Leostream Carving Out VDI Role
Nobody can say that Leostream isn't aggressive when it comes to marketing its Connection Broker product, the latest version of which, 6.3, has just been released. CEO Michael Palin likes to paint his company as the champion of desktop virtualization users at large customer companies.
"It's all heterogeneity," Palin declares. "It's all about the maximum use of existing physical infrastructures to make projects less risky and expensive. We're doing this with very complicated environments."
What they're doing is selling a product that offers what Palin calls "a software management layer that ties desktop images in the data center to the appropriate end-user devices -- thin clients, laptops, workstations or web pages -- delivering an end-user experience as good or superior to that of a conventional desktop."
What's interesting is to hear Palin discuss his company's "technical alliance partnerships" with VMware and Citrix, two companies that he told me a few months back basically put up with Leostream, but are not big fans. For example, in discussing VMware, he declares "VMware says, 'We want to rule the world,'" and when it comes to VMware and Citrix selling to the low end, he states, "The channels aren't up to speed on this technology. VMware and Citrix continue to over-promise and under-deliver to the mid market." Which is actually fine with Leostream, because they are looking for companies with 1,000 users or more, anyway.
At any rate, the company bills Connection Broker as a vendor-neutral product that "provides greater flexibility, simpler deployment and more efficient management of hosted virtual desktop infrastructures."
I know there are some people who take a dim view of the entire connection broker concept because it only solves one part of the VDI puzzle, but Leostream seems to be making a buck, so more power to them.
Some highlights of v 6.3 include a new Web client (user access to desktops and apps), increased platform flexibility (support for Xen.org centers), enhanced remote access support for Sun (tight integration with Sun Secure Global Desktop Software), expanded support for Hardware PCoIP (enabling quad-monitor layouts for hardware PCoIP), and an optimized end-user experience (protocol plans to make the hosted VDI "protocol-aware," and registry plans, enabling the setting of registry keys on remote desktops "based on the client device the user logs in from, providing location-based tuning of the end user's experience."
Posted by Bruce Hoard on 02/09/2010 at 12:48 PM