Cisco has been making a significant number of announcements in the cloud and virtualization space lately and has now rolled out its Desktop as a Service (DaaS) offering. The new solution builds on the company’s existing desktop virtualization portfolio, adding cloud-based solutions that enable service providers to offer a Cisco powered desktop subscription service.
The Cisco DaaS offering brings with it all the benefits of a cloud and virtualized desktop solution, including scalability, costs savings and efficiencies. Tailored to cloud service providers, it also offers management tools, licensing and the capability to deliver desktops to multiple customers through one platform.
Cisco recently announced its Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI) initiative and companion ACI Ecosystem of partners and customers. The move is meant to bring together the company’s partners and customers while facilitating development and deployment of cloud applications and services. The initiative provides a cloud and data center solution that unifies physical and virtual networks while incorporating Cisco data center switching technology. The company’s Ecosystem partners include CA Technologies, Citrix, EMC, IBM, Microsoft, NetApp, Red Hat, SAP and VMware.
The new DaaS offering builds on that initiative and features management via the Cisco Unified Computing System and Cisco Unified Data Center architecture. It offers a number of efficiencies for business customers, who can build a custom, on-premises desktop virtualization solution or choose a cloud-based, as-a-service offering.
In tandem with the DaaS announcement, Cisco has also made improvements to its underlying desktop virtualization solution, designed to offer greater scalability and performance. Enhancements include improved density of hosted virtual desktops with support for up to 252 virtual desktops on a single UCS blade server. The offering also provides support for end-user apps requiring high quality rendering of 3D graphics. An additional enhancement is the new UCS Solution Accelerator Packs for Desktop Virtualization, which offer simplified ordering for both on-premise and cloud-based DaaS deployments.
"Many organizations are looking for ways to achieve the benefits of desktop virtualization without the need to install and maintain equipment or make capital investments," said Satinder Sethi, vice president, engineering, Cisco. "Not only is Desktop as a Service a great solution for a growing number of companies, but Cisco's offering is uniquely architected to help cloud service providers achieve rapid time-to-market while economically scaling their business."
Edited by
Cassandra Tucker
