VDI viewpoint: Fronde

What VDI do you deploy?

We see Citrix as the clear leader in desktop and application virtualisation. We combined Citrix technology with Amazon Web Services and Google to create the ‘Fronde Cloud Workspace’. Fronde sees the next evolution of VDI being cloud-based.

When did your company first get involved in VDI? 

We’ve been doing VDI in some form at various times in our 22-year history. At the start of last year, we started to focus on it quite seriously once we identified that Google Chromebooks and Amazon Web Services could combine to provide the low-cost device and elastic infrastructure to radically shift the typical VDI business case.

What credentials do you bring to VDI? 

We have certified Citrix, Google and AWS engineers.

Who are your main distributors or suppliers for VDI?

We have our own sales team taking our vision for ‘workforce liberation’ to our customers – and also have great support from partners like Google and Citrix in raising customer awareness of what Fronde can deliver.

Tell us about some cool VDI technology

The ‘user workspace’ is the new battleground for all the large players and we’re seeing a raft of new product and platform announcements.

Can you tell us about a recent VDI deployment you have done?

Although VDI was not new to this particular customer, the benefit of moving their VDI infrastructure to AWS enabled it to take advantage of more agile capacity and performance capabilities. A good example was when the customer’s Citrix servers were recently changed to be SSD-backed at minimal cost and effort.

What is driving customers towards VDI? 

The current approach to desktop management is broken. We’re living in an ‘anywhere, any time, any device’ world and traditional approaches just don’t work any more. Employees want access to the applications they need without constraint. Businesses want a secure and cheaper approach to serve employees and customers.

VDI is…?

Not something users actually want. That is, they don’t want desktops, they want apps. We focused our Fronde Cloud Workspace solution on application virtualisation because it meets the needs of today’s users.