Desktone, Inc., provider of the industry's first unified virtual desktop platform, announced that it has closed $17 million in venture funding. The Series A round was co-led by Highland Capital Partners and SoftBank Capital, and also included Citrix Systems, Inc., and China-based Tangee International. Desktone, founded in 2006, intends to use the capital to fund global sales, marketing and development for its desktop virtualization platform.

"As the cost and complexity of managing large-scale PC and server environments becomes overwhelming, the trend toward virtualization is growing exponentially," said Ron Fisher, managing partner, SoftBank Capital. "Enterprises have a tremendous need to accelerate desktop virtualization adoption in a way that is cost-effective and simple, and that doesn't drain IT resources. Desktone's approach to this market and their progress after just one year in business are impressive. We are excited to help them address this enormous market opportunity."

"Desktone boasts an accomplished executive team who understands the challenges enterprises face in managing desktops and transforming to virtualized environments," said Peter Bell, partner, Highland Capital Partners. "The team has proven track records in pioneering ground-breaking technologies, building thriving businesses, and creating valuable services and product offerings. With its powerful combination of visionary management and innovative, in-demand solutions, we are confident Desktone will achieve success." "Delivering desktops as a service represents a promising new growth opportunity with significant upside potential. As the leader in application delivery infrastructure, Citrix is intimately familiar with this market and is pleased to join with Desktone as a strong technology and business partner," said Michael Cristinziano, corporate vice president, Strategic Development, Citrix Systems, Inc.

"We are honored to be working with such distinguished, well-respected investors who are committed to helping us grow into a global desktop virtualization leader. Their investments validate the strength of our vision, the promise of our success and the uniqueness of our solution," explained Harry Ruda, CEO of Desktone.

Desktone vDesktop Platform

Desktone vDesktop is a turnkey solution that provides enterprises an easy on-ramp to virtual desktop computing. It uniquely integrates all virtualization layers – including storage, applications, client devices, servers, processing and network technologies – and enables them to be controlled by a single management console. Desktone vDesktop delivers secure, high-performance computing to end-users while optimizing data center asset utilization and reducing operating costs and capital expenses.

Experienced Management Team

Desktone was founded by Eric Pulier, a serial entrepreneur who also founded SOA Software, US Interactive and IVT. Its executive management team includes:

Harry Ruda, CEO: Formerly CEO of Softricity, the pioneer in application virtualization that was acquired by Microsoft in 2006, Mr. Ruda co-founded and served in executive management of several companies that were acquired during his tenure. These companies also include ITS, which was acquired by Artel Video, and Network Switching Systems, which was acquired by BBN Communications.

Paul Gaffney, COO: Mr. Gaffney is a versatile technology and operations executive who has created substantial value at some of the world's most admired retail and consumer companies. He has served as CEO of Website Pros, executive VP and CIO of Staples, senior VP at Schwab Technology, and executive VP at Office Depot.

Michael Hentschel, CFO: Mr. Hentschel is a "technology growth manager" with 27 years of hands-on corporate management, marketing/sales, and finance expertise. Previous roles have included CFO positions at Resilience and Avaterra, president of TechVest Ventures, partner at Schroder Ventures, and EVP of Internolix.

Clint Battersby, CTO: Mr. Battersby has over 15 years experience in LAN, WAN, Internet and storage acceleration and a long history in desktop OS / application provisioning. Previously CTO and founder of both WWWhoosh and MTI, he holds patents and has patents pending in advanced caching, data acceleration and compression.

Scott Andersen, Executive VP, Business Development: Mr. Anderson has a proven track record of $100 million annual growth of technology-based services companies. He was previously CEO of GlobalServe and Exist, EVP at both Net2Phone and MCI Systemhouse, and Associate Partner at Accenture.