Wanova is a true ‘Desktop Cloud Solution’ I have seen for a long time, this product capable of Migrating, Restoring, Re-Basing, Capturing and many more with one single click. The intuitive user interface looks easy and have no problems to understand without any documentation, but don’t be fooled behind it stands a very complicated and innovative technology process.
Long story short, the concept of the system is to divide the computer into three layers; user data, machine-user apps and OS (base image), then upload them to the server and create a reference CVD (a virtual drive). Some of technologies they are using include: network optimization (a Wanova patent) data duplication, file and block level de-duplication.
As soon as CVD is created you can basically preform all the needed actions from the server console. For instance you can create a VM, this might be good if user’s computer may have been stolen, deploy the CVD to new hardware, if you would like to upgrade, enforce base image, to those that messed up their system or even upgrade the system to new OS. There is also a downgrade function, if you upgraded and it was not successful with one click the system is reverted to previous OS state.
Another important thing is the migration process from Windows XP to Windows 7. After capturing the CVD, you replace the first layer (base image layer) to windows 7. The new image is downloading with WAN optimization to ‘staging area’ on the disk and then after restart the image is deployed, for the final process Wanova uses USMT.
I can’t tell all the features because it would take me another 10 pages (at least) but overall I think that this is the future of cloud computing as we understand it. The product does exactly what it stands for.
It’s good to see someone thkiinng it through.