Kaviza launches VDI-in-a-box 4.0

When your football team doesn’t make it to the Super Bowl, your initial response might be something like, “Well, there’s always next year.” In the IT world, it could very well be that desktop virtualization or VDI is finally on its way to realizing its own “next year.” Analysts and pundits have been claiming that 2011 could be the breakout year for VDI. If not, well, there’s always next year.

Kaviza is one of the companies in this market that believes 2011 is going to be a terrific year for desktop virtualization. To reinforce that belief and help turn it into a reality, the company has announced a new version of its Kaviza VDI-in-a-box solution, bringing it to version 4.0.

If you aren’t familiar with the company’s award-winning solution, you evidently didn’t make it to Citrix Synergy or VMworld last year. Kaviza took home best-of-show awards at both conferences for its all-in-one VDI solution, which allows companies to run Windows images across multiple desktop systems served across a grid of inexpensive commodity servers. It also provides built-in high availability without requiring the need for shared storage. And the company’s claim to fame is that its solution is an easy-to-use, cost conscious VDI offering. Who doesn’t like that?

With all the goodness already packaged up into the company’s 3.1 version of the product released only four months ago, what could it possibly have added to the product in that short period of time to justify a major release?

When the company announced version 4.0, it listed the following new highlights:

• Online Knowledge Base with How-to Videos
• Risk-Free Deployment
• Flexible Real-Time Monitoring
• Anytime, Anywhere End-User Access with mobile iPad and Android devices
• Easy One-Click Kaviza Grid Updates

My initial thought was that these new features really look like more of a minor dot release rather than a major revision increase. But after speaking with Kaviza and gaining more of an understanding for its “VDI for dummies” goal, I have a much better grasp on what these enhancements are all about, though I maintain this probably looks more like a 3.2 release rather than a 4.0 — but who’s counting? This release does, however, continue to advance Kaviza’s simple, out-of-the-box VDI mantra.

“With this release, we are taking it one step further to go beyond ease-of-use to offer administrators a ‘no-think’ solution that automates, guides and detects common mistakes in the trickier parts of virtual desktop management such as working with desktop images,” said Krishna Subramanian, COO, Marketing, Sales & Alliances at Kaviza.

Subramanian added, “We noticed from observing our customers that not all are very familiar with the Windows Sysprep process of setting up desktop images, and there are some common mistakes that were being made during image setup which when undetected could lead to lengthy troubleshooting.”

Because of that, Kaviza has created a new automated wizard in Version 4.0 that walks the user through each step of the image management process. They also added built-in error detection and checklists to help monitor and guide administrators through the entire process.

“This was a pretty major addition that helps lower the bar further for who can setup and manage virtual desktops,” offered Subramanian. “You can think of this as perhaps the difference between an automatic transmission to a car with added cruise-control.”

The second thing Kaviza did with version 4.0 was to provide administrators with the option to monitor Kaviza and the virtual desktops with any management monitoring tool of their choice, as long as it supports the Syslog format. They also increased runtime feedback in the Kaviza management console by adding a Tasks/Events monitor that is always visible at the bottom half of every view in the Kaviza console.

As part of the company’s overall goal of making VDI simple, they included a live online knowledge base that contains a lot of short 3- to 5-minute “how-to” videos that walks through the common virtual desktop management operations. You’ll also find a live troubleshooting guide that’s constantly being updated with the latest information.

With the 3.1 release, Kaviza added out-of-the-box support for Citrix Receiver, allowing its users to access an enterprise VDI system across a number of different devices, including popular mobile devices such as the Apple iPhone and iPad.

With 4.0, Kaviza has updated the HDX stack, providing for a few new additions and enhancements. The new version adds support for native tablet-device features such as gestures, allowing users to manipulate a Kaviza Windows virtual desktop with gestures on an iPad. In addition, Kaviza now offers full support for new Android-based tablets (though it couldn’t be fully tested with the previous version of the product because the tablets were not yet released).

The company also told InfoWorld that in order for virtual desktops to gain widespread adoption in 2011, three events need to happen:

1. The cost model needs to be compelling such that the ROI isn’t based just on soft dollar savings but on immediate capital expense reduction.
2. VDI solutions need to be easy to adopt in a phased manner (most customers want to start with a use case to prove out virtual desktops and grow VDI from there).
3. The end-users need to see value in moving to virtual desktops.

“We now have technology that can address these three requirements,” said Subramanian. “And with the growing use of non-Windows devices such as tablets, the end-user demand to get a standard Windows corporate desktop anytime, from anywhere, is also growing.”

What about 2011? Is this the year for VDI and desktop virtualization? Or will it be “next year” once again? Kaviza said it is definitely seeing much stronger demand, claiming customers are budgeting for VDI this year, and added that 95 percent of its customers are expanding their existing VDI deployments.

Is Kaviza right? Are these three things enough to help virtual desktops gain widespread adoption? What about your organization? Are you planning for VDI in 2011? If not, what’s holding you back?

This article, “Kaviza launches VDI-in-a-box 4.0,” was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Follow the latest developments in virtualization and cloud computing at InfoWorld.com. For the latest business technology news, follow InfoWorld.com on Twitter.