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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