SIMTone: Multiple carriers launching cloud-based desktops this year

After engaging top-tier telcos across the globe for the last year and a half, SIMTone executives expect at least three or four carriers to start offering services over the company's cloud-based PC desktop platform this year.

The startup's back-office software essentially pulls user desktop functions into the virtualized data center, allowing VMWare's virtualized server system to dynamically distribute resource consumption, creating tremendous efficiencies for carriers and allowing users to pay for only the resources they consume.

"It's sort of like a steroids-based SS7," said Mario Dal Canto, SIMTone's chief executive officer, who described the product's implications in a recent Telephony podcast.
SIMTone's system automatically recognizes users' devices and initiates sessions of managed virtual desktop use after the user verifies his or her identity with a name and password.

"The network knows everything it needs to know about you -- the capabilities of your device, the location where you're connecting, the quality of bandwidth and connectivity you're getting and your preferences -- and our back-end software makes use of that information," Dal Canto said.

The network-based platform stores all relevant information about users and their services on a disk, applying that knowledge and retrieving that data when users log in. The cloud is essentially placed behind a stealth IP address in a closed file – a technique SIMTone has patented.

"You're connected to your virtual PC in the cloud," said Kurt Ziegler, executive vice president of SIMTone's high-performance division. "When you power off your device, it causes a disconnect [of the session]…[Later], you bring your clients back up, log in, and immediately you're back with the keystroke you were on before you left. But in the mean time, your resources were not tied up. Your resources were put back down on a disk again until you needed them."

With all the intelligence in the network, there's less need for intelligent PCs at the end. So for users, SIMTone's offering includes simple, inexpensive laptops that the company calls "terminals."

"They are 100% stateless devices that never process, store or manipulate any data or user credential for any service," the company's Web site explains. "That's why they are called terminals. Even during use, they don't hold any information about the service, the user or her/his data, anywhere."