How many devices do you use for work today? And how many of those are your own personal gadgets? I am sure you will not be surprised to know that 43% of us use at least three, and a significant portion of these are “Bring Your Own Device” or “BYOD,” even if that’s not the official policy.
It is not about the devices though. It is about being empowered to choose when, where and how work gets done, having a new level of freedom, flexibility and choice. The days of the 9-5 job are long gone. As the reality of the new “24 hour work day” takes hold, IT must support this mobile work style to make us work better, be more productive, collaborative and creative.
Desktop virtualization, also known as VDI, is the technology that separates the desktop environment and associated application software from the physical client device that is used to access it. VDI gives IT the opportunity to centralize, virtualize and deliver apps, desktops and data with greater control, security, and efficiency, and ultimately lower costs.
Storage has been the Achilles’ heel for VDI. When you are centralizing all of your desktops in a data center giving your end users device-independent, on-the-go anywhere access, you are also moving them from consumer-grade storage to enterprise-grade storage, which costs an order of magnitude higher.
Citrix is a clear leader in the desktop virtualization market. IDC puts Citrix at the top right corner in the leader category for the client virtualization software market[i]. Citrix XenDesktop, with its suite of desktop virtualization products, gives employees the freedom to work from anywhere while cutting IT costs. With industry-leading XenApp built-in, XenDesktop can deliver full desktops or just apps to any device, allowing you to choose the right delivery model for the right user at the right time.
On the storage side, XtremIO is leading the All-Flash storage market by every measure. XtremIO’s architectural advantages translate into very significant savings for desktop virtualization customers. Today millions of virtual desktops run on XtremIO, and customers typically see 10:1 or more data reduction ratios for persistent desktops. A single XtremIO X-Brick can host up to 2,500 persistent desktops and up to 3,500 non-persistent desktops.
Better Together
Citrix and XtremIO together provides a great solution for your desktop virtualization. Here you have the market leader of desktop virtualization software joining forces with the market leader of flash-based arrays. Together, we can scale from hundreds to hundreds of thousands of desktops, delivering uncompromising end-user experience at scale, all the time, for all user types. With XtremIO, your admins have a radically simple storage management experience where they can provision desktops really fast, on demand, as you scale. The net result for you is very low $/desktop, and better than physical desktops for performance, user experience and most importantly, economics.
Citrix and XtremIO just did a joint webinar complete with many demonstrations to illustrate the specifics of how they are better together. The recording is below, the presentation is here, and a detailed technical blog post on this topic is available here.
[i] IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Client Virtualization Software Vendor Assessment, Doc #245100, December 2013
