Dell Taps Start-Up Unidesk For VDI Management Technology

virtual desktop infrastructure projects

Unidesk's VDI provisioning and management technology is now part of Dell's Desktop Virtualization Solutions (DVS) lineup, where it works with VMware View and Citrix XenDesktop to handle image management, storage optimization and the all-important maintenance of a user's personalized settings in VDI environments.

"This is a defining moment for us," Tom Rose, chief marketing officer at Unidesk, told CRN in a recent interview.

VDI has been long on promise but has not lived up to the hype, mainly because the costs can quickly stall deployments. In broader use cases, management tools that come with VDI brokers aren't up to snuff, according to Rose.

DVS Enterprise includes Dell servers, storage, networking, broker and hypervisor software, services and end points, including thin clients.

"Dell has all the key ingredients. We're the last piece of the stack to make VDI finally easy and cost-effective," said Rose.

Unidesk sees its layering technology -- which helps reduce the costs associated with VDI by managing users, applications and operating systems through a single interface -- as a key differentiator.

"Layering is the disruptive technology that will finally make VDI simple and low-cost," said Rose. "We layer the entire desktop, and it's one gold image for everyone. When Microsoft has Patch Tuesday, you patch your gold image once, and that's it."

Since launching in 2008, Unidesk has garnered about 215 customers. Now that it's available through Dell, that figure could be poised for expansion.