, DaaS/SaaS, PC Remote Access or Web services, are simple and very inexpensive to host and manage for businesses and providers, and become usable without a computer, on-demand and on-the-fly, simply and safely, by everyone, everywhere. SIMtone Corporation’s North American headquarters are based in Durham, North Carolina and SIMtone International headquarters are based in Vevey, Switzerland. SIMtone is a privately-held company backed by Motorola Ventures, and Kodiak Venture Partners. For more information: www.SIMtone.net.