BANGALORE, INDIA: Citrix and Cisco announced a desktop virtualization solution, Cisco Desktop Virtualization Solution, with Citrix XenDesktop.

The new offering combines the benefits of Citrix XenDesktop with Cisco Unified Computing System (UCS) to accelerate the enterprise-wide adoption of virtual desktops and apps.

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"When Cisco came to us saying that their customers were asking them to support Citrix XenDesktop on Cisco UCS, I will admit that I was surprised (as was my colleague Harry) and even a bit skeptical - not because customers wanted XenDesktop, but because I always saw VMware as the major virtualization partner for Cisco," says Natalie Lambert in The Citrix Blog.

The solution, which combines the Cisco Unified Computing Systems (UCS) platform with Citrix XenDesktop software to provide the desktop and application virtualization technologies, to help customers looking for a turnkey desktop virtualization solution get up and running quickly.

The new solution features the advanced I/O and extended memory management capabilities of the Cisco UCS system, making it very suitable for desktop virtualization, especially memory-intensive VDI-based desktops running Windows 7.

Key highlights of the joint solution:

Pre-configured service profiles  for hosted shared and hosted VDI desktops to speed setup and deployment
Simplified packaging to get started with the first 300 desktops; expansion packs to scale to tens of thousands of desktops in a plug-n-play, modular fashion
Cisco validated design and reference architecture based on joint interoperability and scalability testing to accelerate enterprise-wide implementations
Single support number to provide a smooth customer experience