Double-Take takes on Citrix and VMware
Buyout rumours swirl
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Double-Take is launching its virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) Flex product in EMEA while buyout rumours strengthen.
DT's Flex product provides "a cost-effective and manageable way of delivering virtual desktops to users and can provision hundreds of machines from one master image". It is for small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and said to be less expensive than VDI software from either Citrix or VMware.
DT reckons it can be used to prolong the life of PCs with broken hard drives by running them diskless hooked up to a Flex server.
Last month Double-Take said it had been contacted by a potential buyer and was examining whether such a purchase was in the best interests of the company. Brenon Daly of the 451 group has put out a note saying that three buyout firms are now interested in buying Double-Take. A purchase could come before the end of the month.
Daly suggests that Vector Capital could be one of the three interested buyers. He says Double-Take has $89m in cash and securities and a capitalisation of around $200m, making it cheap to buy. ®
COMMENTS
simplifying PC total cost of ownership just a tad..
This is one image to manage. How much labor, or more likely, software licenses and labor are you investing in managing a bunch of PC with separate hard drives?
Building new machines, installing apps, patching, and so on.
I'm not saying this particular product is anything great, or more worthy of investment than Citrix or VMware, but that's the math you would actually use to help determine if it were.
Short sigthed...
Cost or the re-installation of the system : £150
Business cost related to the above activity: £35000
Business cost related to data loss and lack of backup: £2M
All makes perfect sense...
I think there is some misinterpretation. I think what is meant is that one of the most common components of a PC to fail is the hard drive and when replacing it the cost is not just in the purchase of a new drive. You will need an engineer to remove and replace the old drive, format it, then install the OS, applications etc. With a diskless PC and centralised images you would just point at the correct image and boot.
Analysts estimate that businesses typically spend on average £80.00 a month to fully manage a PC through its life cycle. This expense takes into account such things as desk-side IT visits, call centre support and management costs. Using Double-Take Flex can potentially reduce this average expense to as low as £46 per PC per month - a 45 per cent saving.

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