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Most universities use visualization today but and most of them run their own vmware (or similar) clusters. The next logical step is to outsource the operation of the vmware cluster itself to a commercial provider. There are indications that several universities are thinking about taking this step in the near future and are expecting the NREN to facilitate the transition. The transition from locally managed visualization to remote hosted visualization will take place over the course of several years and may never fully finish - some services may need to reside on locally managed (much smaller) clusters. Hence we need to prepare for a situation where universities sometimes buy visualization service from commercial providers and sometimes use local resources - perhaps shared between collaborating campuses.
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