Ken Hertzler's Team, Making corporate PC data more secure and improving the way we use PCs in the workspace

SITUATION - The accessibility of business PC data on traditional desktop computers and laptops has been and continues to be a threat to security.  Personal computers run outside of the data center and are at high risk of being hacked or physically stolen.  Such a security breach equates to the loss of both highly sensitive corporate and personal information as well as costly equipment. 

“Thin client” computing was developed as a solution to the security threats to PC data as presented by individual PCs.  In a thin client system, vital and confidential information is stored in a central location - the data center of a corporation - where it is well protected and secure.  A “thin” box with a simple processor replaces a full PC computer setting on the desktop providing secure access to the actual PC in the remote data center.

However, original thin client solutions lacked traditional PC functionality in a couple of very important areas. Original thin clients are inherently flawed in their method of presenting high resolution multimedia data sent from the data center to the individual workstation.  Because the multimedia is now rendered and decompressed in the data center its uncompressed content is far too much to transport over a local area network.  Multimedia simply could not be supported.  Thus, the system could not be implemented in the many organizations today that require multimedia for employee communications, distance training, presentation development, personal productivity, etc.  So, there was limited adoption of the solution for personal computer use and the threat to data security remained.

The NEC Virtual PC Center team recognized this challenge and set out to develop a system that could not only address the flaws of past thin client solutions, but would actually out-perform traditional PCs in side-by-side comparisons with certain multimedia software applications, such as soft phones.

Team: Ken Hertzler, Director, Virtual PC Center;
Dai Yamada, Product Manager; Cabe Cox, Product Support Engineer; Enit Nichani, Marketing Manager; Paul Acton, Director of Sales
Company: NEC Corporation of America

SOLUTION - Thin computing delivers the personal workstations that most companies need, at a much lower cost than traditional PC workstations, all without compromising security or manageability. Thin computing makes it easier for IT to manage systems and improve the reliability and security of PC information, which dramatically lowers IT costs. Yet Thin computing still provides the access to PC applications and data that people need in order to move the business forward -- all while improving on the security, reliability, and availability of PCs; problems that run up the cost to deploy PCs enterprise-wide.

Today, as much as 80 percent of IT's budget is allocated to services such as maintenance, making it very hard for any IT organization to add value to the business. Chief Information Officers have seen their titles evolve to Chief Infrastructure Officer, as they are totally consumed by the need to avoid regulatory problems, manage security and keep things running at the same time. Thin computing not only reduces the cost to deliver desktop computing by as much as 40 percent over the life of the system, it also frees IT staff time to focus on more strategic initiatives.

The NEC Virtual PC Center (VPCC) team saw this, but also realized the limits of the traditional thin client solution to be used as a PC – it could not be broadly implemented because it could not support multimedia functionality supported by traditional PCs.

To demonstrate the problem, take the instance of a large financial company based out of NYC, with a data center in New Jersey.  This company informed the NEC VPCC team that they had deployed as many thin clients as possible within their organization for security purposes.  However, they were only able to use thin clients for applications that do not require multimedia.  So far, they had only been able to utilize the thin client device for 4 percent of their employees.  The other 96 percent of the company’s employees required multimedia of some sort, and so their PCs stilled pose a security threat to the corporation as a whole.   

Essentially, NEC’s VPCC team had to make the thin client solution work as efficiently as traditional PCs to address this specific financial company’s situation and to generally enable widespread adoption into the corporate workplace.  To fix this problem they had to provide a solution for the encoding and decoding of multimedia on the client-side of thin computing to allow for high-speed delivery of the multimedia content to the thin client. 

After months of testing various alternatives for multimedia delivery, the team determined that the most effective solution would be to develop an end-user device designed specifically to decode the rich data on the user end sent from the server in its compressed format.  The challenge was to include the right software and processor combination in the design of the thin client device while still making the unit cost-effective.  In addition, the NEC VPCC team realized that for thin-client computing to be widely adopted it couldn’t create more headaches in regards to server and storage scalability, performance, and availability on the backend.  These problems needed to be addressed with a complete solution – which is NEC’s strength as a global IT leader with hundreds of patents.

In November of 2006, the NEC VPCC team introduced the Virtual PC Center (VPCC) with the NEC US100 thin client device.  NEC’s VPCC is a complete virtual thin client and server solution and the first thin architecture to truly replace the personal computer, supporting all existing PC applications with high quality multimedia delivery that replicates the familiar desktop environment.  The US100, a palm-sized device that can be placed on the desktop or mounted behind the LCD screen, is the first thin client appliance capable of providing rich PC-quality high-speed video and audio processing.

The US100 is powered by Wyse® Thin OS running on the ServerEngines® NetClient processor, along with NEC’s multimedia acceleration enhancements. Combining NEC’s enhancement with the Wyse Thin operating system, you have the perfect highly secure thin client solution for PCs.  Wyse is an expert at providing the thin client operating software that shifts computing complexity to the network, liberating IT departments from unnecessary support and maintenance functions, empowering users to be more productive in their jobs, and protecting and improving access to critical information and business applications.  ServerEngines™ LLC, a leading independent supplier of next generation I/O for Enterprise Computing LLC, is a privately held startup founded in 2003 by several industry veterans. The company is focused on developing innovative solutions for the Enterprise Computing market.

The complete NEC Virtual PC Center solution leverages NEC Express5800 Servers running VMware’s Virtual Server software.  VMware is the world’s leading provider of virtualization solutions and services. Through a pioneering virtualization approach, VMware solutions separate the operating system and application software from the underlying hardware, delivering significant improvements in efficiency, availability, flexibility and manageability.  NEC’s VPCC solution takes advantage of VMware’s platform by virtualizing each of the Windows PCs sessions on a single NEC Express5800 server, in pre-configured servers for 20 or 50 PC users.

These partnerships were critical to NEC’s VPCC success.  Partnering with industry leaders is a critical component of NEC’s strategy.

The invention of the US100 was extraordinary because with it, the NEC VPCC team was able to support all existing PC applications utilizing multimedia – such as computer-based training programs and videos, corporate video messaging, web browsing with Flash, voice-over-IP (VoIP) telephony solutions, and DVD or music playback – that have not traditionally been supported on thin client architectures.

NEC’s solution, the Virtual PC Center, is a complete thin client personal computer product line with full PC functionality and multimedia capability, designed to replace the desktop PC.  The NEC solution offers a full virtual PC environment, combining the thin client device with NEC Virtual PC Servers and NEC VPCC Management Servers in the data center. The entire VPCC system is called “virtual” because a user can access any VPCC workstation and work as if using a traditional PC with its familiar Microsoft® Windows® desktop multimedia environment.  Workers have complete mobility from desktop to desktop in conjunction with the most advanced data protection technology on the market today. 

NEC Virtual PC Servers utilize another important NEC technology called the NEC SigmaSystemCenter™ management system. SigmaSystemCenter provides a unified and scalable management solution on top of the VMware® Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) that simplifies the NEC Virtual PC Server’s management and monitoring. NEC’s server heritage is evident in its management software technology, including built-in integration with the server hardware and virtual operating system platform, ensuring high availability. It also includes an easy-to-use interface to manage PC user session creation and monitoring, server utilization profiling, system policies, security, expandability, auditing, account management, deployment functionality, client brokering and more.

In addition to providing more secure corporate data and fully functioning Windows® PC for business, the NEC VPCC provides more efficient PC maintenance and support.  Moving data storage off of the desktop and into the data center ensures that an individual’s data is stored securely from most threats. All workstations within an organization have centralized management within the IT department and have the additional option of utilizing a network boot.  A network boot can greatly enhance a network’s security because security patches can happen in real-time across multiple offices. 

A network boot is composed of all the PCs within an organization where users have standard applications but do not have Windows on their hard disks.  Instead, the Windows software is housed on the network and all of the PCs run off of the same application.  Therefore, all PCs are centrally managed and Microsoft® security patches can be applied simultaneously.  This is a significant advancement for security – all workstations are kept up to date, at all times.  Additionally, by utilizing NEC's VPCC, enterprises large and small can realize substantial reductions in support and maintenance costs, resulting in a lower total cost of ownership as compared to traditional desktop PCs.

The NEC VPCC solution ensures that data will stay secure while still providing a comfortable and familiar user experience.  The NEC VPCC not only successfully replicates the PC environment; it outperforms it in side-by-side comparisons.  A thin client solution has finally been developed that can be broadly used to truly maintain data security.

CONCLUSION - NEC’s VPCC is the first thin client solution to truly replace the personal computer, supporting all existing PC applications with high quality multimedia delivery that replicates the familiar desktop environment.  Compliance laws – particularly those coming out of Japan - have furthered the success and future implementation of the NEC VPCC solution.  NEC has recently announced that Daiwa Securities Group will implement a company-wide system with more than 10,000 NEC Virtual PC Center (VPCC) terminals covering 117 branch offices in Japan.

The Virtual PC Center (VPCC) product team at NEC is a geographically and culturally diverse team of avid techies who bring a passion for perfection to the art of product development, management and marketing.  Dai is from Japan; Enit is from Peru; and the rest of the team members are American born.  The ad hoc team of five resides in three different locations.  The two offices in Northern California are a three-hour drive apart and Paul telecommutes from home in Phoenixville, PA. 

Regardless, it is a tight-knit team built on several commonalities:  a love of technology, a love of family, a drive for perfection, strong work ethics, and a desire to bring a product to the market that improves the way people work, the way companies do business, and the way PC data is secured.

The small team of six is relatively new within this established global company and wears a number of hats, but doesn’t mind because “we love the product.”   And, as the success of Virtual PC Center grows, so will the team. 

NEC Corporation of America
2890 Scott Blvd
Santa Clara, CA 95050
General phone: (866) 632-0767 
Fax: (408) 844-1494

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