By Tabrez Khan
After establishing its leadership in server virtualization, VMware is now eyeing the fast growing desktop virtualization market with the launch of View 4, its virtual desktop solution.
“Although desktop virtualization has been a key priority for enterprises, adoption has hitherto been hampered by high acquisition costs, performance issues and its unsuitability for mainstream deployment,” said T Srinivasan, Managing Director, VMware India and Saarc. “View 4.0 aims to solve this problem by providing an affordable, mainstream desktop virtualization solution.”
The key feature of View 4 is that it enables delivery of virtual desktop in a device-agnostic fashion as businesses can deploy virtual desktops on a variety of devices such as laptops, smartphones, regular desktops or thin clients with this solution. “View 4 is based on the PC-over-IP concept which will ensure real desktop-like performance and user interface for virtual desktops,” he said.
To successfully position View 4, VMware hopes to leverage on the success of vSphere—a platform on which the new virtual desktop offering is built, the latter. “vSphere has seen a tremendous response from our 22,000 global customers worldwide within just few months of its launch. We expect View 4 to do even better,.”
Srinivasan said PC-over-IP was a key innovation that made it easier for View 4 to be delivered as a managed service. “This is a big opportunity for our channel partners as they can provide outsourced desktop management services with View 4.”
Srinivasan said partners were already clued into the server virtualization opportunity, and with performance issues getting sorted out, desktop virtualization would also grow manifold.
Traditionally, the issues holding back desktop virtualization have been performance and user experience. PC-over-IP goes a long way in solving that. With a potential 50 percent reduction in TCO that it enables, combined with enhanced manageability, security and compliance capabilities, there is a compelling case for desktop virtualization.”
According to Srinivasan, the notion that virtualization was more of a large enterprise phenomenon is wrong. “We have many customers with very few servers who have opted for virtualization. Consolidation and savings on infrastructure, manpower and energy costs are key drivers that are even motivating SMBs to adopt virtualization,” he added.
Srinivasan said VMware’s endeavor over the next one year would be to help partners gain expertise in virtualization solutions. The company will augment its support staff, conduct more certification and training programs and also help partners enhance their selling skills. “Since we are a 100 percent channel-centric company, the readiness of our channel partners to avail of the growing opportunities in the virtualization space is critical to us,” he concluded. |