Dell Offers Desktop Virtualization Bundle and New Wyse Thin Client

• By Dian Schaffhauser
• 06/27/12

Now that Dell's acquisition of Wyse is complete, the newly joined operation has come through with a new US-only desktop virtualization bundling deal for education customers as well as a new model of thin client. The announcements were made during this week's International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) conference taking place in San Diego.

The Dell Wyse bundle provides what the company is calling an "end-to-end desktop virtualization solution," comprised of Dell datacenter components and Dell Wyse thin clients. The package includes a Dell Desktop Virtualization Solutions (DVS) Simplified Appliance, which runs a PowerEdge 12th generation server. The appliance has preconfigured hardware and factory-installed software. The bundle also comes with Citrix VDI-in-a-Box software and a Wyse T10 thin client. It's specially priced at $500 per seat until August 31, 2012.

The idea of the package is to make it easier for schools to deploy desktop virtualization. Desktop virtualization enables schools to allow users to access applications and data from either a thin client device or a personal device for anywhere computing. Those applications can be managed remotely from a central location, reducing IT cost and effort.

"I don't need to go to the high school calculus teacher to understand the financial benefits of thin clients versus PCs," said Yevgeniy Sklyar, infrastructure manager for Danbury Public Schools in Connecticut. "In hard costs, we are saving approximately $80,000 per year on administration with our Wyse devices because we've been able to completely rework the ratio of computers to IT support personnel. The ratio has gone from 200-to-1 for PCs to 600-to-1 for thin clients. That's a significant savings, particularly at a time when everyone is trying to do more with less."

Dell also launched a new Wyse thin client device in its "Zero Client" line of products. A zero client is a type of barebones device that delivers the interface to the user while execution of programs takes place from a hosting computer, which can support multiple users simultaneously. The Dell Wyse E00 is designed to work specifically with Windows MultiPoint Server 2011, which uses Windows Server 2008 R2's Remote Desktop Services to run multiple end-user devices from a single computer.

The E00 device connects to a server, mouse, keyboard, webcam, and flash drives via USB cable. It facilitates sharing of computer processing for up to 15 students per server, depending on the server configuration. The company said the E00 consumes "substantially less" power than a typical PC--less than three watts in full operation.