Willing to show me yours

[Stuart_C]

We are currently in the process of lookig at virtual solutions to reduce our long term PC replaecment costs.

I've been playing with Citrix XenDesktop but I can only go so far in a test environment and I was wondeirng if anyone would be willing to show me theirs so I can see the system in practice (and get some practical advice on what not to do ).

I'm based in Rotherham (nr Sheffield in case you didn't know) but don't mind a bit of a drive round Yorkshire or north of Nottingham/Noth Derbyshire or possible a little further abroad.

So if you don't mind spending a day in the summer hols with some random bloke poking around your network please can you PM me (I may bring muffins if you as a thankyou )

[m25man]

I have big issues with Citrix and their agressive push into the Educational Sector, salesmen pushing enterprise level VDI solutions that cost a fortune and will take most schools years to get a decent ROI.
Im still to be completely convinced that this technology is ready for use in schools or is a viable alternative.

We thought that we might have had the solution cracked when we discovered KAVIZA it was a fraction of the price of the Citrix Solution and looked like it could revolutionise the educational sector of the VDI market.

Just as it looked like we were going to do our first deployment CITRIX came along and bought them out.....

Im waiting for the dust to settle after the aquisition, its already been rebranded as Citrix HDX VDI in a Box and the price remains very low.

Who knows maybe Citrix actually realised that the Education Sector wasnt made of money after all and they dont need all if the Bells and Whistles that their Corporate Solutions provide but either way this is one aquisition that might have a happy ending I just hope they havent done an RM/Ranger type aquisition where the sole intention is to bury the competition...

I would thoroughly recommend that anyone considering a VDI solution in a school looks at this first, VDI, 100% Affordable Virtual Desktop, Windows on iPad, MS & Microsoft Desktop Virtualization | Kaviza.com because without doubt Citrix's experience could take this product a long long way and finally bring VDI to the masses.

I will add that Citrix have killed the competition to a degree as where Kaviza was available through resellers which promotes competetive pricing they have stopped the reseller program.
Kaviza is only available through existing Kaviza Partners or Citrix Directly. I suspect that the partner channel will be quickly starved of air and killed off thus allowing Citrix complete exclusivity to the product at which point they will be in complete control of its users and pricing.

£160 - £290 per desktop and you still need a thin client or repurposed PC as a workstation.... How much cheaper is it? Will VDI actually save your school any money in the short term?
Im still not certain but it seems to be a lot cheaper that the previous Citrix Offerings.