Liquidware Labs eyes growth in 'David and Goliath' battle

VDI vendor claims its lower-cost products will lure customers away from rivals such as Appsense and RES Software

Liquidware Labs is aiming to double its global channel partner base by the end of the year as it enters what it describes as a David and Goliath-style battle to win market share.

The US-based VDI vendor took aim at some of its rivals last summer as it launched a partner recruitment push, and this week revealed further plans to increase its market share.

Liquidware Labs was founded in 2009 and provides desktop virtualisation solutions for next-generation physical and virtual desktops, including VMware View, Citrix XenDesktop and Microsoft Windows 7. It operates entirely through its global channel network.

The firm's co-founder Tyler Rohrer claimed to want to double his company's global partner base of 350 by the end of this year, and said he is eyeing further growth in the UK market too by looking to steadily up its count of UK resellers from its current level of 18.

He claimed that in the European market, his firm comes up against the likes of RES Software and Appsense and described the company's battle with the latter as one similar to David and Goliath.

He said: "It's a coin toss – sometimes we get mentioned in the same breath as Appsense and sometimes not. Our mission is to continue to tell [our] story – we're David against Goliath in some ways as they have a much larger scale and have more history and time in the market.

"Being small and agile makes us incredibly astute in listening to exactly what the channel wants and what they need now and that is a fun place to be."

The firm's director of user management solutions, Jason Smith, said Liquidware Labs is gaining new customers due to what he claims is a much lower cost to users.

He said: "Our licence cost is only a quarter of that of the competition. The channel may immediately equate that to thinking ‘I am going to make less margin' but you have to remember [that we offer] an ancillary, enabling project to [complement] much larger projects.

"We can say that we can speed up your project by getting us in in one afternoon so you can get on and reduce the overall cost for your customers – that message always resonates."