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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.

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