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AS OF 11/21/2008 4:54PM EST
VMs for outsourcing
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By Andrew Binstock

May 15, 2008 —  Companies that outsource development, especially to offshore locations, frequently face problems that virtualization can diminish. The first is provisioning special tools to their developers; another is security of their intellectual property. Some companies have solved both problems by hosting the development machines locally in a VM and having the developers dial in, generally using remote desktop protocol (RDP). Access to Web sites or other network locations from the VM is tightly controlled, as is access to the file system.

That arrangement provides an easy solution for provisioning expensive tools. Because the VM is hosted locally, there is no chance the tools will “walk away,” causing licensing problems. Likewise, that setup makes it far more difficult to steal IP. Certainly, it’s not impossible, but now any misappropriation requires more extended effort and would certainly be intentional as opposed to inadvertent or impulsive access limitations violations.

The downside, of course, is the responsiveness of the system for the developer. RDP, especially over transnational WANs, is hardly as fast as local access, so productivity will be somewhat diminished. This solution works best for situations in which some specific change has to be made to sensitive code, rather than as the default environment for green field development.


Related Search Term(s): Virtualization


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