LivePCs for IT Professionals
LivePC's™, as a computer management solution, are poised to revolutionize the IT service industry. They leverage state-of-the-art virtualization to allow a single IT professional to manage and lock down numerous personal computers, while providing an unprecedented level of security, whether the computers are desktops or laptops in the central office, branch office, or remote home office.
The Bare Metal Edition of the LivePC Engine™ directly runs on the PC hardware and hence will not be affected by Windows' security vulnerabilities. Furthermore, an Active-Directory plugin is available to turn our Bare Metal Live PC Engine into a LivePC kiosk that allows any authorized personnel to log in and access the LivePCs he or she is entitled to. The LivePC Engine automatically fetches the LivePC and runs it on the local machine. Many optimizations such as caching, prefetching, and demand paging are used to make the experience seamless. Note that the LivePC kiosk is stateless and therefore field replaceable.
LivePC Benefits for IT professionals
- Security, machine lockdown, auto-healing, and no desk side visits: LivePCs revert to their pristine state with every reboot, so spyware, key loggers, and even rootkits installed by the user will vanish upon shutdown. All changes made to the LivePCs' system state are eliminated, while keeping the users' profiles, preferences and data persistent. Tools installed inside Windows cannot provide this level of protection; virtualization has this ability because it fixes the problem "outside the box". This technique also fixes the annoying problem that Windows degrades on its own with time, even if the user has installed no software on it.
- Instant account management, access control, user migration, and hardware management: Adding a user is as simple as adding an entry in Active Directory. Revoking access control is just as easy. Users whose rights have been revoked may be able to access the data offline, if permitted by the company policy, but they are not allowed to manipulate online data.
- Deterministic, offline updates, and no surprises: Software installations and upgrades are daily routines in system management. For example, administrators can perform an SP2 update, test it, and publish the new image; the LivePCs will prefetch the new update, the user is switched over immediately without rebooting. This means that users do not have to each suffer through an SP2 update, nor do they have to wait while their computers are being serviced.
- Multi-purpose computers: Employees who use their home computers for work are at risk for vulnerabilities as it is impossible to control their home computers and guarantee that they are free of compromising software. Our patented technology switches the home computer into a secure office machine effortlessly.
- Ultraportability, leave no footprint, fault tolerant, data security: By carrying a 30 GB iPod or even a 4 GB flash drive, users can run their environment on any PC. Furthermore, it will not leave behind any footprint, nor does it carry anything away. By encrypting data on the drive, losing the USB drive will not leak company secrets. And because the drive only holds a cache; no data is lost either, except for the edits made offline.
Who should consider LivePCs?
Forward-looking service providers looking to scale their businesses by adopting emerging technologies. LivePCs are especially well-suited at addressing a number of particularly difficult IT scenarios such as:- Home computers: telecommuting, virtual offices and call centers.
- Large numbers of distributed offices: franchises.
- Migratory employments: setting up new offices, employment relocation.
- Hoteling: computers used for different shifts: training centers, contact centers.
- Sarbanes-Oxley and HIPAA compliance.
- Disaster recovery.
