Logicalis to team with Citrix for desktop virtualisation

The Australian arm of global integrator Logicalis has revealed it is in discussions with a number of vendors to expand its cloud partner portfolio ahead of plans to release a BYO mobility solution and infrastructure-as-a-service offering.

The partnership would extend a global relationship which recently saw Rackspace, NetApp, Citrix and Logicalis join to release a hosted desktop virtualisation service in Asia Pacific countries including Hong Kong.

The integrator’s current cloud offering includes back up-as-a-service (BaaS), the soon to be released disaster recovery-as-a-service (DRaaS), along with its staple private cloud and data centre solutions, developed in conjunction with the VMware, Cisco and EMC alliance. The company told CRN it was also looking at infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) as the final solution tying three cloud offerings together.

“At the moment we’re seeing a huge amount of growth just in private cloud or in companies looking to make their old data centres far more efficient and agile using cloud architecture in private rather than public,” Logicalis Australia marketing director Oliver Descoeudres said.

The company has gained 25 Australian customers across its managed cloud services portfolio since it launched into the space two years ago. It recently added a fourth local partner in NetApp, extending a global relationship to provide Australian customers with storage solutions.

Descoeudres said that in addition to Citrix, Logicalis was in discussions with two or three other “top vendors” in the cloud and data centre space.

“We definitely see a strong demand for desktop virtualisation,” he said. “We’re seeing the consumerisation of IT, wanting to bring consumer devices onto the network, which is driving strong demand for desktop virtualisation. Citrix will be a natural fit for us to provide managed desktop services.”

The company is expecting to make an announcement next year about a new mobility solution which will incorporate a number of vendors. Descoeudres attributed strong demand for BYO policy as the driver behind the plans.

“It’s going to be about addressing that challenge that organisations have which we’re seeing everywhere: how to safely allow consumer devices onto their networks without introducing additional risk,” Descoeudres said. “It’ll be having the desktop virtualisation enabling the technology to make that happen, but allowing the management of client devices and the data centre infrastructure to support that mobile workforce.”

Descoeudres told CRN the mobility solution would target the enterprise market and involve client or virtual desktop software and full management of back end data centre infrastructure

“We see a huge demand for companies that want to take demand of BYO policy but don’t quite know how to do that.”