In January of this year, ClearCube introduced version 5.6 of its Sentral VDI Management System software. With this release, the company promoted the notion of "No Vendor Lock-Down", meaning that it would provide cross-platform support for hardware from all leading vendors and also provide vendor agnostic support for multiple virtualization technologies. This may be a growing trend. Back in October of 2007, Egene In January of this year, ClearCube introduced version 5.6 of its Sentral VDI Management System software. With this release, the company promoted the notion of “No Vendor Lock-Down”, meaning that it would provide cross-platform support for hardware from all leading vendors and also provide vendor agnostic support for multiple virtualization technologies. This may be a growing trend. Back in October of 2007, Egenera also decided to start allowing its own management software, PAN Manager, to work with hardware platforms outside of its own Egenera BladeFrame product line.But now, ClearCube is taking things one step further. Rather than simply stating that its software is vendor agnostic, the company has decided to spin-off its software business into an independent new company called VDIworks.VDIworks will continue to deliver the software management platforms for creating, deploying and managing the virtual desktop infrastructure, while ClearCube will continue to provide its centralized, high performance desktop computing solutions, which include the company’s PC blade technology. The two companies have an OEM agreement in place whereby ClearCube will continue to market the VDIworks software under the Sentral VDI Management Software name. Sentral will continue to be an integral component of ClearCube’s solution and current ClearCube customers should see no change in their product support. The two companies still share the same investors and owners. And ClearCube’s current Chief Operating Officer Randy Printz was promoted to president and CEO, while Rick Hoffman, the former president of ClearCube, became the president of VDIworks.Hoffman said the spin-off enables both companies the ability to focus on delivering the right products and solutions to their respective target markets as well as the flexibility to develop the right partnerships to take those solutions to market. Splitting the two companies should give ClearCube the opportunity to strengthen its relationship with other desktop virtualization software providers such as Citrix, Microsoft and VMware; allowing those companies to promote their own desktop virtualization management tools on ClearCube’s PC blade hardware. Likewise, VDIworks will be afforded the chance to work with other hardware vendors such as Dell, HP, IBM and Wyse. By separating the hardware from the software, hardware vendors are more inclined to look at VDIworks’ software solution as a partnership opportunity rather than more competition. “Spinning off the software makes it easier for VDIworks to engage in non-competitive OEM relationships,” Hoffman said. When asked more specifics about the OEM agreement between ClearCube and VDIworks and whether or not VDIworks would provide a special version of the software solution for ClearCube technology, Hoffman painted a much clearer picture for me by describing it like so.“The Sentral management software is optimized for ClearCube’s complete centralized desktop computing solutions, which include, for example, proprietary thin client protocol support such as their dual and quad-monitor PCoIP-based I9400 thin client deices. As ClearCube develop additional PC Blade solutions and thin client devices, ClearCube will continue to provide their Sentral requirements to VDIworks as per their OEM agreement. There are a number of unique features that are enabled only on the ClearCube platform. The first is the out of band management technology which uses proprietary infrastructure on both the blade as well as the chassis hardware. The second unique feature is the enabling of the KVM switch in the chassis that allows instant switching and sparing to another blade. VDIworks, on the other hand, will focus their software development on VDI specifically, so product packaging and pricing will be different as VDIworks focuses on developing the breadth of capabilities required for comprehensive deployment and management of VDI in order to provide maximum flexibility for customers in heterogeneous environments, which include: Deep integration with hypervisor management APIs, including: power management, inventory of non running virtual machines, remote control of VM sessions as well as value added functionality such as Virtual Machine Pooling; a patent pending innovation that throttles free VM pools on any physical host to deliver rapid user connection times while using the least possible resources on the physical host. Upcoming features include VM templating, duplication, rollback and more. Support for Windows mobile 5 & 6 devices (the future virtual desktop) Third party application integration and plug-ins that support existing systems management tools, ie., Microsoft System Center, so IT managers can leverage existing solutions and technologies to manage their virtual desktop infrastructure. Extensive thin client protocol support that extends the monitoring, software distribution, help desk and remote control capabilities of the VDIworks solution to the client device. Portable virtual machine functionality that extends the reach of your virtual desktop environment to scenarios where users may not have always-on network connectivity. This modular feature will allow users to choose whether to run their Virtual Desktop session in an ‘online’ or ‘checked out’ state, and intelligently ‘check back in’ when no longer mobile.”Both companies, ClearCube and VDIworks, find themselves in a highly contested desktop virtualization market. However, the split could prove to be the key for both companies to advance their individual product lines. And it could prove to be an even bigger help down the road when it comes to acquisition time. Software Development