RingCube Targets 'VDI Ghetto'

At first glance, desktop virtualization is the poster child for the problem of satisfying an increasingly mobile workforce with increasingly scarcer resources. However, despite the proliferation of vendors entering the VDI market--including Citrix, MokaFive, Pano Logic, Ring Cube, Symantec, Oracle and VMware--the reality has been both technically challenging and more expensive than expected.

RingCube Technologies is tackling what it calls the "VDI ghetto"--namely, personalization--with a new solution that expands an organization's VDI user base, enables faster and more efficient VDI rollouts, reduces VDI infrastructure costs, and lowers a VDI project's cost per user while increasing its return on investment (ROI). vDesk VDI Edition for VMware View and Citrix XenDesktop is available today with pricing starting at $95.

RingCube's new offering addresses the current practice of restricting personalization to keep costs and complexity down, as well as limiting the technology to structured task workers. The company says that there are almost 600 million enterprise PCs in use, but today's VDI can address only 10 to 20 percent of them, ignoring campus (30 to 40 percent), mobile (30 to 40 percent) and remote worker (10 to 20 percent).

The biggest challenge to widespread VDI use has been user acceptance, which has left most enterprise VDI implementations in pilot mode, says RingCube. What vDesk VDI Edition does is provide the personal desktop experience on top of VDI for reduced costs. The company says that it is leveraging the infrastructure that VMware, Citrix and Microsoft provide today, adding a layer to their offerings.

This integration with existing VDI implementations is a primary strength of vDesk VDI Edition, says analyst Steve Brasen, Enterprise Management Associates. The ability to customize for individual users makes the VDI investment more applicable to business requirements while simplifying management and reducing infrastructure costs. The product also broadens the appeal of the VDI platforms with which it integrates."Traditional VDI implementations are valuable only in specific use cases--enterprises that include a workforce that utilize a common system environment. It has not been particularly useful in environments where end users require extensive customization in their desktops to achieve the disparate requirements of their individual roles. vDesk VDI Edition specifically addresses this problem by allowing individual users to overlay environment settings and customizations on top of a common desktop environment. This provides a "best of both worlds" scenario, achieving minimal storage requirements while allowing flexible user environments. This provides a distinct advantage to VDI platforms that integrate with vDesk VDI Edition over those that are unable to achieve similar capabilities. RingCube cleverly orchestrated this solution so that it enhances existing VDI solutions, rather than competing against them.

George Hamilton, an analyst with Yankee Group, says the company is "able to support a cool model but maintain customization for the end users. It allows you to extend pooled resources for tethered works."

Brasen says there are a number of drivers for desktop virtualization adoption, but the three that are most common are workforce mobility (users need to access their data from multiple different workstations, such as work laptops, home desktops and mobile devices); simplified client management (with all user environments managed on a single centralized platform, administrative tasks are significantly reduced, and processes for patching, configuration, system updates, backups and other maintenance practices are far less time-consuming and simpler to implement; and cost reduction (since physical endpoint requirements such as CPU, memory and disk size are minimized, substantial capex savings can be achieved). Additionally, the reduced client management requirements diminishes administrative operating expenses.

While he thinks the VDI market is too immature for this announcement to have significant impact, at least on the other vendors, Hamilton says they're seeing more organizations looking to get out of the desktop-support business. "You can buy a device for $500 to 700, but then have to spend $2,000 to $3,000 or more to support it." It becomes further complicated when employees buy their own machines, including Apple Macs. "Even my own organization is starting to do that. We're using a combination of cloud-based and local installations." This evolution is starting to get more traction, he says, with users getting PC support from a variety of sources. "So this is just another option on how I can deliver apps to a machine I don't necessarily own or manage."

See more on this topic by subscribing to Network Computing Pro Reports Research: VDI Adoption 2010 (subscription required).