NComputing CEO: 2012 Virtualization Trends, Opportunities
We’re no strangers to virtualization trends, and neither is NComputing CEO Raj Dhingra. So when he sat down and talked with The VAR Guy about what his company sees in store for 2012, it wasn’t a surprise virtualization would be top of mind.
Dhingra said computing is “in a state of turmoil” due in part to the ongoing “fluidness” of new devices hitting the scene. The use of tablets and laptops is growing, desktops and netbooks are dying, and the demand to support a heterogeneous mobile environment is becoming more and more common. Naturally, Dhingra sees the solution in virtualization, and he sees it via the lens of three key trends: development of the midmarket, faster growth of VDI infrastructure and transformation of endpoints.
Naturally NComputing, he said, is ready to go to meet all three. “We represent market leadership in thin clients. Worldwide, we’re No. 2 or [No.] 3 (to HP and Wyse). In Asia Pacific, we’re No. 1. Education is a key focus [but] we’ve seen growth in the SME market.”
Indeed, the midmarket is where NComputing is going to start attacking. NComputing has taken its technology designed initially to make classroom deployments easy and matured the platform “… from the ground up to be simple and scalable and the best price performance, especially compared to [enterprise offerings],” Dhingra said. NComputing’s solutions aren’t designed to scale the way enterprise virtualization deployments are, but the trade-off is the midmarket acceptance of cheaper, easier and smaller scale virtualization solution. As the market for these tools expands along with the customer base, “the cost of VDI is dropping fast,” and NComputing plans to be at the forefront, he said.
NComputing believes it has a leg-up in hardware, too. While other companies (including HP and Wyse) offer expensive, near-PC-priced thin clients, Dhingra said companies are not buying new PCs (or are repurposing old ones), so “something less than $100 a seat” will certainly be more appealing. Dhingra said there is lots of potential for penetration at that price point.
So how does this all trickle down into the channel? NComputing has built a relationship with Citrix to deliver NComputing’s Numo system-on-a-chip technology with Citrix’s HDX technology, designed to optimize graphics and multimedia performance on virtual desktops and mobile devices. So if you’re a Citrix partner, there’s some new motivation. But for the rest of the channel, Dhingra said …
“Channel partners and VARs can benefit from the higher growth market with more solutions that channel partners can sell. If a reseller is going to sell $10,000 worth of desktop virtualization, he’s going to sell $50,000 to $80,000 more of other infrastructure that’s needed. Maybe it’s servers, storage, monitors, keyboards … Overall, the opportunity is bigger than [just] desktop virtualization.”
And the SME market “gets to be five times bigger in a few years from now. There are partners that target the enterprise and SME market. For SME they’ll have new revenue sources [from NComputing],” he said.
Finally, partners considering managed services should consider NComputing’s end-to-end solutions, which Dhingra said can be “a great way to provide a desktop service offering.”
Bottom line for our resident blogger? You can be sure virtualization will remain top of mind in 2012, and no doubt, NComputing will play a large part.
What Dhingra fails to explain why they consider themselves as No1 in Asia is that they are NOT a zero client leader but a PC Multi user leader….a BIG difference in technologies! In fact it goes the same in all their represented regions. Dhingra would do well to surround himself by good capable people who understand the Zero client / virtualization market as his vision is not quite up to speed with other leaders.
At no point in the article did they claim to be #1 in Asia in Zero clients. They said #1 in Asia in Thin Clients. With the nComputing ethernet devices the difference between them and the likes of Wyse/VMWare solutions or almost all other solutions out there is nComputing has multiple users sharing one OS on one PC/Server, whereas VMware/Wyse solutions see multiple users running multiple OS’s on a single Server. Virtual Guy would do well to surround himself with people who have strong reading comprehension skills.
Virtual Guy, n: The vAR Guy appreciates the back-n-forth… even if it occurs six months apart 😉
Keep the feedback/perspectives coming and The VAR Guy will be sure to generate follow-up coverage where appropriate.
-TVG