Workspot makes a native cloud-based VDI solution which is simple to install and use. Hyper-converged vendors are one of their routes to market, and this new agreement makes available a reference configuration for Workspot VDI on the HPE HyperConverged 380.
Brad Peterson, Workspot’s VP of Marketing
LAS VEGAS – Today at HPE Discover, Workspot, a relatively new player in the VDI space, is announcing a new partnership with Hewlett Packard. It will see the availability of the HPE Reference Configuration for Workspot VDI on HPE HyperConverged 380.
For Workspot, partnering with a company with the reach of HPE is a pretty big deal.
“This relationship didn’t come into being because we want it – it’s got to be because HPE wants it,” said Brad Peterson, Workspot’s VP of Marketing. “They see hyper-converged as a massive opportunity for them. Their HC 380 solution can be installed very quickly. But unless they can quickly put a workload on it, the value of that is neutralized. For VDI use cases, we can deploy VDI on the HC380 in 60 minutes. HPE realizes the value in doing that. Our cloud and their hyper-converged is a match made in heaven.”
Workspot is a four year old company founded by senior executives from Citrix (Amitabh Sinha, who had been General Manager for Enterprise Desktops and Apps at Citrix) and VMware (Puneet Chawla, the founding engineer on VMware’s View product line). The company is now positioning itself in the market as an alternative to both legacy vendors. Using the ‘VDI 2.0’ tagline, they leverage a cloud-native architecture for a quick to deploy and easy to use experience.
“Citrix has a very complex back end,” said Peterson, who worked at Citrix for ten years. “Our differentiation is that we have rearchitected this at cloud scale to make things simple. You use menus that just point to the data.”
Peterson said that the complexity of the legacy VDI solutions is a great recruiting tool for them.
“We have been flooded with people at the booth here at HPE Discover, who are fed up with Citrix and VMware,” he said. “We talk to them for 20 minutes and sign them up.”
Workspot sells to the whole pyramid of customers, from the large numbers of SMBs on the bottom, to the mid-market in the middle, to a handful of enterprise companies at the top. In addition to the customers they sell to themselves through outbound marketing, they have both vendor and reseller channels.
“The hyper-converged vendors are an important channel for us,” Peterson said. “HPE is the newest one here but we are also partnered with Nutanix and several others, and have reference architectures with them. They address a broad range of the pyramid we are going after.”
Workspot also has solution provider partners, although they are being careful with the number they recruit there and not signing up every VAR in sight.
“The partners come to us, attracted by our branding of VDI 2.0 and our marketing,” Peterson said. “Most of them tend to be ex-Citrix, with some of them also selling VMware. They are looking for an alternative. We have also attracted partners who want to be MSPs, because our solution, being cloud-based, is ideal for that.”
Peterson said that the number of partners is deliberately being limited.
“It’s on the order of dozens – not hundreds,” he said. “We don’t want to get caught supporting a ton of partners, and want those we have to be successful.”
The HPE Reference Configuration for Workspot VDI on HPE HC 380 is available now
