The company announced the completion of its Calista acquisition at its Virtualisation Deployment Summit in San Jose yesterday. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
San Jose-based Calista was founded in 2006 and has been pioneering next-generation desktop virtualization. Its product aims to provide richness and responsiveness of locally-executing desktops while preserving the security, management and cost benefits of a centralised computing model.
The company claims to be the only desktop platform that provides a user interface and cost per desktop to support broad adoption. The core of Calista’s technology is a patent-pending Virtual GPU (graphics processing unit) technology that improves user experience, but more importantly increased the number of users per server – dramatically lowering per user costs.
Microsoft Server and Tools Business senior vice-president Bob Muglia said few customers were using virutalisation technology – less than 5 per cent – because it was too costly and too complex.
“We believe Microsoft’s comprehensive approach – from desktop to datacentre – is unique to the industry by delivering solutions that address virtualisation at the hardware, application and management levels,” Mr Muglia said.
“Our approach is not only one of the most comprehensive … (but) also one of the most economical. This combination brings a big strategic advantage and cost savings to customers,” he said.
Microsoft and Citrix announced an expanded alliance to deliver a set of virtualisation solutions to address the desktop and server virtualisation needs, working together to deliver and market joint solutions with Windows Server 2008.
The companies plan to co-market new client computing offerings with the next generation of Citrix Presentation Server and the Citrix XenDesktop products, both based on Windows Server 2008 and Windows Optimised Desktop solutions, and managed by Microsoft System Centre.
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