King of Prussia, Philadelphia-based Neoware said it has been working with IBM for over a year to develop a client interface and connectivity to IBM’s Virtualized Hosted Client Infrastructure.
The Virtualized Hosted Client Infrastructure was announced in mid-October and is designed to deliver desktop functionality to any client via VMware’s server virtualization functionality and Citrix’s client access technologies, using IBM’s xSeries and BladeCenter servers as the back-end processing power.
Currently in beta testing, the Virtualized Hosted Client Infrastructure will be delivered by IBM’s Global Services organization, with general availability scheduled for the first quarter of 2006. The idea can be seen as IBM’s response to blade PC specialist ClearCube Inc.
The addition of Neoware to the list of IBM supporters could make for an interesting dynamic between Neoware, IBM, ClearCube, and Lenovo Group Ltd, which acquired IBM’s personal computing division earlier this year.
Earlier in October Neoware signed a deal with ClearCube for the latter to use Neoware’s thin clients as the basis for its IP-based User Ports, while in July Lenovo signed up to resell ClearCube’s PC Blade technology. Lenovo was already a reseller of Neoware’s thin clients, offering them as an upgrade path from IBM’s former thin client products.
