anyone done any trials on these NEC devices

[epping]

hi all

anyone looked into these models

Nec US100

Nec TCM160 mobile (dont know if this one does the graphics offload)

i know some people on here have seen demos but have u managed to get your hands on one in your environment.

[sgrinker]

After seeing one of these demo'd by Wyse in person, I was asked to make contact with NEC to find out more information. I sent an original email to them to find out more about their devices. My email was returned back from a rep there that simply just asked me more questions. I answered his, and asked again more about what they provide. Again, I received an email with yet more questions, and no answers. After a number of exchanges like this, he stopped sending anything further.

From what I can gather though, they provide an entire "solution" proprietary to their servers and thin clients. It seems to essentially be similar to what we are all now calling "VDI", but again I believe they sell everything together. I wasn't able to get enough information on how we could even begin looking at one of the devices.

Needless to say, they fell off the radar when we were testing. Since we went with the V10L, we're just waiting on the software codecs to become available. That should essentially make this device similar in video functionality, and way beyond the NEC device in regard to other performance.

[epping]

interesting, i have had a few calls with them and they are going to send me out a unit or 2, however i asked them if they can connect to any third party CB's but i havent been able to speak to anyone yet who knows what i am talking about.

ill keep u post on what i find out.

[epping]

was very disapointed by nec, they sent one of their reps out to see me and i asked him what OS ran on their device (knowing full well it is the wyse OS) he said it was Windows XP !!!!

i got the impression they know very little about the market they are in, anyway they are sending me a device but they did not know if i can hook it up to a CB so i dont know how much use it will be.

[sgrinker]

Well... eventually isn't that true?

In the end you are most likely connecting to a Windows XP machine. Next thing you know these NEC devices might come out with a Vista upgrade! :smileygrin:

Out of curiosity, did the rep even realize his mistake and try to correct himself? If not, I'd be a little bit worried about how they are selling this to others that don't already know a good portion of the information.

[epping]

he did not understand, i asked him if the device ran the wyse OS,he said no it ran windows xp and then made a rdp connection to the virtual xp running on vmware....

he was not asked to stay long

[kbk00]

It seems to me that the solution NEC is providing is just a complete VDI environment. Is this correct? It seems they will take parts from other manufacturers and combine them into a single product/solution.

It seems to me that there's no benefit if someone can get Wyse terminals, a broker, and the ESX backend themselves. Is this a correct assumption?

[sgrinker]

Ken

That was my take on it as well. Of course I never got far enough along with the rep for him to fully explain what they offer. From all of their marketing though, it appears to be a "full solution." As to what that specifically entails, is still up in the air. We do all know that the device itself is OEM from Wyse, but I'm not sure about the rest of the components. I'd more than agree with your assumption though.

Steve

[epping]

this is correct, the device while made by wyse has a graphics chip in it that nec have added, they use a seperate channel to offload the graphics to for mpeg (just the same as wyse now do but they do is via software).

the rest of the solution is a management server (i.e. CB) that also has ESX on it, also so there big selling point is the VOIP integration.

they are offering nothing new, just a complete solution. i am only interested in the device.... but not that much anymore i think the wyse solution is better and it seems they are going to lead the way in what they are going to bring to the market soon.

[nec_vpcc]

Epping,

Could you please let me know the representative that came out to your site? I find it very difficult to believe that our reps would not know the difference between WTOS and XP. Was he referring to the TCM160? The TCM160 uses an XPe OS.

I hope to clear up any questions and issues that you all may be having with NEC.

[nec_vpcc]

Here is what the "full solution" includes.

Backend NEC server running VI3 (VDI).

NEC management server for VC and SigmaSystemCenter (SSC)

SSC is a brokering type of software. It is used to manage the VPCs and includes functions such as patch deployment and brokering (NEC proprietary software)

US100 Thin Client devices

As for the untimely response from the sales rep, we apologize. The shear volume of inquiries may have caused some inconveniences.

NEC is trying to position the VPCC solution (VDI) as a one stop shop. Although may competitors have similar products, they have not packaged the backend and front end as a solution including the management software. However, we are offering the US100 to customer that are interested.

I invite everyone to check back at the NEC VPCC site. It has been revamped, and should have information which you all may be interested in.

http://www.necam.com/vpcc/

At a final note, I would like to let everyone know that we are currently investigating new feature sets and additional hw development, so please check back periodically. You may find some of them interesting.....

[sgrinker]

Thank you for posting the follow-up and clarification. Our original point of interest in the NEC devices was in regard to the IPT/VOIP functionality that was mentioned briefly in the older marketing information. The new data does definitely help to clarify what it is that NEC provides in that market. Unfortunately I was never able to get that information out of my original inquiry and honestly felt like I was running in circles trying to get information. As I mentioned before though, eventually the responses stopped coming in, but that as likely due to the fact we were literally days away from beginning our project. We had already made some purchases, and that may have come off poorly in my response.

In regard to the better functionality with Soft Phones, do you have case studies where this has been put in place already? I'd imagine that there are individuals here that would be interested in speaking with other customers of yours if possible.

I'm also curious if you have done anything in regard to USB functionality in your implementation? I know it's a stretch with current technology, but we have started to deploy USB Cameras with VT Advantage (Cisco) that work directly with the phone. The video and audio enhancements will obviously help, but there is still the issue of how to get the USB webcam to work with the Thin Client, the phone, and VT Advantage on the VM.

Again, thank you for taking the time to clarify things. I do understand that your company doesn't want to start off with a bad image, but unfortunately my personal first experience wasn't that great. I can say that things have turned around after your last post here though.

[nec_vpcc]

The VoIP capabilities of the NEC thin client is definitely a value add that is not found on other vendor's units. We currently have qualified the use of the SV7000 SIP server and the SP30TC softphone application. We are aware that there are demands for other non NEC devices, so we are in the process of working with other HW/SW providers to develop and qualify then on our platform. The difficulty is that it will require some software development.

You will find with our VoIP solution that once the call is once the session is initiated between the Softphone applications (this time running on the US100 TC devices), the call takes place p2p, so the processing is offloaded from the client OS (WinXP). By doing so, we no longer will have the b..oken... so..nd .... th...t we h..v.. with the softphone applications which we find in the market today. This uses the same technology that we have build in for the acceleration of the multi-media, that is decoding client side rather than server (guest OS) side。

USB functionality has always been an issue on the thin client. We have two different issues which we need to worry about. 1. Driver support on the TC device, and 2. Support through RDP.

1. Since in our current model, we utilize the WTOS, which is a proprietary OS of Wyse, we are not able to support the full array of devices that are available in the market today. Also, we are not able to create drivers to support them.

2. RDP also does not support all devices through its protocol. For example, we are not able to have up stream of sound through RDP 5.2. This is what makes it difficult to have VoIP/Telephony support on the TC. We over came this by using our "special" chip that is on board the TC device and special multimedia accelerator files on the client OS. Other items which may not be supported would be authentication devices such as biometrics.

Please keep in mind that if you require more peripheral device support, there are other TC OSes such as WinCE that would allow, but you do lose some things moving away from WTOS. It depends on where you put your priorities.

On a side note, we did demonstrate video conferencing at VMware last fall. I can't give details, but it is possible!

Keep in tuned...........

[sgrinker]

Please keep in mind that if you require more

peripheral device support, there are other TC OSes

such as WinCE that would allow, but you do lose some

things moving away from WTOS. It depends on where

you put your priorities.

Understood, but we wanted to go as Thin as possible if we were going to look at Thin Clients, and the WTOS won out. Linux was a close 2nd though on that. I know the industry is already working on solutions for a lot of these things, especially USB. It'll hopefully just be a matter of time until some new solutions come out.

On a side note, we did demonstrate video conferencing

at VMware last fall. I can't give details, but it is

possible!

Like I said before... hopefully just a matter of time. We realize that a lot of this is so new, it's hard to expect everything to work. I think Massimo said it right before that it's hard to believe just a few months ago we were happy with a Virtual Desktop connection that worked. Now we (as a community) are already looking for icing on the cake, and wanting all additional bells and whistles. I have to think that the technology will catch up to the demand, but it's just question of how long.

[epping]

Hi

Its good to have some one on here from NEC.

i am not willing to give out the reps name as i dont want him to get into trouble, my impression is that in the UK at least NEC just dont have the technical reps that know VDI (u excluded of course).

I had a US100 dropped off to me yesterday (i am on it right now as i type this), however the streaming media does not work for me, is there a software component that needs to be installed within the VM \!!!

[nec_vpcc]

Again, I appologize for any inconvieniences which this may have caused. Depending on the NEC affiliates, some come on line very quickly, where others may take a little time to get up to speed. If you have any concerns or questions, please feel free to contact us. I am based in the US, but have ties in NEC Europe, so should be able to resolve many of your issues.

>I had a US100 dropped off to me yesterday (i am on it right now as i type >this), however the streaming media does not work for me, is there a >software component that needs to be installed within the VM \!!!

Yes. There are software multi media acellerator files which must be installed into your VPC in order for the multi media to be offloaded to the US100.

Please send me a direct email, and I will be able to help you get your hands on them.

daisuke.yamada@necam.com

Thank you!

[mreferre]

Referring to some of the posts on this thread I'd like you to clarify a few aspects if possible:

>NEC is trying to position the VPCC solution (VDI) as a one stop shop.

>Although may competitors have similar products, they have not packaged

>the backend and front end as a solution including the management

>software. However, we are offering the US100 to customer that are

>interested.

1) With which VDI brokers would the US100 work ? Should we expect it to work with any broker that is currently (and in the future) supported by the Wyse ThinOS or you have your own compatibility ?

2) I am not a "telephony guy" so I apologize for the basic question but ... it is my understanding that those customers currently deploying Cisco IP phones would NOT be able to use the US100 as an alternative due to the different back-end protocols used. So you can't merely use a US100 instead of a Cisco IP phone without switching technology in the back. Is that correct ?

3) a bit off-topic but ..... it is my understanding that the new Wyse V10L model requires sw to be loaded into the XP vm for the video acceleration to work. On the other hand it is my understanding that the US100 does not require any sw loaded into the remote XP vm but it rather accomplishes everything via the local firmware. Is this correct ?

Thanks.

Massimo.

[nec_vpcc]

1) With which VDI brokers would the US100 work ? Should we expect it to work with any broker that is currently (and in the future) supported by the Wyse ThinOS or you have your own compatibility ?

From best my knowledge, the answer is yet. However, NEC is trying to provide all major components of the solution which includes management and brokering capabilities. NEC includes a software product called SigmaSystemCenter which is used for these aspects. The edge device managment software is currently under development, and hopefully will be released in a timely manner.

2) I am not a "telephony guy" so I apologize for the basic question but ... it is my understanding that those customers currently deploying Cisco IP phones would NOT be able to use the US100 as an alternative due to the different back-end protocols used. So you can't merely use a US100 instead of a Cisco IP phone without switching technology in the back. Is that correct ?

We use SIP, however, SIP itself has many dialects. Also, since we offload the multimedia (sound) section onto the HW, the softphone application must also have some changes made. There are some rumors of cross vendor support, but that is something in the works. For the initial release, NEC built in support for the inhouse NEC SV7000 SIP server, and the SP30TC softphone application.

3) a bit off-topic but ..... it is my understanding that the new Wyse V10L model requires sw to be loaded into the XP vm for the video acceleration to work. On the other hand it is my understanding that the US100 does not require any sw loaded into the remote XP vm but it rather accomplishes everything via the local firmware. Is this correct ?

The V10L is a software based acceloration different from the the technology built into the US100. NEC's solution does require that some software be deployed into the VPC (client XP), but not exactly for acceloration. The "MMA" (multi media accelorator) sees that a certain multi media codec is called for, and at that time, instead of uncompressing and decoding locally, opens another path to the US100 device, and sends the compressed packets to the device. When received client side, it decompresses the packets, and decodes them to be pasted to the display. So there is a little bit for SW play, but the processing is done client side. This allows for the server side processor to have less overhead, as well as less network traffic, because the packets are sent compressed.

[mreferre]

As far as 1 and 2 I see your points of being able to provide a fully integrated end-to-end solution.

However full integration might be a double-edge sword. On one side it's good having a single vendor being your infrastructure provider (after all you know who to call if you have a problem ..... doesn't matter what the problem is - no finger pointings).

On the other side however .... you don't want this integration to be comprise of "tightly couopled" components that are only compatible with their countperpart from the same company (to avoid vendor lock-in). Ideally what you would want to have is a number of modules that work best when deployed together but that could work well (and retain their positive attributes) even if you only take a few of those to plug into an open solution.

That is why, in my opinion, it would be very good to have the US100 work with any broker out there and not only with the NEC SigmaSystemCenter for example.

This is of course just my opinion.

Massimo.

[epping]

hi the us100 does work with any broker, it is running the wyse OS, got my demo unit connecting to leostream just like anyother wyse device