Virtual Bridges Announces Major Update To VDI Products By VSM News Staff published: Monday, August 11 2008
“Desktop as a Service” lowers cost, improves
security and boosts productivity.
AUSTIN, TX -- Virtual Bridges, a
provider of desktop and enterprise virtualization solutions for
education and business, announced today the release of a major upgrade
to its Win4VDI family of products. The release Version 5 brings
Win4VDI on par with the company's standalone Desktop offerings.
Win4VDI, Virtual Bridges’
Educational/SMB and enterprise product, allows an organization to
easily and cost-effectively deliver multiple Windows desktop sessions
to PCs, Workstations and thin clients from a non-Windows server such as
Linux and Solaris OS.
With this release Win4Lin
Virtual Desktop Server and Win4Solaris Virtual Desktop Server have been
renamed to Win4VDI for consistency with the growing Virtual Desktop
Interface (VDI) market space that Virtual Bridges founded with their
Win4Lin Terminal Server (WTS) products.
Win4VDI products are perfect for
the organization looking to lower costs and improve security through
centralization of desktop computing resources. Typically, these
organizations are looking for alternatives to the expensive,
complicated and high overhead offerings from VMware or Citrix. By
running Windows desktop sessions on Linux or Solaris OS servers,
organizations benefit from the reliability and cost-effectiveness of
the base platform but also from the ability to re-host their existing
Windows licenses on the server for further cost savings. Win4VDI
products require no expensive Microsoft server infrastructure.
"Win4VDI on Solaris is a great solution
for education as it handles rich media much better than Citrix with
much less overhead. Also, having a robust, complete commercial solution
on Solaris enables us to support Microsoft products on multiple
platforms and is very attractive to us," said Ivar Janmaat, CEO of
Raywyse B.V. "Virtual Bridges offers excellent, responsive support,
which is also key in choosing a solution that must support over 10000
users."
IT organizations such as Raywyse
are well aware of the expensive and inefficient nature of traditional
desktop computer management. Maintaining and upgrading desktop
computers physically distributed across an organization is a difficult
and slow process that is also not effective for users who find
themselves with aging computers with degraded performance. Win4VDI
offers IT organizations the ability to easily deploy “desktop as a
service” across the organization for both fixed-function as well as
custom desktop users, all from a central location, reducing the Total
Cost of Ownership (TCO) of desktop computing.
Using Win4VDI to deliver
desktop services allows users their familiar legacy and custom
applications without modification and no need for additional user
training.
“Virtual Desktop Infrastructure is emerging as the next
big growth area in enterprise and SMB computing. The added security,
together with centralized deployment and “access anywhere” flexibility,
is very attractive to IT shops looking to lower cost but offer a higher
level of service to their users. Win4VDI has a long, successful history
as a trailblazer in this market category”, said Jim Curtin, president
and CEO of Virtual Bridges. “Our version 5 release offers users the
power of desktop computing, together with the flexibility and economic
value of server-based computing.”
Through
Virtual Bridges’ work on virtual desktop computing with hundreds of
thousands of users, the company has crafted a product that delivers all
of the core features a typical organization would require to accomplish
their IT goals. Features like automatic local printing, one-click
Windows installation, the ability to integrate with Active Directory,
availability of web display or third-party display options, use of
write-protected Windows system images for true malware resistance, and
integration of RDP support, are just some of the features that combine
to put Win4VDI in the lead of the desktop virtualization and
consolidation market.
Features of Win4VDI Products include:
-
Dynamic
Renewable Desktops for instant deployment and centralized software
updates and patches.
-
Easy
to use and install thanks to powerful management console and
comprehensive documentation.
-
Seamless
remote printing over LAN, WAN, or Internet.
-
Highly
scalable infrastructure, supporting high server density.
-
Powerful
new architecture improves performance, scalability, security, and
reliability.
-
Win4DI
for Linux: Works on any 32-bit or 64-bit x86 Linux platform running a
2.6.x kernel.
-
Supports
connectivity from almost any type of client (PC, thin client,
workstation).
-
Centralized
management and provisioning of users.
-
Consistent
user access to personal desktop environment from home, office and other
network connected locations.
-
Support
for multiple remote display choices - Win4Lin client, NoMachine, LTSP,
VNC, and X, for example.
-
Increased
security and reliability by running on Linux and Solaris servers.
-
Lock
down Windows read, write and other operations with Linux and Solaris
permissions – an administrator's dream!
-
Provide
standard application environments to users regardless of desktop
hardware and operating system - Windows, UNIX, or Linux on the client,
but standard application profile served from Win4VDI servers.
“Having the choice of hosting
your virtual desktop infrastructure on either Linux or Solaris gives
users great power in avoiding vendor lock-in from VMware or Citrix,”
said Dan Perlman, VP of Marketing of Virtual Bridges. “Win4VDI is at
the same time the most mature, yet modern virtual desktop platform on
the market today. As organizations continually look to drive structural
costs out of their IT budgets, virtual desktop computing has the
answers. Centralized management and provisioning and enhanced security
design, make this a very attractive choice for an organization looking
to lower costs and increase productivity.”
Win4VDI allows organizations to
standardize the application environment to users regardless of desktop
hardware and operating system - Windows, UNIX, Linux or Mac can be used
on the client, but a common application profile can be created and
served from Win4VDI server configurations such as blade servers, rack
arrays or large multi-way machines.
Win4VDI products are very popular in the
retail, education and health services industries due to its ease in
supporting legacy Windows applications for industries that are looking
to preserve their application investment while migrating to lower cost
operating system infrastructure.
Pricing and Availability
Win4VDI for Linux and Win4VDI for Solaris
are available immediately.
Win4VDI is priced at $125 per user
with a minimum configuration of 10 seats. Win4VDI for Workgoups, a
10-seat configuration is being offered at a special price of $699 until
September 15, 2008. Please contact Virtual Bridges for volume pricing
and educational discounts.
Win4VDI is a no-cost update to existing users of
Win4VDI and Virtual Desktop Server. Registered users please visit
http://win4vdi.com to download an update. For
more information and to purchase, please send email to sales@vbridges.com.
Virtual Bridges Product Family
Virtual Bridges (VB) develops software
that offers users of open source platforms the ability to run Microsoft
Windows applications in addition to the wealth of Open Source
applications available to them. Virtual Bridges’ Win4 brand
professional-grade virtualization products help businesses extend their
Open Source desktops without additional hardware costs.
Virtual Bridges’ desktop products include
Win4Lin for running Windows on various Linux desktops, Win4BSD for
running Windows applications on FreeBSD and PC-BSD and Win4Solaris for
running Windows applications on Sun Solaris.
For more information about Win4 branded
products, please visit http://www.win4lin.com/. For more information
about Virtual Bridges, Inc., please visit http://www.vbridges.com/.
About Virtual Bridges
Virtual Bridges, Inc. develops SMB and
enterprise virtualization solutions for business. Virtual Bridges’
products are multi-platform and are aimed at businesses that want to
use virtualization solutions to create sustainable business advantage.
Win4, Win4Lin, Win4Lin Desktop,
Win4BSD Desktop, Win4Solaris Desktop, Win4VDI are trademarks or
registered trademarks of Virtual Bridges, Inc. All other trademarks are
the property of their respective owners.
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