Unidesk's Virtual Desktop Management Blog

VDI, XenClient, iPad, and more final thoughts from Citrix Synergy

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Since I already summarized booth visitor reactions to the Unidesk demos last week, I'll just share a few observations from our last few days at Synergy before unveiling the winner of our iPad contest:

• Expect to see VDI implemented in mixed environments. Many customers told us they're planning to implement Citrix XenDesktop on top of VMware vSphere.
• VDI is still in its infancy. Several of the largest and most progressive enterprises are reporting the same thing - VDI pilots are in progress but large-scale deployments are not yet underway yet because of an inability to give knowledge workers a great user experience at reasonable cost (hence the interest in Unidesk).
• Unidesk Chief Solution Architect Ron Oglesby is a hit with the virtualization community. His breakout session "Server Virtualization – smashing success, Desktop Virtualization - on hold. Why?" was packed and covered in a blog by Sid Herron of Citrix and Microsoft partner Moose Logic. I lost count of how many times people came up to him at our booth saying "I've read your books." Good thing he's humble.
• XenClient is very cool, but practical applications of the bare-metal hypervisor are scarce.
• The real XenClient opportunity is not about letting users toggle back and forth between work and home VMs in a Bring Your Own PC (BYOPC) model. XenClient's ability to run multiple VMs on a PC or notebook opens up amazing new opportunities for third party solutions that can improve or provide new capabilities around desktop patching, app delivery, user mobility, personalization, end user self-service, desktop repair, auditing, edge security, data protection, and more.
• With the integration of XenDesktop and XenApp and Citrix FlexCast's blurring the lines between terminal services and VDI, you have to be very clear when explaining how you work with Citrix. Even though our signs said we're focused on VDI (for now), we still had a lot of people asking if Unidesk supports terminal services.
• We were impressed at how technical and eager to learn the Synergy attendees were. We were still giving demos to a good-sized crowd as the union workers were literally taking our booth apart around us.

As for the iPad... The people who entered our contest were a mix of customers and solution partners who need Unidesk to reduce storage requirements, improve the user experience, and simplify patching/provisioning for their VDI projects. The winner was the virtualisation product manager for a large UK reseller specializing in Citrix and VMware (and now Unidesk) solutions. That's her accepting the Unidesk iPad from yours truly.

She was thrilled to win, especially since she had been looking all over San Fran for one to bring home, and they were sold out. We were thrilled to hear one of her clients will become one of Unidesk's first customers.

10 more lucky winners of Unidesk Starter Packs will receive details about their prize via email.

If you missed us at Synergy, fear not, you have two more chances to win an iPad and Unidesk Starter Packs. Look for us at the Kansas City VMware User Group (VMUG) June 11 or at Briforum in Chicago June 15-17.

-Tom Rose
Unidesk CMO

Synergy Day 2 recap and booth visitor reactions to Unidesk

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For the second straight day, our booth at Citrix Synergy was packed. From what we could tell, we were the busiest small vendor in the Solution Expo - people often stacked three and four deep.

The customers, Citrix partners, and consultants above wanted to see the Unidesk demo and learn about our desktop layering technology for the same reasons:

• They are starting VDI projects or are in the early stages of their VDI implementations with XenDesktop
  
• Their end users are demanding the equivalent of a traditional PC experience, in which they can install their own applications and make other rich desktop customizations.
  
• These changes can't be lost when IT updates Windows every two weeks with the latest patches, hot fixes, and service packs.
• IT can't afford to allocate full disk images for every user on more expensive data center-class storage

Some of the quotes from our booth vistors:

"Our CEO runs our company like a family.  He wants to keep that cozy feeling, and let users do whatever they want on their desktops.  We can't afford the storage for this.  And since we can't control what these monkeys do, we need to be able to back out their changes when they break their desktops. Unidesk looks like the perfect solution."

"Unidesk is the s***. You're too good to be true. Too simple. We're going to be your biggest partner in Europe."

"I woke up thinking about Unidesk and what I saw last night. I have a few more questions about how your layering works. Show me again how you can reduce VDI storage costs while still giving every user their own personalization layer."

"User-installed apps are just part of our problem. There are a bunch of other challenges we have with users that Linked Clones and Provisioning Server can't maintain through Windows updates. Especially around security and authentication. You appear to solve these problems, too."

"Everybody talks about the iPhone as being so cool. But it's really a consumer play. You've taken Apple's usability and applied it to a real business application. Unidesk is like desktop management meets the iPhone."

More updates to come.

-Tom Rose
Unidesk CMO

Citrix Ready, user-installed apps, VDI storage savings and more at Synergy

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We kicked off a busy week at Citrix Synergy in San Francisco today with two announcements.

First, Unidesk virtual desktop management software is now verified as Citrix Ready for use with Citrix XenDesktop. We've passed the Citrix validation tests, and have shown we can provision 100% personal VDI desktops that give XenDesktop users the same or better user experience than they had with their traditional PCs.

This includes the ability to sustain user-installed apps through patches and updates to Microsoft Windows - without having to create full virtual desktops for every user.  It's made possible with our desktop layering technology, which enables Windows and common apps to be shared across many VDI desktops.

Maximum storage savings for lower XenDesktop TCO. Maximum personalization to broaden XenDesktop's use cases.

Our other announcement is what we're doing at Synergy. Unidesk Chief Solution Architect is presenting the breakout session “Server Virtualization – smashing success, Desktop Virtualization - on hold. Why?” on Wednesday, May 12 at 3:30pm PST. Don't miss it!

But if you do, we're showcasing our 100% personal Citrix XenDesktop user experience live on the Solution Expo Hall in Booth #538. Here's a pre-show look at the booth.

Hope to see you at the event!

-Tom Rose
Unidesk Chief Marketing Officer

Unidesk Named Vendor to Watch at Synergy

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Next week, we're headed to San Francisco to showcase Unidesk at Citrix Synergy. The theme will be "XenDesktops Your Users Will Love," since we're all about providing a user experience for VDI that's as good (or better) than a traditional PC - without forcing IT to break their budgets on storage. Of course, a big part of this is supporting user-installed applications, which we'll be demonstrating live.

We got a nice head start on the event when Burton (now Gartner) desktop virtualization analyst Chris Wolf named Unidesk one of the "Vendors Flying Under the Radar at Synergy" in his blog.

We hope you take Chris up on his suggestion, and visit us in Booth #538. Like every other vendor, we'll be giving away an iPad. But we'll also be giving away some free Unidesk Starter Packs. So you'll have more than the usual 1 chance to win!

Watch this space Monday for the big announcements we'll be making from the show.

-Tom Rose
Unidesk Chief Marketing Officer