Dell is making it easier to use Wyse thin clients in virtual desktop environments that take advantage of Citrix Systems technologies.
At the Citrix Summit in Las Vegas, Dell official unveiled Wyse ThinOS 8.2, the latest version of its thin client software that now enhances the unified communications (UC) capabilities, and a new system—the Dell Appliance for Wyse-Citrix—which is designed to make it easier and less costly to deploy a Citrix virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) environment.
Taken together, the new offerings are the latest innovations from Dell for delivering desktop clouds and accelerating the adoption of VDI, according to Steve Lalla, vice president of commercial client software and solutions at Dell.
“Enhancements to our client products as well as providing more solutions for faster and easier deployment of the data center are critical as VDI gains momentum,” Lalla said in a statement.
With Wyse ThinOS 8.2, Dell is enabling the operating system to support UC more efficiently in partnership with Citrix. The Citrix HDX RealTime Optimization Pack for Microsoft’s Skype for Business 1.8, Lync 2010 and Lync 2013 is available in the OS, according to officials. Users can easily participate in both video-and-audio and audio-only calls to and from other Lync or Skype for Business users and from other standards-based video desktop and conference room multipoint control unit (MCU) systems. The communication processing is offloaded from the server and put onto the end-user device, which improves the quality of the call while reducing the load on the server and network, they said.
The new operating system also has improved security, including support for TLS 1.2 with AES and 802.1x wired and wireless authentication. ThinOS 8.2 also can be installed in Wyse thin clients that already are being used, including the Wyse 5010, 7010 and 5040 all-in-one with ThinOS and the 5010 and 5040 with PCoIP.
Dell’s Appliance for Wyse-Citrix improves scalability with support now for up to 5,000 users, which company officials said makes it a good choice for smaller businesses that want to adopt and run XenDesktop from Citrix, and for larger companies that are looking to run VDI proof-of-concepts or pilots of Citrix technologies before deploying them widely. The appliance also comes with a “quick start” tool that enables users with basic IT and end-user support skills to configure the appliance and deploy desktops in a Citrix Environment in less than two hours.
Other key features include the capability to support basic, advanced and professional users and to support compatible endpoints within the same appliance, and configurability to offer a complete VDI environment with Citrix HDX and Dell ProSupport.