Should professional Enterprise VDI be free? – Yes, says tocario
The name tocario is currently only known among insiders of the cloud provider community. The Germany-based company was previously only active as a technology supplier in the area of cloud and managed service providers. This should change fundamentally with the introduction of the new product.
In recent years two major US vendors who have brought a constant flow of innovations to the market have dominated the world of on-premise desktop virtualization. The focus of these innovations, however, is primarily aimed at the needs of large enterprise customers.
As a specialist for cloud technologies from Europe, tocario has always had a different perspective. In addition to the natural focus on data protection and data security, market conditions in Europe are also very different from the US. Small and medium-sized enterprises are significant part of the European economy.
‘”Within such an ecosystem, it is natural for a new technology to have a different focus”, says Carsten Unnerstall, co-founder and CEO of tocario.
The focus was and is to make desktop virtualization accessible to all enterprise sizes
The first product of tocario was a turnkey cloud desktop virtualization technology. Thanks to its integrated multi-tenant capability and a high level of self-service, service providers are able to deploy virtual desktops fully automated even for the smallest customers. In addition to micro-segmentation capabilities to enable high data security for each tenant, the “infrastructure-as-a-service” approach in desktop virtualization is absolutely unique. This allows the operation of any x86 operating system as a VDI in the data center. Service providers can thus address completely new scenarios for their customers moving beyond pure Windows or terminal service environments.
“These capabilities open up completely new uses for virtual desktops in businesses. That’s why we’ve decided to make our technology accessible to any size of business or installation, “said Unnerstall.
The new product with the speaking name Apexo is the further development of the previous technology. The new software can be downloaded for free at tocario and installed on any server. The special feature lies in the way the software can be put into operation. Apexo is an all-in-one solution. From hypervisor, to management and automation, to user management, everything is included.
The self-installation takes place via guided dialogue and creates a Hyper-Converged Desktop Infrastructure on the server. Therefore Apexo opens up VDI for IT operators of all sizes and enables installation on-premise, as-a-service and also in the cloud (for bare-metal-as-a-service providers such as softlayer).
Even in the pricing model tocario deliberately positions itself differently than their competitors. Licensing is not based on the number of users but on the number of parallel desktops.
“For the first time in desktop virtualization, we introduce a freemium model. Everyone can download our software for free and use up to nine desktops completely free of charge. We hope to finally make Enterprise Desktop Virtualization accessible to all companies. Customer benefit and added value are paramount. Complex installations and complicated pricing models will no longer be a barrier to VDI in the future, “commented Michael Kurz, Chief Sales Officer at tocario.
Apexo is now available as a preview version at www.tocario.com/download
About the Author
Carsten Unnerstall is a passionate evangelist for future of work, Digital Evolution and Digital Workspaces. He is an experienced entrepreneur, CEO and co-founder of tocario (Cloud Workspace Technology) with a professional background of working in B2B Internet and Enterprise IT companies – both within startups and large international corporations.
For his work with tocario he has been awarded a number of prices and honors including „Most Outstanding Software Company“, „Business Excellence Award“ for four times in a row as well as „Techtour 36“ naming the 36 most innovative companies in Europe.
