Wyse: Pushing Beyond Thin Clients to Virtualized Platforms
Wyse Technology is best-known as a thin client provider. But now, the company wants to be known as a virtualized platform provider focused purely on the channel. And yes, Wyse even wants to be known as the “cloud client computing” leader. Can Wyse back up those claims? Chief Marketing and Strategy Officer Jeff McNaught offers some perspectives.
“We’ve moved from being ‘the thin client guys’ to a company that has a platform of software and hardware products sold exclusively by the channel…into all sizes and businesses that want to deploy these virtualization systems,” asserted McNaught.
At the same time, McNaught takes issue with rivals like Hewlett-Packard. In recent months, HP has claimed that it is the market leader for Windows Embedded in the thin client virtualization space. McNaught prefers to shift the conversation to a broader discussion — positioning Wyse as the overall thin client leader when discussing Windows and non-Windows devices.
The Secret Sauce: Software
Known mostly for hardware, Wyse actually focuses 95 percent of its engineers on software, McNaught asserted. And Wyse, he said, offers a unique cross-licensing agreement for customers using Linux with Microsoft technology. Much of the effort is built atop two custom tailored virtualization operating systems, Zero and ThinOS.
How are partners and customers leveraging those solutions? McNaught points to five categories, which include:
- Presentation: A centralized VDI execution that essentially has all the work done on the server, using Microsoft Remote Desktop or XenApp as the primary back bone. Good for simple task workers.
- VDI: Similar to presentation, but a bit more robust, including Microsoft VDI Suites, VMware View and Citrix XenDesktop offering greater compatibility for end users who need to do specialty tasks.
- Cloud PC: Distributed, instead of centralized, Cloud PC is designed to push storage and management to the server side, but leave a local PC to do all the heavy lifting. Ideal for a variety of employee tasks.
- Shared: Ideal for small classrooms or similar situations where a single local centralized server provides the source for virtualizing desktops, with shared execution happening on the server and the local machine.
- Web: Specifically designed for the use of web apps and other hybrid environments, many users can connect for simple task-related work processes using a variety of solutions, from Wyse PocketCloud on a tablet or even zero clients.
Partner Initiatives
So where does the channel fit into the strategy?
“Wyse is one of the only companies that is wholly dependent on the channel,” said McNaught. “We don’t do any direct fulfillment. When an order comes in, we always fulfill through resellers. [We’ve] kept our allegiance to the channel and added more resources to our channel team with new training products specifically aimed at [resellers] getting [their] arms around VDI and virtualization opportunities in general.”
According to McNaught, the channel has embraced a fairly new $99/seat Wyse virtualization offering, which is positioned for the SMB and education markets. Next up, watch for Wyse to introduce some new offerings at VMWorld (Aug. 29-Sept. 1, Las Vegas). McNaught hinted that the news will involve the mobile thin client market…
Some thoughts.
IMHO there is one category missing: mobiles – yes there will be news at the VMworld, but as the “cloud client computing leader” there should be a strategy in place – already – pointing in the right direction for BYOD (focusing on mobiles).
Something like “pocket-cloud” even exists already, and should be named in such an interview.
As told, just some thoughts…
Hi M. Weber,
Thanks for reading. Just thought I’d let you know I mentioned PocketCloud underneath number 5 — which was the “Web” virtualization category. I spoke to McNaught for a while about the BOYD idea, and Wyse is very keen on it, especially with their iPad app.
Best,
-Dave
With HP potentially shedding the PSG group (which includes thin-clients) this is some good news for Wyse and other vendors in this space! Did TVG or Wyse see some early warning signals that HP would be making this announcement? This article caught my eye as it was posted only days before HP made such big announcements! Would love your insight – keep up the great reporting!