Cisco and Citrix Strategic Alliance aims to deliver solutions that help Saudi enterprises accelerate mainstream adoption of desktop virtualization and reduce per-user PC support costs by 51%

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia, 20 February, 2012 - During its annual Collaboration and Virtualization event in Riyadh, Cisco today unveiled the next phase of its Virtualization Experience Infrastructure (VXI), an IT system that was designed to simplify desktop virtualization and bring voice and video to the virtual workspace.

The announcement comes at a time when desktop virtualization is on the rise in the enterprise. The worldwide hosted virtual desktop (HVD) market is expected to reach 70 million units, or 15% of enterprise desktops and laptops by 2014.[1] To further accelerate this rapid market growth, customers need to ensure users receive a rich high-definition experience for voice and video, and an integrated 

According to analyst estimates[2], desktop virtualization can reduce per-user PC support costs by 51%, an item that accounts for 67% of PC-related IT expenses.

Virtual desktops also help protect the security of corporate intellectual property by keeping information in a data center rather than on physical devices.

End users also benefit by being able to choose their own devices through which to access their virtual desktop. 

Combining these benefits with the productivity and business agility delivered through rich media and video applications further enhance the value to the end user and the business.

Cisco VXI helps enterprises to take advantage of the financial, data security and workforce flexibility benefits offered by desktop virtualization, with the ability to integrate rich media and video collaboration capabilities to create next generation workspaces. Cisco VXI also reduces the total cost of ownership of desktop virtualization solutions by significantly increasing the number of virtual desktops that can be hosted on each server.

Utilizing its expertise in Unified Communications, Cisco announced endpoints that enable high-quality voice and video in virtual desktop environments - a development that could help redefine collaboration in the virtual workspace.  Additionally, Cisco announced other significant advancements including a broad strategic alliance agreement with Citrix. Combining Cisco leadership in networking, datacenter, endpoint devices and collaboration, with Citrix leadership in virtualization and the delivery of desktops, applications and data, this alliance is aimed at delivering solutions that help enterprises easily and cost effectively deploy virtual desktops to millions of PCs, Macs, tablets, smartphones and thin clients. This alliance will also deliver data center solutions that make it easier for organizations to deploy the infrastructure required to deliver IT as a service across multiple networks and geographies.

As the first deliverable of this collaboration, Cisco Wide Area Application Services (WAAS) will be optimized for Citrix XenDesktop, which will help customers reduce bandwidth necessary to deploy desktops virtually over wide area networks (WAN) - enabling better scalability and optimal end user collaboration experiences.

Cisco is addressing this head-on with VXI. Cisco® VXI is an open, validated virtual workspace solution that integrates products and technologies across Cisco's network-based architectures- from Collaboration to Borderless Networks to the Data Center as well as from partners.

Executive Quotes:

Mohammed Al-Sammarraie, Product Sales Specialist, Collaboration, Saudi Arabia

"As the industry transitions from the PC era to the cloud era where mobile work forces need to access media-rich applications from any device, anywhere, anytime, enterprises are turning to desktop virtualization to give them the benefits of the security, flexibility and cost-savings by delivering desktops and applications as a centralized service. Innovative solutions like Cisco Virtualization Experience Infrastructure (VXI) with Citrix XenDesktop® span desktop virtualization, networking, datacenter, multimedia and endpoint devices to support customers through this transition."

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

  • For more information about Cisco VXI, visit www.cisco.com/go/vxi.

  • For Cisco collaboration news, visit the Collaboration Blog

  • For more information on Wyse support for Cisco VXI, visit the Wyse Blog

Availability Disclaimer: Many of the products and features described herein remain in varying stages of development and will be offered on a when-and-if-available basis.  These products and features are subject to change at the sole discretion of Cisco, and Cisco will have no liability for delay in the delivery or failure to deliver any of the products or features set forth in this document.

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[1] Source: Gartner, Inc., Forecast: Hosted Virtual Desktops, Worldwide, 2010-2014 (2010 Update), Ranjit Atwal, December. 2010

[2] According to the Gartner Notebook Total Cost of Ownership Study of 28 Feb 2008, The majority of savings from virtual desktops come from avoidance of end-user break/fix costs which include activities such as downloading software, fixing interoperability issues between software installs and end-user downtime during PC repair. Gartner estimates these costs at $5,473 per year per user for a traditional PC and at $2689 for a virtual desktop user, a reduction of 50.8%.

© Press Release 2012