Synergy on My Mind: VDI Dominates Citrix Conference

The talk on the Synergy exhibition floor was largely about the various aspects of VDI--most prominently management and storage--while a host of VDI ecosystem players such as AppSense, RingCube, Kaviza/Citrix, and Wanova, Liquidware Labs, and Atlantis Computing, among others had booths. I also had a briefing with Desktone CEO Peter McKay, and noticed Unidesk boss Don Bulens patrolling the floor. All in all, lots of great fodder for M&A rumors, not many of which seemed to be in circulation. What it all amounted to was a lot of companies with a lot of good technologies--some of which have a lot of customers, and some of which are more heavy on unfulfilled potential.

Regardless, It was interesting to me the way all these VDI players view themselves as one big family. Frequently heard platitude number one: "We're all in this thing together." Frequently heard platitude number two: "A high tide lifts all boats," followed by the unspoken, "And we'll torpedo each other later."

The clock is ticking on all these companies, of course, and you have to wonder if any of them are in desperate straits. When I was chatting with one CEO and I asked him about profitability, he smiled and replied, "We're venture-backed," as though that was some kind of magic bullet or long-term tonic.

Slightly off-topic, I ask in frustration, will someone from RES Software, please get in touch with me? In response to my entreaties, they keep sending me form letters, and I live in fear that I will start getting sales calls. All I want is a briefing, people.

Cheeky company of the show: WhipTail Tech, and here's three things going on with them: 1) They just secured some $60,000 in much-needed funding--hey, everybody can't feed at the Matrix trough; 2) Their business cards say "DISK IS DEAD"; and 3) Their motto is something along the lines of "Forget everything you've learned about storage in the past." Billing themselves as "a revolutionary technology company positioned 2,916 miles east of Silicon Valley, in seasonally sunny Whippany, N.J.," WhipTail claims to have engineered the first fully populated solid state SAN. They are telling anyone who will listen that all their competitors will have to close up shop once the word gets out about how the firm's XLR8r can slash the I/O demands of processors and applications to the bone. Whip it good, I say.

Posted by Bruce Hoard on 05/27/2011 at 12:48 PM