The new Wyse thin clients will be shown at the VMware trade show in San Francisco next month
By Agam Shah, |
Microsoft’s upcoming Windows Server 2012 includes an updated version of RDP (remote desktop protocol) which has been licensed and modified by Wyse to enable delivery of touch-based features to remote desktops. The updated RDP protocol doesn’t gobble up a lot of resources, so it is relatively easy to implement, he said.
Dell bought Wyse to become a major vendor in the virtual desktop space, which is still growing, said Charles King, principal analyst at Pund-IT. Dell offered virtual desktop products, but Wyse has a far broader range of assets, including sophisticated management software and related services for provisioning of virtual desktops to a wide range of devices.
“There’s a consensus in the industry that virtualization has made this style of desktop PC provisioning far more attractive operationally than traditional thin clients where each endpoint is tied to an individual server,” King said.
Dell and Wyse seem to be in a good position to profit from the continuing roll-out of Windows 7 among businesses, and Dell’s increasing focus on mid-sized enterprises should provide additional growth opportunities.
“If Microsoft’s Windows 8 is a success, especially as a driver of Windows-based tablet sales, that could spur significant future Dell-Wyse sales,” King said.
McNaught said Wyse is fitting smoothly into Dell, and there could be other opportunities to extend Wyse technology, such as in cloud computing and mobile device management tools. Dell has acquired many companies in the past few years in an effort to build out its product portfolio ranging from hardware to software and services.
“Dell has aggressive revenue goals for us over the next few years,” McNaught said.
Pund-IT’s King said Wyse could focus on virtual desktops in the short-term, but cautioned that in recent years virtual desktops and thin clients have tended to exceed expectations, which could change.
“That seems to be in the process of changing as virtual desktops catch on among companies of every size and offer cloud service providers a valuable market model,” King said.
Agam Shah covers PCs, tablets, servers, chips and semiconductors for IDG News Service. Follow Agam on Twitter at @agamsh. Agam’s e-mail address is agam_shah@idg.com