The expanded VMware relationship also gives partners and customers the ability to deploy the Stratodesk NoTouch Center management solution to the VMware Cloud.
Emmanuel Pirker, Stratodesk’s founder and CEO
Today, Stratodesk, which makes managed endpoint software for end-user computing [EUC], is making what they term an announcement of great significance. Their Stratodesk NoTouch Center management software is now available on the VMware Marketplace, and is also deployable to the VMware Cloud.
Stratodesk is an established VMware partner, but Stratodesk said that this move takes the relationship between the two companies to another level.
“The worst thing you can do to a customer is tell them that they can run VMware in the cloud and not tell them they need management software,” said Emmanuel Pirker, Stratodesk’s founder and CEO. “What we have done here is a breakthrough, and not just for VMware Horizon. It gets away from the last EUC dependency in that everything can now be cloud run.”
Stratodesk NoTouch Center’s availability in the VMware Marketplace lets organizations using the software in their VMware Horizon deployment leverage their entire VDI deployment in one infrastructure and control plane.
“We have customers with geographically dispersed users, such as having a call centre in the U.S. and users in the Philippines,” said Rich Severson, Stratodesk’s VP Global Solutions Engineering. “With this, they can deploy the management pane in one zone, deploy a repository in another area, and bring them together as a fully managed VDI endpoint deployment, so that they aren’t having to do configuration updates across the globe.”
Bringing things together also makes things easier for the customer, Severson added.
“Why would you want VDI in the cloud and have a management solution in the data centre,” he asked. “Customers today are more inclined to want one bill. This offers a major increase in ease of adoption. Instead of having to go through some large exercise, you can deploy a VDI solution and just reconfigure the endpoints. It’s about ease of adoption as much as ease of management.”
Deployment time for Stratodesk NoTouch Center through the VMware Marketplace has been shortened considerably.
Rich Severson, Stratodesk’s VP Global Solutions Engineering
“Previous to this, they would have chosen to deploy the management plane on- prem or in another cloud service,” Severson said. “The time to deployment for larger organizations could take months. Doing it through the VMware Marketplace, it can be done within minutes, either through the customer’s resources or their service provider’s deployments. It also makes adoptability easier because it’s a one-stop shop. This is especially the case for smaller organizations.”
“Security is also a driver for this,” Pirker indicated. “There are plenty of attacks against VMware, and many organizations feel safer getting out of the data centre and moving to the cloud. This is a way of overcoming common on-prem problems where one person leaves a company, and another comes in who is not yet fully trained. It’s not the case yet today, but it is possible that a year from now, you may not be able to sell a cloud solution, if it still requires something to be on prem.”
Pirker also emphasized that while the concept of marketplaces still scares some resellers, the availability of Stratodesk NoTouch Center in the VMware Marketplace opens up significant opportunities for them.
“This gives smaller partners an advantage,” he said. “They really didn’t have the ability to build up a data centre and become an MSP before. Now a smaller VMware reseller can run it – not physically – but they manage it on behalf of their customers. It opens up the possibility for smaller VMware resellers to do more for their customers.”
Pirker also noted that the Stratodesk model remains friendly, because even with the Marketplace, Stratodesk licenses still have to go through the partner.
“This doesn’t take anything away from the channel at all,” he said.
Finally, he emphasized that while some partners continue to associate marketplaces with the early days of AWS, when there was little money to be made and the only real reason for engaging in the Marketplace was not losing control of the customer, the value proposition here is much different.
“We hope that partners will get it instantly,” Pirker said. “There is always some fear among some partners that anything that has to do with a marketplace is bad.”
