HP, Citrix and Microsoft Combine Forces
I was cruising around the Windows Virtualization Team Blog and came across an interesting entry dating back to June 22 and HP's Tech Forum conference. The entry describes a VDI reference architecture and deployment offer including HP client virtualization in conjunction with Microsoft Hyper-V and Citrix XenDesktop 4.0 Enterprise Edition, and points readers to a brochure that lays outs the nuts and bolts of the deal.
I guess my radar is always tuned to deals involving Microsoft and Citrix, because those two have worked so well together for so long. As Brad Anderson, Corporate Vice President, Management and Services Division at Microsoft puts it, "When I think about the best way to work with us, I use Citrix as the example."
This particular deal is built on the concept of providing customers with a highly reliable, secure and flexible desktop environment built on the HP Converged Infrastructure, "where all IT resources are united on one highly manageable, virtualization-ready platform--and combined with ground-breaking Citrix XenDesktop software and the robust Microsoft Hyper-V hypervisor." The goal here is to produce a top-of-the-line, full-featured desktop solution that produces today's typical desktop nirvana: the complete, on-demand, anywhere, anytime, desktop experience.
Toward that goal, in addition to the Microsoft and Citrix offerings, the product package calls for HP ProLiant BL460c server blades, a HP StorageWorks P4800 SAN, and HP Insight Control for System Center.
The bountiful benefits of this joint effort include simplified desktop lifecycle management, decreased TCO, centralized management, and dynamically provisioned desktops all served up with reduced energy consumption.
XenDesktop gets more ink in the brochure than Hyper-V, but Microsoft is like China: they just keep moving inexorably forward, strengthening themselves and consolidating power.
Posted by Bruce Hoard on 07/21/2010 at 12:48 PM