Wanova, Inc. today announced the general availability of Wanova Mirage software, a Distributed Desktop Virtualization solution that lets IT centrally manage the desktop, simplify support and protect remote and mobile PCs, while optimizing the end user experience.

Laptop sales now outpace desktops in the enterprise, but traditional virtualization technologies have provided little support for these millions of remote and mobile users. At the same time, industry analyst firm Gartner estimates the total cost of ownership for a notebook of a ‘somewhat managed day extender' is $7,151.3, per year^[1] and has predicted that through 2015, managing mobile users will represent the biggest client management challenge.^[2] Wanova Mirage has reinvented desktop virtualization to significantly reduce both operational and capital expenses associated with these remote endpoints, in a way that meets the needs of both IT and the end user.

"As a beta customer, we have been impressed with the unique capabilities of Wanova Mirage," said Alexander Smirnov, senior director of IT and IS at Mellanox Technologies. "With Mirage, we can automatically back up and quickly restore remote and mobile users, easily migrate them to different hardware, and ensure continuous compliance with our corporate standards. Mirage can dramatically improve how we manage and protect these endpoints, while reducing our support costs."

Wanova Mirage software

Wanova Mirage software centralizes the entire desktop contents in the data center for management and protection purposes, while distributing the execution of desktop workloads to endpoint caches for performance and superior user experience. Wanova Mirage is unique for a number of reasons, including:

• Optimized for remote and mobile workers, providing native performance and support for offline use
• Supports single image management with persistent user personalization
• Hypervisor-free (but supports execution in a hypervisor)

Wanova Mirage is comprised of three key components: The Mirage Client installs onto the base operating system (OS) of the endpoint, with no hypervisor required. This ensures that there is no underlying unmanaged OS and reduces OS licensing costs compared to traditional VDI. However, Mirage is hypervisor-friendly, and can also be installed on an OS that is executed in a type-1 or type-2 hypervisor. The Mirage Server centralizes management of all desktops in the datacenter, and provides a powerful interface and functionality for controlling image-management, storage, and clients. Wanova's Distributed Desktop Optimization (DDO) streams the complete desktop to a remote endpoint over a WAN in minutes and optimizes the bi-directional transfer of data between the endpoint cache and server.

Conceptually, Mirage layers each desktop into three major components: a Base Image, comprised of core OS and applications managed by IT; a personalization layer that includes user-installed application and machine state; and a user layer that contains data files and user settings. The combination of these layers is called a Centralized Virtual Desktop (CVD). CVDs are hardware agnostic, and therefore highly portable. With Wanova Distributed Desktop Optimization, the complete instance of a user's desktop can be deployed anywhere, in minutes.

The combination of these technologies creates many use cases, including:

Hardware Migration: If a user needs to move to a new computer - even one from a different manufacturer - the CVD can be transferred to the new device, and the user can be up and running in minutes with full personalization and all previously installed applications.

Single-Image Management: IT can manage, patch and ensure compliance with one Base Image, which can be easily deployed and continually enforced to hundreds of endpoints, while retaining user personalization. Offline users will be automatically updated when they reconnect.

Business Continuity: IT can load a CVD into a physical or virtual machine for troubleshooting, or re-image an endpoint in minutes instead of hours or days, without deleting user-installed applications or settings.

Data Protection: Because the primary copy of the entire desktop contents resides in the datacenter, organizations can easily create backups, with snapshots for point-in-time restores. Desktop streaming delivers a snapshot to a broken endpoint and has the end user up and running in minutes. End users can also restore single files themselves, further reducing support costs, and companies retain employees' valuable data even when they leave.

"Wanova Mirage untethers the desktop from its hardware, enabling a new era of flex computing," said Issy Ben-Shaul, CTO of Wanova. "Organizations now have the flexibility to run a user's full desktop, including applications, settings and personalization, from any machine - thin, thick, physical or virtual. This agility can immediately impact a company's bottom line by reducing the cost of managing, supporting and protecting remote and mobile workers."

Pricing and Availability

Wanova Mirage 1.3 is available immediately through Wanova. Pricing starts at $210 per endpoint and decreases with volume. For more information or to evaluate Wanova Mirage software, please visit www.wanova.com/contact.

^[1] Gartner, Inc., How to Reduce Your PC TCO 30% in 2011.  Federica Troni, Brian Gammage, Michael A. Silver, March 20, 2009

^[2] Gartner, Inc.,  New Approaches to Client Management. Terrence Cosgrove, Ronni J. Colville, February 25, 2010