20 01732 759725 if they had to spend three to five times more than they were currently spending on something that probably wasn’t going to perform as well. We felt there was a huge gap in the market and that if we could develop something that met people’s performance requirements and was cost accessible, we might be able to introduce VDI to the clients we had at the time and to other organisations. ManagedIT: Why were VMware, Citrix and others not attempting to fill the gap you had identified? TW: It’s not necessarily the same across all industries, but in the AEC sector the need for quite high performance GPU compute and a lot of CPU meant the cost of VDI stacked up quickly. It was very expensive because of the licensing models of the existing vendors and because there wasn’t a lot of competition. It was also very niche, to the extent that almost nobody we knew within our sector in the UK was using the technology in any way. ManagedIT: How have you been able to produce something more affordable and with better performance? TW: Basically, by using open source KVM-based technology and building everything on top of that. Because we don’t use proprietary software, VMware, Citrix or anything like that, we have been able to cut out licensing costs, and because it’s open source we have much more granularity of control over what we develop, design and configure. We also build bespoke hardware to suit each client’s requirements instead of buying hardware from the likes of Dell and HP. In addition to its core VDI offering of vdesks with dedicated Nvidia GPUs, Inevidesk now offers GPU-less vdesks suitable for knowledge workers using standard office software and Intel Flex GPU options that allow multiple vdesks to draw on one card where a relatively low level of GPU resource is needed. Both these options allow a very large number of vdesks to run on high-density servers located on a customer’s premises, in a datacentre or hosted by Inevidesk, which also offers IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) as a secure, local alternative to public cloud providers. Here, to mark the five-year anniversary of Inevidesk’s first customer win, ManagedIT asks co-founder Tim Whiteley about developments at the company and in the wider VDI market. ManagedIT: Briefly, what is Inevidesk’s VDI proposition and how does it differ from what’s available from the market leaders? Tim Whiteley (TW): Before starting Inevidesk, I used to run an IT consultancy that primarily worked with architects in London. We had often looked at VDI because we could see the benefits it could bring to an industry that was conservative in terms of its technology use and very officebased. We thought virtual desktop technology could introduce a lot of flexibility and agility to such organisations. We’d done quite a bit of research on what was available, which was essentially VMware and Citrix and latterly hyperscalers like Azure AWS offering cloudbased desktops, but none of these addressed the particular issues our clients faced in terms of performance and cost. There was no way they would embrace VDI Inevidesk, the high-performance virtual desktop provider, started out five years ago offering VDI services to architects and AEC customers with high GPU requirements as a flexible, affordable alternative to traditional workstations. Having made good inroads in that market, with more than 1,000 virtual desktops, or vdesks, at leading architect firms such as Grimshaw, Hopkins Architects and Morris+Company, it is now taking its VDI offering to a broader customer base. Last summer, it launched a partner programme to extend its reach into new markets and at the end of January it supported this strategy with the introduction of a flexible monthly licensing model and an expanded product suite suitable for businesses with less demanding workloads than its existing AEC customer base. INTERVIEW With Tim Whiteley, co-founder of Inevidesk Q&A Tim Whiteley
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