Intercept IT claims VDI has finally taken off

London VAR reports 100 per cent growth in hosted desktop customer numbers in past 12 months

City of London-based VAR Intercept IT claims that customer numbers for its cloud offering have doubled in the past year as the virtual desktop market has finally taken off.

The Citrix Platinum partner has offered hosted desktop technology to customers for almost 10 years through its bespoke OnlineDesktop offering. But chairman Ian Readman claims demand ignited during the latter part of last year in a way not seen before.

"Until 2010 there was a frustrating lack of traction in the whole desktop-as-a-service market," he added. "This was largely due to a lack of awareness of the real benefits available from hosted IT and, specifically, hosted application delivery.

"However, now cloud computing is becoming a familiar term, customer awareness is increasing rapidly and the support being given from tier-one vendors such as Citrix and Microsoft is helping to rapidly accelerate both interest and adoption."

Intercept IT also claims that its overall revenue rose 38 per cent during its 2011 fiscal year. Richard Gilder, chief executive of the VAR, is projecting more robust growth for the coming year, fuelled by the increasing ubiquity of the cloud.

"We have been running a business built on early cloud adopters since 2002," he explained. "Now with cloud computing finally reaching the masses, growth is inevitable."