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Desktone announced that it is collaborating with NetApp, a leading provider of storage and data management solutions, to provide an efficient and flexible desktop as a service offering for cloud service providers. Desktone will use NetApp storage technologies for optimizing performance of the Desktone Cloud, the industry’s only purpose-built cloud-hosted virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) solution. The combined solution will be previewed at VMworld in Desktone’s booth # 1166 and NetApp’s booth # 401.

“Desktone is committed to delivering the most cost-effective, high-performing desktop cloud platform on the market, and leveraging innovative storage technology is key to enabling this,” said Peter McKay, CEO of Desktone. “By teaming with NetApp, we are ensuring that our service providers and customers benefit from the high availability, cost savings and flexibility that such advanced storage solutions make possible.”

“NetApp is committed to helping its service provider partners succeed in the marketplace by offering solutions that enable them to deploy differentiated and profitable enterprise-class services,” said Julie Parrish, senior vice president of Global Partner Sales, NetApp. “Desktone has a deep understanding of the technologies required for a compelling DaaS solution. The combined strengths of NetApp storage solutions with Desktone’s cloud-hosted VDI technology provide a highly efficient offering for service providers, which is optimized for performance and ROI.”

Desktone launched the industry’s first purpose-built cloud-hosted virtual desktop platform more than four years ago. Desktone’s architecture was built for delivering cloud-hosted DaaS, unlike traditional VDI offerings. Features such as multi-tenancy, grid architecture, role separation, and cloud economics achieved through substantial use of open source, are what make the Desktone offering unique. Desktone was recently named a “Major Player” in desktop virtualization by IDC, which cited the company’s current strengths and long-term strategy in delivering VDI solutions to market.

Desktone is collaborating with NetApp to leverage several of NetApp’s leading efficiency technologies, bringing significant benefits to its customers. These include:

• NetApp FlexClone API, enables customers to quickly create new virtual desktops in minutes
• NetApp deduplication, offers extensive disk space capacity savings, significantly reducing the overall cost of storage
• NetApp Flash Cache technology, helps withstand peak I/O periods typical with Windows desktops, ensuring high desktop performance even during times of heavy load
• NetApp Snapshot technology for backing up and protecting desktops and gold images without impacting the operating environment