Las Vegas – Lenovo told more than 500 solution providers at its first ever channel conference, held here, that its two part cloud strategy will enhance the computing experience and make it more secure for customers.
The company in a joint venture with chip maker Intel Corp. has developed Lenovo Cloud Ready Clients and Secure Cloud Access. According to the company’s cloud guru Rich Cheston, each offering will provide flexibility and security with cloud services enabling customers to use the hardware they want to use or already have. The Secure Cloud Access will exploit Cloud Ready Clients such as the ultra thin X1, which was released at the show, ThinkPads, deskop All-in-Ones and IdeaPad notebooks. The goal of these two cloud offerings is to give the end user the choice to use all the functionality of notebook, desktop or tablet when working with cloud based applications.
Cheston said that traditional view of cloud computing has been either through Amazon Web Services on the infrastructure side, Microsoft Azure on the platform side and SalesForce.com on the software as a service side.
But Lenovo’s approach will be that of “face of the cloud is the PC.”
“Today’s client does not have a vital role. We think the cloud is real and it will grow in importance but its not all about content services. We’ve developed our own model and the road to the cloud is to get to the content. The first layer is the PC or the device you want to use. Being a device manufacturer is an important role for us,” Cheston added.
Cheston said that in Lenovo’s view the market will not completely move over to thin clients or zero client PCs. Besides Intel, the vendor has formed partnerships with middleware developer Citrix and little known Stoneware to bring more secure cloud computing to devices through the Secure Cloud Access.
“Today’s approach to the cloud is unbalanced. The cloud dummies down the client. It treats it as 12-inches of gorilla glass. The cloud does not take advantage of the devices. If you run SalesForce.com and you are concerned about security of your customer list the fingerprint reader on Lenovo hardware can be used as a second point of authentication.
SalesForce.com and other cloud offerings do not recognize that and its not a great experience for the end user,” Cheston said.
Cloud Ready Clients are for second generation I Core processor-based hardware and it has the capabilities for cloud apps to recognize fingerprint readers or the graphics processor, network connectivity and other functionality. Besides security Secure Cloud Access can inform the user that application perforamce can be improved in a local environment.
For example, a YouTube video with Secure Cloud Access can be run in full screen, in HD with 30 frames a second. “This is a better end user experience. We did not back into the cloud. We have been working on this for quite a while,” Cheston said.
For channel partners, Lenovo channel chief Chris Frey told CDN that the company will decide shortly what the best course of action is with Cloud Ready Clients and Secure Cloud Access with channel partners.
An announcement is expected later on this year.