VDI Provider Kaviza Reveals Investment from Citrix Systems

Kaviza. Remember that unusual name, because we’ll be writing about it often here at eWEEK.

Kaviza, based in Sunnyvale, Calif., reminds me of “cabeza,” the Spanish word for “head.” But from now on, it should remind people of a new kind of desktop virtualization.

Kaviza VDI-in-a-Box is a plug-and-play virtual desktop system that basically anyone can get up and running for a small-to-medium-size business. It truly is an automated turnkey way to do it; you install the software on a commodity server, and it just finds all the nodes automatically.

When Kaviza is running, the virtual desktop runs in its own browser-type window with all the application functionality needed. Little or no latency is apparent. User can continue to use their local applications as normal. Talk about best of both worlds!

The security and administrative advantages of virtual desktops have been well-chronicled here at eWEEK and elsewere. But VDI [virtual desktop infrastructure] can be an expensive proposition, thus many enterprises have backed off — especially in view of the worldwide recession.

Kaviza’s pricing model undercuts that story, however. Because it scales out on commodity server hardware, its software does not require its own shared storage. It uses a customer’s existing storage — and can use any type available. So even an older array laying around doing nothing could be redeployed for VDI use.

“We’ve figured that the average total cost/desktop of our VDI is less than $500,” Kaviza CEO Kumar K. Goswami, an HP veteran, told The Station. “This approach makes our VDI much less expensive than personal computers and generates immediate return on investment.”

Kaviza made some other news April 6 when it announced that Citrix, the world’s second-largest VDI provider behind Hewlett-Packard, has made a “substantial” investment in the young company. Goswami wouldn’t divulge the amount of the new cash in the bank, but The Station found out it was in the mid-seven figure bracket.

This is quite a vote of confidence for Kaviza. Citrix focuses mainly on high-end large enterprise installations; owning a part of Kaviza gives the company a good “in” to the SMB sector.

Kaviza was founded by virtualization and VDI veterans from HP and IBM. The company is funded in part by a grant from the National Science Foundation. For more information, go here.