Wyse Debuts Virtual Desktop Accelerator (VDA)

Wyse Technology has announced that it will launch a new software product, Wyse Virtual Desktop Accelerator (VDA). Wyse VDA addresses limitations of existing data centers, which are currently constrained by proximity. Today, an application or service, hosted and delivered from data centers is typically within 100-300 miles of the end-user recipient. Without this proximity, the user experience suffers from network latency, packet loss and other inefficiencies found in longer networks. Because of these issues, businesses are forced to maintain multiple data centers to handle all geographies. Wyse VDA virtually eliminates these geographic constraints by accelerating network protocols up to three times in order to greatly enhance remote end-user productivity and experience in virtualized settings.

Enterprises are able to consolidate data centers, eliminate redundancies, improve ease of management for the IT staff, and significantly reduce overall maintenance costs. The software-only solution is also easy to deploy, requires no hardware or appliances, and is optimized for virtual desktop deployments. The reduction in data center usage also has Green IT implications, as energy consumption and carbon emissions will also be significantly minimized.

Wyse Virtual Desktop Accelerator will accelerate popular virtualization architectures such as Citrix XenApp, Citrix XenDesktop, VMware View and Microsoft Terminal Services.

In general, data centers typically account for 25% of corporate IT budgets, according to McKinsey(1). In addition, the cost of operating data centers is increasing by as much as 20% per year. By reducing the geographic redundancies required to cover end users locally and globally, Wyse VDA will also contribute to significant reductions in greenhouse gases. Carbon emissions from data centers continue to rise, with data centers expected to quadruple their emissions by 2020 worldwide. Based on the same McKinsey research, the amount of energy used to store and handle data doubled between 2000 and 2006, with the average data facility using as much energy as 25,000 households. A single enterprise-class data center that reduces its number of severs by 50% would potentially save $1.5 million in energy costs and eliminate 14 tons of carbon dioxide emissions per year.

Results from early implementations of Wyse VDA have suggested significant potential cost savings to participating companies. A major global financial services provider engaged in retail and commercial banking, credit cards, investment banking, wealth management and investment management services, deployed early versions of Wyse VDA in an effort to better serve employees working in virtualized environments. The company, which has an extensive international presence in Europe, the Americas, Africa and Asia, wanted to streamline its data center operations in order to reduce costs and minimize the associated maintenance for its IT staff.

Wyse VDA addresses challenges faced by companies attempting to use cloud computing or virtual clients located around the globe but find the user experience unacceptable due to network distance. Working without specialized hardware, Wyse VDA complements existing remote desktop protocols, including Citrix(R) ICA(R), Microsoft RDP, and VMware View, accelerating the experience to LAN-delivered levels. By reducing the impact of network latency, Wyse VDA eliminates the sluggish performance often associated with virtual desktops connected to remote data centers or public clouds. Remote users will, for the first time, experience the same level of network quality as local users.

These benefits also extend to local geographies, whether end users are located only a few miles from a data center, are in the next state or the next country. Latency and packet loss inefficiencies are mitigated without any impact on end user experience.

Wyse VDA also can help enterprises with business continuity and in disaster recovery scenarios. In standard operation scenarios, end users are located close to the data center. With Wyse VDA, if those data centers are in a disaster situation, the enterprise can easily connect the effected end users into alternate data centers without compromising their experience.

Wyse VDA does not interfere with the security and encryption of the underlying remote display protocols. Wyse VDA works standalone or as a compliment to existing hardware WAN accelerator solutions adding value to customer deployments by providing acceleration specific to remote desktop protocols.

Wyse VDA adds to the impressive portfolio of virtualization software already offered by Wyse. Whether it is overcoming the obstacles of audio, video, multimedia, multi-display or USB support, Wyse’s virtualization software solutions are all designed to ensure the best possible end-user experience.

Available built-in to Wyse ThinOS 6.4 devices and select Wyse thin clients, and for PCs running the Microsoft Windows XP Pro operating system, Wyse Virtual Desktop Accelerator will be generally available July 8th.