Dell and Perot Systems have entered into a definitive agreement in which Dell will acquire Perot Systems in a transaction valued at approximately $3.9 billion. I’m sure there are lots of good reasons for this acquisition from Dell’s perspective, but the one that stands out in my mind that it will up the company’s game in the desktop virtualization arena. Dell already has a pretty impressive presence at the endpoint and now, we are witnessing the beginning of a market with the potential to change the way companies manage, protect, and deploy desktops. At a recent Citrix event I attended, a representative from CSC referenced Jeffrey Moore and stated that he felt that we were currently in the “early majority” phase of adoption. A recent ESG survey of early and planed desktop virtualization adopters also found that 21% of respondents said their organization currently has a CDI initiative in place (in the form of an active production or test implementation).

It’s important to point out that “desktop virtualization” is the overarching term used to describe various technologies that include VDI, application virtualization, blade PCs, client side hypervisor, etc. It differs from server virtualization in the sense that it is going to be more of a services play. Customers are not going to rely on companies such as Citrix, Microsoft, and VMware as they did with server virtualization. These companies will surely help provide some of the key technology behind desktop virtualization solutions, but they will swing towards services-lead engagements to help hide some of the complexity and the many moving pieces inherent in desktop virtualization initiatives.

Dell is positioning itself to bring home desktop virtualization wins in enterprise accounts. Desktop virtualization will drive services and the refresh of endpoint devices—a win-win for Dell with the Perot acquisition!

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1. Desktop Virtualization in the Telcos
2. VMware, EMC, Cisco, HP, IBM and Dell Target x86 Workloads
3. Fujitsu Reminds Us That Desktop Virtualization is Not Technology Driven
4. HP Expands Thin Client Portfolio
5. Top to Bottom Support with Server Virtualization