Double-Take to offer low cost virtual desktop through channel

News Will Garside 2010-05-18 14:21

Ian Masters, UK sales director at Double-Take Software believes that desktops are costly and time consuming for the

£70 a seat with no hidden charges will let partners target SMEs priced out of VMware and Citrix goodness.

Double-Take (DBTK) software has launched a virtual desktop product which it claims will allow channel partners to target SMEs with a low cost alternative to desktop PCs.

The Double-Take Flex software allows PC to boot its operating system images directly from a central server over any Ethernet network – yet run applications locally for performance.

Double-Take gained the technology when it acquired start-up Mboot last year and is similar to Intel’s (NASDAQ:INTC) PXE boot by turning each desktop PC into a centrally managed smart terminal. According to Double Take, this approach reduces the time taken around managing desktop PCs substantially, while the personalisation elements found on traditional PCs can still be applied, maintaining the user experience.

According to Ian Masters, UK sales director at Double-Take Software: “Desktops are costly and time consuming for the business but the hosted desktop solutions from VMware (NYSE:VMW) and Citrix (NASDAQ:CTXS) are much more focused on bigger environments.”

Instead, Double-Take is offering a £70 per seat software solution that allows IT staff to manage desktop images and resources in one place and enforce a central storage policy, while the processing for each machine is carried out locally on a user’s machine.