Robin Wauters

Virtual Bridges, makers of the VERDE suite for desktop management, VDI and provisioning, today announced a breakthrough first quarter in 2010, further validating the company’s leading role in the exploding desktop virtualization market.

The firm added a number of new customers, including a world-renowned motorcycle manufacturer; launched the industry’s first comprehensive solution for hosted desktop virtualization with market-leader Rackspace; and received acknowledgement from industry expert Brian Madden for the company’s strong performance in an evaluation of the leading vendors in desktop virtualization.

One of the world’s foremost motorcycle manufacturersCustomers selecting the VERDE desktop virtualization solution include:

• A large K-12 school system
• A leading European oil refining company

For each of these diverse organizations, the basis for the selection of VERDE was consistent: compelling TCO with significant CAPEX reduction, and ease of deployment and management, clearly differentiating the company from complex and more expensive competitive desktop virtualization offerings.

Last month, Virtual Bridges announced the availability of VERDE Hosted Powered by Rackspace, the world’s leader in the hosting and cloud computing industry.

This new offering provides the first and most comprehensive hosted desktop virtualization solution for VDI, disconnected, and branch-office desktop users worldwide. Complementing Virtual Bridges’ VERDE On-premise desktop virtualization, VERDE Hosted addresses an organization’s unique requirements for infrastructure, CAPEX and OPEX budgets, and payment options, providing additional TCO reduction.

The company also added a number of partners worldwide:

• ZSL — Global
• Govirtual – Korea
• Clearmanage — Singapore

In March, Virtual Bridges participated in a vendor shootout conducted by desktop virtualization industry experts Brian Madden and Gabe Knuth comparing VERDE installation and testing against desktop virtualization solutions from Citrix, VMware, Microsoft and Quest. The participating vendors were selected by readers of Brian Madden’s website and blog. The objectives of the shootout included an evaluation of setup complexity, provisioning performance and user experience during a one-day product test.

Centrix Software, a provider of solutions that optimize the way IT infrastructures deliver applications, services and content, today announced the release of Centrix WorkSpace iQ, providing companies with a complete overview of their IT resources and how they are being used across the data center.

This critical data supports both ongoing reduction and consolidation of servers through virtualization, but also offers CIOs the ability to evaluate how different strategic IT decisions can affect the cost of delivering applications services to users.

Centrix WorkSpace iQ provides monitoring and metering of application delivery to users along with analysis of how services are being consumed. Based on this information, organizations can evaluate their strategies for IT and the opportunities for cost savings through software license rationalization, reductions in server numbers and further virtualization activities. This information can also be used to support larger IT transformation projects, where significant alterations to how IT delivers results to the organization can be considered.

“The ability to measure how applications are delivered to users and monitor how many users access applications over time is an important consideration for organizations as they virtualize their data centers. Without this complete overview across their different IT and technology silos, companies run the risk of apportioning more resources to applications than is required, or having more software licenses than needed,” said Lisa Hammond, CEO, Centrix Software. “WorkSpace iQ provides a comprehensive view of the entire IT environment, covering multiple application delivery technologies and data centers if a company has them in place. Based on WorkSpace iQ’s breakdown of how resources are used, IT can seek to reduce costs and improve service delivery. At the same time, CIOs can use this analysis to make the best strategic investment decisions for their organization.”

Clive Longbottom, Service Director at Quocirca commented, “The number of ways that organizations can deliver IT services to users has gone up considerably – from traditional approaches such as mainframes and server-based computing through to more modern systems such as web services or virtualized servers, the ability to see across all these different silos of technology is becoming more important. Without information on application delivery or data on how users actually consume IT services, organizations cannot compare their desktop IT strategies with other approaches and therefore miss out on potential cost-savings or opportunities to increase IT efficiency. Best practice for the future is to look across the entire IT infrastructure, measuring how hard resources are working, and to use this data to define how best to source and deliver application services through to the end-user.”

WorkSpace iQ is part of the overall Centrix WorkSpace Solution, which provides a suite of products to discover, measure and optimize the delivery of applications to users, whatever platforms are in place. Centrix Software also provides WorkSpace Discovery, a free tool for discovering desktop assets that can be upgraded to WorkSpace iQ.