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.