Equinix, Inc., the global interconnection and data center company, today announced that it has partnered with Desktone, a pioneer of Desktop as a Service (DaaS), enabling service providers to deliver a new scalable and profitable cloud services revenue stream via Platform Equinix. By leveraging Desktone software and locating infrastructure in Equinix’s highly reliable, network-rich data centers, service providers will be able to quickly provide customers DaaS capabilities, while limiting downtime and geographic-induced latency to improve the end users’ desktop experience.
Highlights / Key Facts
- Spurred by Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) and mobility initiatives, enterprises are increasingly deploying DaaS and virtual desktop infrastructures (VDI). According to Cisco, 79 percent of organizations either have current or future plans to use virtual desktops, while 25 percent are already using VDI. However, many organizations realize the upfront cost and complexity of deploying VDI is prohibitive. Deploying desktops and applications in the cloud provides customers with all of the benefits of virtualized desktops while limiting the challenges.
- Backed by the multi-tenant Desktone Platform powered by Equinix, service providers can now rapidly provision desktops and applications to users connected on any device, anywhere, without the upfront costs and complexity of traditional desktop virtualization. Desktone’s DaaS platform is purpose-built for the cloud, providing all of the benefits of virtualized desktops—including reduced deployment complexity; improved management, security and compliance; and superior end user productivity—without any of the hassles.
- For service providers, the Desktone opportunity translates into additional infrastructure and services revenue with low risk, since pilot environments can be quickly established in the cloud with easy try and buy options for customers. A 1,000 desktop trial that would otherwise take six to nine months to complete can be deployed in 45 days using Desktone’s convenient reference architecture. With Desktone’s reference architecture, footprint and software package, service providers can bypass the time and resources required to build their own data center footprints, and instead, rapidly deploy and scale DaaS environments without massive capital expenditure costs. This ease of use and spin up enables accelerated time to market.
- By delivering desktops as a cloud service, service providers can easily wrap virtual desktops around their existing cloud offerings such as Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) while providing customers a flexible, affordable and device-independent desktop management strategy. Once a customer moves their desktop environment to the cloud, storage and applications often follow suit, opening up more revenue opportunities.
- Providing the ability to directly connect with more than 900 networks globally, Equinix is ideally suited to partner with Desktone, helping service providers deliver an optimal end user experience and improved time to market. Equinix offers network choice and density, which also gives Desktone customers the option to power their DaaS connections via public or private IP networks.
- In February 2013, a Solution Validation Center (SVC) demo environment will be available from Equinix to further complement the Desktone offering. Built using NetApp storage systems, the demo environment will be deployed across three geographically dispersed data centers, allowing Equinix customers to test Desktone solutions from different parts of the world and validate performance metrics around DaaS.