Sentillion Launches Virtualized Remote Access Solution

Published: July 13, 2006

by Alex Woodie

Sentillion last month launched a new virtualization product designed to reduce the complexity of remotely accessing server-based applications. Called vThere, the offering leverages a VPN connection and desktop virtualization software to create a sandboxed operating environment on a remote computer. So instead of fumbling with traditional remote access products or worrying about malware, users just click the vThere icon, and thereby gain access to a virtual Windows environment that houses all their business applications.

Sentillion came to the virtualization space in a somewhat roundabout fashion. The Andover, Massachusetts, company focuses on providing identity and access management solutions for the healthcare industry, and was spun out of Hewlett-Packard's Medical Practice Group in 1998. Since then, about 450 hospitals around the country have adopted the company's identity and access management solutions.

Sentillion found that its hospital clients struggled with remote access issues, says Paul Roscoe, the former senior vice president of field operations who has taken the role of president at Sentillion vBusiness, which was formally launched Monday.

"One thing our customers continued to tell us is they wanted us to provide the same user experience that we provide in hospitals, to provide that same experience to home venues," Roscoe says. "A physician may be at home and is called upon to view data about a patient, and he can't or doesn't want to drive into the hospital. He wants access to the same information as if he's physically there."

The traditional approach to remote access is to set up servers running Citrix or Microsoft Terminal Services, and to configure the target laptop or home PC for remote access. However, this approach leaves something to be desired, Roscoe says. "The challenge with that approach is, as you scale up, you need a large server farm, and personnel to manage that server farm," he says. "Additionally, some applications, like imaging, or publishing and pagination, sometimes struggle to work across this presentation-server approach."

Security is another concern. When a home PC or a personal laptop is used for business purposes, the IT admins really should be concerned about viruses, spyware, and other malware that could be on that computer, and which could interact with whatever business applications are installed on it. Creating a secure Web interface for the business application could alleviate this problem, but this would probably entail a pricey development effort. In any case, not all applications are well-suited for HTML.

"We thought, 'There needs to be a better way to deploy remote access solutions.' So we developed vThere," Roscoe says. "It leverages virtual computer technology to allow us to deploy in remote locations a vThere image, which contains an operating system and a set of applications. But it's running within a virtual environment."

VThere piggybacks on the VMware Player, from EMC subsidiary VMware, to create an entirely separate Windows operating environment on a Windows PC (support for other virtualization products may be delivered in the future). The applications that a user will need, such as Microsoft Office, SAP's mySAP, terminal emulators for accessing hosts like Unix and mainframe servers, and even Norton Antivirus, are then loaded into this virtual environment. Aside from some services such as printing, nothing passes the "membrane" separating the host operating system from the vThere image. A visit to the Windows Task Manager would show only a vThere thread running, when in fact the user is updating the backend database of a client-server ERP application.

Sentillion designed the software to be as easy to use as possible. Assuming a VPN has already been set up, all that's required of users is to visit a Web site where they can download a vThere image that has been specially crafted with all of their applications. These images are assembled by administrators using the vThere Image Creator software. From the administrator's perspective, computers equipped with vThere Players are just another managed PC accessing the company network and servers. But from the end-user's perspective, it's just "load and go."

"One of the challenges with current virtualization technology is they're not designed for the average end-user," Roscoe says. "The VThere Player provides the capability to provide a very simple experience for the user. We're managing the VPN on the back-end for the user, so they don't have to manage it. As the VPN drops, the VThere Player detects it and manages it. So as far as the user is concerned, it's the same experience they get in the office."

Because vThere directly accesses the various servers running Web, application, database, file, and print workloads, there's no need to introduce another layer of servers that must be managed. "The beauty of this approach is it provides users with a Windows desktop, and all the applications, all running virtually on that remote work computer, without the need for any central server infrastructure," Roscoe says. "So it changes the paradigm, instead of building a remote server farm."

vThere is supporting current 32-bit versions of Windows; the company is looking into supporting Macintosh and Linux OSes down the line. The hardware requirements for vThere are not stringent--the software only requires a computer to have at least 512MB of memory, 2GB to 4GB of free disk space (depending on the applications loaded), and a processor running at least 500 MHz. A broadband connection and a VPN connection are also required, as is a directory manager, such as Microsoft Active Directory, to authenticate users. Sentillion will also implement strong authentication using RSA Security's SecurID solution or biometric authentication.

Several hospitals have participated in an early adopter program for vThere, including Cottage Health System in Santa Barbara, California; Inova Health System in Fairfax, Virginia; and Kettering Medical Center in Dayton, Ohio. The company expects organizations in other industries to adopt vThere as well.

vThere became generally available June 26. Concurrent user licenses for the vThere Player starts at $495 per user for a group of 200 users. The vThere Image Creator costs $10,000. For more information, visit www.vthere.net.