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Virtual Computer and Lenovo on Tuesday said they will collaborate to optimize Virtual Computer's NxTop client virtualization software on Lenovo's business-oriented systems. NxTop brings virtualized management capabilities directly to end user systems -- in this case, select models of Lenovo's ThinkCentre A- and M-series desktops and ThinkPad T and X series laptops. In addition, Lenovo's Imaging and Technology Center will offer NxTop client virtualization loaded directly onto end user's custom images.
"We're working with Lenovo to optimize our version of client virtualization in order to give users the best experience possible on Lenovo hardware," said Dan McCall, CEO of Virtual Computer, in an interview with CRN. "We're working with Lenovo's engineering department to make things stronger, faster, and more reliable."
Virtual Computer says its collaboration with Lenovo is aimed at SMB and larger enterprise customers looking to manage and control their PCs more easily, while reducing costs. "The solution is not targeted at any one segment of the market," McCall said, "It's for SMBs as well as larger enterprises."
Lenovo says the collaboration is aimed at capturing the desktop virtualization market with a solution that takes advantage of performance enhancements to Lenovo's ThinkCentre and ThinkPad PCs. “NxTop offers business customers a robust client virtualization solution that provides a market-leading desktop management console, while simultaneously maintaining the high performance standards that customers expect from their Lenovo ThinkCentre desktops and ThinkPad laptops,” said Tom Tobul, vice president, Software and Peripherals Marketing at Lenovo, in a statement.
McCall said users running NxTop on Lenovo hardware can manage virtual machines locally and run copies of multiple operating systems at the same time, as if carrying two PCs. "We're moving the hypervisor from the data center out to the remote device," he said. "Whereas VDI offers centralized management and centralized execution, we're offering centralized management and distributed execution."
McCall said Virtual Computer's business model replaces virtualization solutions that run through a data center accessible to thin clients and dumb terminals, which are currently common in the market.
"A lot of big infrastructure providers have been offering that solution, and at Virtual Computer we agree that virtualizing the desktop is important," he said. "Virtualization provides a platform for managing that operating system, and a lot of benefits around management. Our company, our vision, is to take that paradigm and move it out to the end-point, rather than host virtual machines on a server, you can access them via thin clients running a hypervisor installed directly on to the hard drive."
