The IGEL OS will now support LG monitors and All-in-Ones broadly, but the major element in this new partnership will be a new LG-designed replacement for the IGEL UD 9 All-in-One.
The LG 38 inch All-in-One, showing a typical multiple use case
LG Electronics USA Business Solutions is a latecomer to the end user computing market. They believe that their hardware is well positioned to handle the more robust demands of Thin Clients, and have the additional benefits of some differentiating technology and a strong channel that is their entire route to market. They also have put together a strong network of vendor partners, with the most recent being a brand new partnership with IGEL.
LG is associated with the consumer market, although they have been selling to corporate buyers for years. Until recently, however, it has been products like TVs and digital signage, although these have given them name recognition in some key end user computing markets, particularly medical.
“We entered the end user computing market in the middle of last year,” said Nadia Abji, Senior Channel Manager at LG Electronics USA. “We found that there was a real need in the market as it shifted from Zero Clients to Thin Clients. Applications were getting more robust. Thin Clients require a certain amount of memory and hard drives, which we can provide in our robust All-in-One products.”
LG has the advantage of having been able to learn from the missteps of fellow Korean conglomerate Samsung in this space.
“We think they had the disadvantage of coming into the market too early, and decided to leave it too early as well,” Abji said. “We think that we are better situated with our partner networks. We came into this business through our channel partners, and only sell through partners. We have also built a strong network of vendor partners in this space, including Teradici, VMware, Azure and AWS. We are also starting to have conversations with Google. In addition, we have built out a cloud relationship team that supports both customers and partners.”
Abji also stressed that LG is investing significantly in this space, and that their strength in screens and monitors positions them well to take share and be successful.
“Our products were extremely well received last month at CES 2019,” Abji stated. “No one else in the market has a product like our curved 38 inch monitor All-in-One. It’s an upgrade over everything, and a real differentiator for us. We think we are well positioned to succeed, and we won’t be bowing out of the market.”
The IGEL partnership will see the IGEL OS support LG’s high-definition monitors and new all-in-one thin client devices. IGEL is currently shipping two all-in-ones – a 24 inch one and the large 38 inch one
“The 24 inch one is perfect for the health care market, and the 38 inch one can be split into 2 or 4 different displays to save space,” said Simon Clephan, IGEL’s Vice President of Business Development and Strategic Alliances.
For IGEL, the immediate payoff of the new partnership is an upgrade to their UD 9, their largest device, which is an All-in-One.
“We are end-of-lifing our UD 9 All-in-One in May 2019, and working with LG as a partner of choice to produce a modern design infrastructure,” said Matthias Haas, IGEL’s CTO.
As of now, this is the only joint product between IGEL and LG Electronics U.S.A on the roadmap, although Abji said more may be forthcoming down the road.
“I’m sure there will be more exciting things to come, but integrating out All-in-One with the IGEL solution is an exciting relationship,” she stated. “IGEL reps have already been telling us that they are eager to sell this.”
LG may well realize other benefits from the IGEL relationship as well.
“We are confident of our growing strength in this space,” Clephan said. “IDC counts this category by hardware, but we expect that within the next 48 months we will pass at least one of HPE or Dell in the number of our OS sold, as software. And we expect to be able to steer customers to a preferred hardware vendor – like LG, for example!”
LG Electronics USA Business Solutions sells into the Canadian market. Ingram Micro and Synnex handle their distribution.
