Wyse Goes on HP Offense, Ramps Up ThinClient Offerings

Written by Dave Courbanou 1
August 30, 2011

Wyse, the thin client company, is looking to steal the limelight at VMworld with an interesting list of announcements. The company is offering a unique approach to mobile virtualization along with a new thin client series. I spoke to Wyse’s chief marketing and strategy officer, Jeff McNaught, about the news and how it plays into the channel for virtualization VARs …

First up on the list is the all-new Wyse Z class thin clients. Short and simple, the new Z class comes outfitted with AMD’s dual-core G-series APU, enabling HD encoding and other virtual machine CPU-intensive tasks such as 3D modeling or graphic design work to be handled with ease. USB 3.0 is also supported in the new Wyse Z class, with both Linux and Windows flavors available.

Wyse has also taken the best technology in the Z class and stuffed it into a laptop, of sorts — a decision McNaught said was wrought out of age-old question, “What happens when I’m on an airplane with no connectivity?” The Wyse X class is a mobile thin client, and while it’s virtually indistinguishable from a regular laptop, it’s really running Linux or Windows-based virtualization clients. It contains a 64- or 128-SSD drive that automatically downloads and syncs the VM for offline use. This special mode is called “local mode” and is part of VMware View 5’s feature set in addition to Wyse’s own “cruiser mode” technology. “When the user goes back on the network, they reconnect and any changes made will automatically be synced back up to the network,” said McNaught. The SSD storage is not accessible by the user, so it’s 100 percent transparent and automatic.

And no surprises here: McNaught said Wyse is fully supporting VMware vSphere 5 and the new VMware View 5 on day one, with both PocketCloud, the P20 zero client, ThinOS clients, and Linux- and Windows-embedded clients all set to fully take advantage of VMware View’s new enhancements, such as real time 3D graphics.

When I asked McNaught to frame this in the perspective of the channel, he pointed squarely at opportunities with current HP customers. With HP’s thin clients falling under the PSG group (which HP is looking to potentially sell or spin off), “… the channel is now scrambling to figure out what to do for their HP customers. The new things we’ve [announced at VMworld] are all aimed at helping the channel [mitigate] the HP confusion and move them to Wyse,” McNaught said. “We’ve been working with VMware for an awfully long time, [and] we’re poised to help HP customers who may be confused.”

We’ll keep tabs on how many converts jump the HP ship and move to Wyse as the year progresses. In the meantime, it might not be a bad idea for Wyse partners to approach new customers and assess their situation if they’re using HP thin clients.