SonicWALL Next-Generation Firewall features provide security, application control and application traffic visibility, while the WXA Series provides WAN acceleration through traffic optimization. Together, this consolidated security platform enables IT to secure and control against today’s constantly evolving landscape of threats plus application-related issues with effortless deployment and manageability, eliminating the operational complexity.

By transitioning from outdated protection to this advanced security platform, you will be able to:

• Reduce the amount of data sent between corporate and remote branch offices through traffic de-duplication
• Increase security by blocking suspect botnet Command & Control traffic
• Reduce risks by controlling network communications by geography
• Bandwidth manage all applications to enable acceleration of business critical applications
• Identify network inefficiencies through real-time traffic visualization
• Consolidate management of WAN Acceleration with Next Generation Firewall functionality for a consistent and intuitive user interface and deployment

Network Efficiency and Productivity

The application control feature in Next-Generation Firewalls allows for blocking of undesirable application traffic and for throttling the remaining “good” traffic. For VPN and dedicated link traffic, the firewall can then pass the “good” traffic to be further optimized by the WAN Acceleration appliance. This coordination allows for higher network traffic efficiency and optimization. The WXA Series takes the “good” traffic and uses byte caching, protocol optimization and other techniques to increase network performance over VPN or dedicated links.

Other SonicOS 5.8.1 features increase protection, control and manageability:

• App Control Policy configuration: The App Flow Monitor page now provides a “Create Rule” button for quick creation of App Rule policies for application traffic blocking, bandwidth management and packet monitoring.
• Ability to detect and block botnet command-and-control communication: This feature allows the administrator to block connections to and from a botnet command-and-control server that may be originating from compromised hosts on the network.
• Ability to restrict communication to and from certain countries: Connections to and from countries can be blocked based on IP addresses to help reduce risk of attack and data loss.
• Wire Mode: A new deployment mode adds further flexibility to SonicWALL Next-Generation Firewalls.
• Bandwidth Management Enhancements allow for bandwidth management across all interfaces, bandwidth management per firewall rule, and other enhancements.

The new SonicOS makes application control even easier to run and configure, and adds additional security features such as botnet command-and-control communication blocking. With the newly released WAN Acceleration (WXA) series of appliances, you will have the most integrated network security and productivity-building solution available today.

2X the software company recently announced the launch of 2XCCOS CloudClient, a free Linux-based operating system that give you access to WebApps, Remote Desktops, ICA & Vmware View.

It allows you to convert PCs, Laptops, Netbooks and Thin Clients to provide real-time Web applications and access virtual desktop applications in a friendly click-through installer. It can be installed to USB devices, CD-ROM, hard drive and boots directly as needed.

2X Software develops enterprise server-based virtual computing software, enabling desktop virtualization and application streaming on personal computers and thin client devices. Its product line, which includes the award-winning 2X VirtualDesktopServer and 2X ApplicationServer, is easily scalable, installable, and manageable with straightforward licensing, resulting in product prices far below those of competitors.

It becomes obvious near the end that SPICE is very heavy on bandwidth coming from the server and ICA beats RDP for both CPU and Bandwidth consumption.

http://www.brianmadden.com/blogs/gabeknuth/archive/2009/06/18/redhat-spice-vs-rdp-vs-ica-performance-video.aspx