The future for Starbucks! Flash drives and VMware Thinstall

Starbucks future looks precarious, but there is hope with the marriage of sexy flash storage and virtualisation!

Yesterday I blabbed about the life-changing news from EMC, who are using flash drives as part of their data storage solutions. Speed is the theme, and they also boast low energy costs compared to traditional hard drives.

Just like a coffee machine needs beans, so hardware needs software. As you may know, EMC own a company called VMware who are the world leaders in virtualisation software. This means it is possible to store loads of data in such a way that it doesnt really exist until you need it.

Taking it a stage further, it just so happens that today, VMware announced the purchase of Thinstall. These guys can now centrally install one copy of a software program and make it accessible to a whole building full of brain dead office workers – simultaneously. That’s right. Many people sharing the same single program. Cheap, fast and easy to control. Big brother is here!

So, EMC and VMware’s flash-based hard drives combined with virtualisation software give us a glimpse at a killer tech combo that will be all the rage in the commercial world soon.

And this, I hypothesise, is the future for Starbucks !

The ailing coffeee houses should each install a flash server loaded with this virtual software from Thinstall. Thereafter, anyone with a laptop can walk in and drink coffee and log in to th eworld’s greatest software while downloading itunes etc etc.

Admittedly that will cut out the need for workers to go the office buildings that have been tricked out with VMware /Thinstall / flash servers, and this service should clog up Starbucks queues good and proper, but you get the idea of the potential for getting even more bums on seats for longer. And imagine, art students wont need to pirate Photoshop, and architects and engineers wont need to rip off Auto-Cad. The world will be a more moral place, thanks to Starbucks.

At the moment the technology is nearly as expensive as a Starbucks double whatever it is mocha, but unless they push past a basic wi-fi coffee shop experience, Starbucks will have no future.

If you want to know anything else ahead of time, just ask.
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Flash drives, ah haaah, from EMC

The naked tech truth about hard drives is that flash storage is pretty cool. You can jump all over an iPod and, thanks to the flash drive, it won’t miss a music beat; you can throw your camera out an aeroplane and the flash card will survive unscathed, assuming it doesn’t land in a fire. And as time moves on, the itty bitty 128MB drives have evolved into the gigabytes.

And now, EMC, the masters of the data storage universe, where they think in terabytes and beyond, are the first to incorporate solid state flash drives for industry. Woah, it finds info so fast on your hard drive that it shows the results before you even finish your search term!

I wondered what it would be like to pack one of those flash drive babies into your iPod. Talk about putting a big bulge in your pocket, having to lug one of those around. And a hole in your pocket to buy one.
Of course, EMC couldn’t care less about iPods, they have bigger fish to fry, but on the domestic front, it is a hint of the future of PC hard drives. Amongst other things, instant on computers will be feasible. There we go, another 30 seconds a day saved.

What will you do with your 30 seconds? Listen to a sample of music on iTunes? EMC execs will probably use the extra half minute to compute their extra money.

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