HP Offers Partners Desktop Virtualization

Hewlett-Packard is giving its channel partners more virtualization technology targeting the desktop and thin clients, an area that analysts say is poised for big growth.

HP on May 19 announced its new HP 2533t Mobile Thin Client. The tech giant says all of its Citrix Ready thin clients and blade client products are now available with Citrix XenDesktop. The new integration, offered to partners and direct customers, is in addition to HP's existing certification from VMware for compatibility with that company's Virtual Desktop Infrastructure.

"HP channel partners now have a much broader portfolio of HP and Citrix [Systems] technology that integrates together to deliver a virtualized PC solution," says Tad Bodeman, director of HP's CCI and thin-client products for its Personal Systems Group in North America. "Instead of having them be stand-alone separate environments, they can now integrate the two together into a seamless experience for the end user."

IT market research firm Gartner has forecast that desktop virtualization will outpace server virtualization in the years to come.

Such solutions are experiencing greater demand because customers are interested in improving security and simplifying management of virtualized PC environments.

"What customers are really asking for is a single integrated set of infrastructure that lets them pick back-end components for each user group as it makes sense over time," Bodeman says. Each set of clients and configurations fits particular sets of users.

"For resellers this means there's a lot of consulting and value-add that they will be able to deliver," Bodeman says. But HP's new virtualization vendor partnerships will save partners time because they don't need to sell a series of isolated solutions.

Targeted at midmarket to large enterprise businesses, the technology integrations will also offer a lower-cost option for the sales force at IT outsourcing company Electronic Data Systems to offer to its customers. HP on May 13 announced plans to acquire EDS.

"Quite frankly, this will be another tool kit for our HP services organization to deliver that PC experience at a lower cost in a more secure way and in an integrated infrastructure across the enterprise," Bodeman says.

And the technology integrations between HP and vendor partners are likely to continue. HP is sharing and developing technology road maps with Citrix.

"You'll see more and deeper partnering in integration points between the two companies," Bodeman says.