OREANDA-NEWS. March 20, 2013. IBS Group, a leading software development and IT services provider in Central and Eastern Europe, announces that IBS IT Services, a member of IBS Group, and Parallels, Inc. have signed an agreement to develop and promote a cloud solution for corporate virtual desktop infrastructures (VDI). The companies will invest USD1.2m in the project and ensure certification of the developed solution for local use. The project is expected to take two years.

The solution to be developed by IBS IT Services and Parallels will be used for building VDIs of almost unlimited scale, up to hundreds of thousands of virtual desktops. Along with that, the chosen approach will allow clients to deploy a VDI two times faster, reduce hardware management costs, ensure a higher level of cyber security, and increase efficiency of user software and data management. With a VDI solution in place, users can connect to their virtual desktops in a corporate private cloud from any geographic location that has Internet access, and from any device, including smartphones, tablets, and mobile computers.

In cooperation with IBS IT Services, Parallels will improve the existing virtualisation platform based on its Parallels Virtuozzo Containers (Windows) and Parallels Virtual Automation products. Additionally, a new component named Parallels Connection Broker will be developed.
"The new component will enable us to offer a seamless and complete solution for building virtual desktop infrastructures based on software provided by one vendor, which ensures higher reliability. Besides, according to IBS and Parallels’ estimates, it will cut the deployment time at least by half compared to traditional integration projects and reduce the roll-out costs by 40 to 50%," said Sergey Matsotsky, Senior Vice President of IBS Group.

According to the agreement, IBS Group’s contribution to the product development will include formulation of design specifications for the components and investment in software engineering. After the development phase is completed, IBS Group will liaise with Russian authorities to have the product certified, so that both business entities and governmental agencies will be able to use the solution.

IBS Group will promote the solution in Russia, while Parallels plans to offer it internationally.

"Private clouds are not exactly a traditional market for Parallels. The company is still focused on products meant for hosting providers and telecom operators, but simultaneously we seek application for technologies we create in adjacent areas," said Birger Steen, CEO of Parallels. "The Parallels Virtuozzo Containers platform doubles or triples virtual environments’ density per server compared to hypervisors. This makes it an ideal solution for large and super large organisations that contemplate a roll-out. However, we also see opportunities for application of the solution in Hosted VDI projects using clouds of hosting providers and telecom operators."

According to IBS IT Services own research, the potential market for Enterprise Virtual Workspace-class solutions (including VDI solutions) in Russia will reach 2 million virtual desktops by 2015, which translates into USD80–120m in monetary terms.

There are a number of ongoing or planned projects in Russia that use Enterprise Virtual Workspace approaches. For example, the Federal Tax Service has scheduled a pilot project for 5,000 virtual desktops. Potentially, the system can be scaled up to involve 120,000 FTS employees.