Liquidware Labs squares up to VDI rivals

Desktop transformation software vendor launches EMEA-wide growth strategy with plot to usurp its competitors

Virtual desktop specialist Liquidware Labs is gunning for European growth and is eyeing its competitors' share of the user virtualisation market.

The vendor specialises in desktop virtualisation capacity planning and migration assessment tools and has distribution agreements in place with Magirus and SDG.

It formalised its UK operations last week by announcing that Dan Falconer, former EMEA channel manager at virtualised management software vendor Vkernel, had been recruited as the firm's UK territory manager.

The company has also recently poached Veeam Software's former director of global education services Ricky El-Qasem and handed him the role of technical director for northern EMEA.

Speaking to ChannelWeb, Chris Akerberg, senior vice president of global sales and marketing at Liquidware Labs, said the firm is investing heavily in EMEA to capitalise on growing interest in desktop transformations.

"There are two key drivers. A lot of people want to migrate to Windows 7 and the storage costs associated with deploying VDI solutions have come down a lot," explained Akerberg.

At the moment, the fastest-growing part of Liquidware Labs' business is its user virtualisation product, ProfileUnity, which he claims is gaining ground on competing products offered by RES Software and AppSense.

"It is a lower-cost offering, which means the overall project costs are lower in the long run, and it takes a matter of hours, rather than days, to set it up," said Akerberg.

"It also does not require any back-end infrastructure or professional services to install."

Steve Jackson, vice president of channels and strategic alliances for EMEA at RES Software, seemed unmoved at the prospect of Liquidware Labs' expansion plans.

"We welcome new entrants as they help accelerate market momentum and validate this new category [user virtualisation] and raise awareness of the value that RES provides to its customers," said Jackson.

"RES has a comprehensive range of products that address different user levels of requirement from our free Workspace Manager Express to the full Dynamic Desktop Studio product suite."