ClearCube announces formation of VDIworks 6 May, 2008 By Vanessa Ho

PromoPipeline Exclusive Channel Promotions Find Out How You Can Make Money Today! ENROLL FREE! >> Factory Direct Should Not be Cheaper William Vanderbilt - Innovative Learning Channels Cloud Ecosystem II: A Candid Conversation with Oracle Beth Vanni - Amazon Consulting Cloud Ecosystem: A Candid Conversation with Rackspace Hosting Beth Vanni - Amazon Consulting Channel Manager Compensation William Vanderbilt - Innovative Learning Channels Financial Expertise William Vanderbilt - Innovative Learning Channels

Both companies will operate as independent entities, with independent customers, investors and strategic partners and ClearCube will continue to provide its end-to-end solutions for centralized desktop computing.

Rick Hoffman, the former president of ClearCube has been named the president and CEO of VDIworks with ClearCube's COO Randy Printz stepping into the roles vacated by Hoffman.

Joining Hoffman to VDIworks will be Amir Husain, who will be the company's chief technology officer; Barry Hutt will be vice president of professional services and business development while Susannah Kirksey will be the vice president of marketing.

"When we announced that our software was available separate from our hardware, we continued to try and find ways to get visibility to that software," said Hoffman. "When we asked people what they thought about ClearCube, the first thing they thought about was PC Blades or more around the hardware side."

He added that ClearCube was trying to figure ways to get the software out of the shadow of the hardware and after the recommendation from key analysts the decision was made to spin it off into its own company.

VDIworks will deliver one of the most comprehensive, flexible software management platforms for creating, deploying and managing virtual desktop infrastructure targeting the desktop virtualization space.

"We wanted to let people know what we do," said Hoffman about the origins behind the company's name. "We provide a comprehensive [holistic] framework and infrastructure for managing a virtual desktop environment."

ClearCube, on the other hand, will continue to provide its complete solutions for centralized desktop computing, including end-to-end desktop virtualization.

One of VDIworks first acts will be OEMing its software back to the ClearCube side so that the first revenue stream and first OEM partner that VDIworks will have will be ClearCube itself.

ClearCube would continue to market and promote the VDIworks software under the current Sentral VDI Management Software brand. The Sentral management software would continue to be an integrated component of ClearCube's complete centralized desktop computing solutions. And ClearCube customers would continue to be supported in their current license agreements, the company said.

"Going forward, we will be getting other OEM partners on board to continue to drive the software proliferation into the marketplace," said Hoffman.

The first product that VDIworks will produce would be VDIworks Virtual Desktop, a platform that includes advanced connection brokering, thin client management, virtual machine management and health and asset monitoring.

Also, around the first half of the third quarter of 2008, VDIworks will be coming out with support for Windows Mobile 5 and 6 devices that are on the edge of the network to be able to connect to a hosted virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) experience.

Additionally, Hoffman said that VDIworks channel program would be similar to ClearCube's program.

He added that VDIworks has already signed one partner, Optimus, and is looking to start off with other key partners that have the required knowledge sets and skill sets in order to provide a VDI environment.

Additionally, VDIworks would be targeting partners that have skill sets in the virtualization space as well as possess good knowledge of the network, Active Directory structures and database components.

"We believe that 2008 will be the year of the proof of concept [for VDI] with customers trying to figure out where does VDI fit for them and [our] channel partners are going to be key to that," noted Hoffman.