Toshiba’s Digital Products Division (DPD), a division of Toshiba America Information Systems, Inc., today announced its plans to enter the enterprise virtualization market with the new Toshiba Virtual Desktop Service. The service, hosted completely in Toshiba secure data centers, is targeted for the mid-market and enterprise space.
But what Toshiba hopes will make its service different from others is the support for Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) initiatives.
Scott Sims, vice-president of cloud solutions engineering at Toshiba, said today’s organizations have an ever-growing need to secure corporate data, while controlling capital expenses – finding the right balance can be a challenge.
“That’s why more and more organizations are choosing to implement hosted virtual desktops,” he added.
Toshiba will not be going alone with this service and has partnered Citrix and VMware to provide a service that allows Windows operating system and other software traditionally located on individual PCs to be installed, stored, run and managed on servers in secure Toshiba data centers.
According to the Toshiba, its new virtual desktop service attempts to eliminate the need to invest in and manage data centre hardware, removing costly barriers to entry and allowing businesses of any size to capitalize on the benefits of desktop virtualization.
The Toshiba Virtual Desktop Service will allow mobile workers to securely access company data from any Internet-enabled device. With support for most client operating systems – including Windows, Linux, Android and iOS – and Toshiba’s propriety hybrid storage system that provides optimal performance, the service will enable organizations and employees to tap into the productivity and efficiency gains of a BYOD program.
Calvin Hsu, vice president of product marketing for Citrix, said more organizations are adopting desktop virtualization to enable BYOD and mobile workstyles initiatives for their employees. “Toshiba Virtual Desktop Service using Citrix XenDesktop provides organizations with a complete solution to mobilize Windows apps and desktops on any device,” he said.
Toshiba said it has a secure data center infrastructure to host, manage and deliver virtual desktops for in-office employees and mobile workers. Toshiba has made significant data centre investments to host data safely and securely for this new service.