Well, sort of. IBM is selling a VDI desktop management system for small and midsize businesses (SMBs) through resellers. Check out the IBM page for IBM Virtual Desktop for Small Business a clearer picture. Take a look at this picture, from the PDF on that page, to get a glimpse of what’s going on with IBM’s product technologically:
Click it for a larger version. You can see that IBM is using Virtual Bridges, and an entry on that company’s blog confirms that IBM’s using Virtual Bridges VERDE. The solution includes features comparable to what you get with other VDI solutions, including offline VDI and accessing VDIs from tablets and thin clients.
The interesting part of this announcement to me is that the IBM solution is targeted specifically at SMBs. My impression up to now has been that VDI is for companies that either have huge numbers of machines to manage (enterprises) or that have very specific, high security IT needs (such as hospitals). It’ll be interesting to see if smaller companies start adopting VDI in the next few years now that companies are starting to develop VDI tools specifically for them.
