Technology Reseller - v29

technologyreseller.co.uk CLOUD WORKSPACES 47 business four years ago. In the US, IGEL went from 40,000 seats to over 400,000 in the largest retailers, hospitals, banks. Even the US Government is buying IGEL,” explained Ayres. Impressive, yes. But disruptive? Not yet. Disruption for IGEL will occur when thin clients replace PCs as the endpoint of choice. And in this transformation, Microsoft has given it a big boost with the introduction of the Windows Virtual Desktop (WVD) Desktop-as-a-Service offering, which, like Amazon WorkSpaces, represents a major new application for the IGEL OS. Microsoft WVD was given top billing at Disrupt 2020 alongside more established IGEL partners such as Citrix and VMWare which enable organisations to move Windows from local device operation to the data centre and access applications using a Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI). Windows Virtual Desktops Released on September 30 last year, WVD is the next stage on from putting Microsoft Office in the cloud, which has seen take- up by more than 80% of enterprises in just five years. Built on Azure, the WVD cloud workspace gives users a high fidelity Windows 10 experience on any device without the need for the Windows OS, Disrupt is an over-used word in the IT industry, but that doesn’t mean it is not sometimes justified. A case in point being the IGEL Disrupt 2020 conference held this year in Nashville and Munich close to the company’s Augsburg HQ. IGEL used to be best known as a manufacturer of thin clients, but under the stewardship of Jed Ayres, newly promoted from co-CEO to global CEO, it has been repositioning itself as a software company by unbundling its software from the hardware and selling it separately to give virtualisation customers more flexibility and a lower TCO. Key software products include IGEL OS – what IGEL calls the next-gen OS for cloud workspaces; a management and control platform for endpoints (the IGEL Universal Management Suite), which also includes UDC converter software for turning any existing x86 device into a thin client; and the IGEL UD Pocket, a Linux-based micro endpoint that mobile users can plug into the USB port of any internet-connected PC, Mac or laptop to access their virtual desktop, server-based applications and cloud services when away from the office. Record growth The unbundling strategy has proved very successful for IGEL. About two thirds of new seats are now software-only, with software responsible for about 60% of last year’s record revenue, up 35% on the year before. “Last year we celebrated going past the $100 million mark and that is a big deal for a software company. Less than 5% of software companies actually make it to $100 million and this year we celebrated $150 million, with 749,000 seats being sold. That’s a pretty meteoric rise from 300,000 seats when I came into the Putting Windows in its place IGEL was in bullish mood at its third annual DISRUPT 2020 event in Munich on February 4-6, buoyed by record results and the launch of Microsoft’s Windows Virtual Desktop. James Goulding reports which, through 16 releases in the last 35 years, has become ever more powerful, bloated and complex. WVD can be accessed natively in Azure or via a partner such as Citrix or VMWare on a Linux-based endpoint, with IGEL becoming the first Linux client to connect to Windows Virtual Desktop. The strength of the relationship between IGEL and Microsoft is such that Ayres was on-stage in front of 30,000 people at the Microsoft Ignite event in Orlando last November. “WVD is going to change everything,” he said. “We think this is a complete architectural shift and that the best way to consume Windows is going to be out of Azure.” Ayres added that IGEL is uniquely positioned to benefit from this development. “We happen to have a piece of IT that is very strong and very mature and right in the middle of this inflexion point we are going through in cloud workspaces. The best description of what we do us that we are an edge operating system for cloud workspaces. This means choice, performance, savings. In the architecture of delivering Windows applications and desktops it lets you choose whatever cloud you want, whatever protocol you want and whatever x86 device you want. Continued... We happen to have a piece of IT that is very strong and very mature and right in the middle of this inflexion point we are going through in cloud workspaces