Dell (News - Alert) is taking cloud computing one step further by exploring a “workstation as a service” strategy. The service would offer users remote access to applications running in a data center instead of the workstation in their office.
While Dell has a similar desktop as a service (DaaS) offering for basic office applications, it’s the first time the company has explored a like offering for workstations, which are generally used for engineering applications, desktop publishing, software development and other types of high-performance applications.
The challenge is that workstations require a moderate amount of computing power and relatively high quality graphics capabilities. The company said it is currently researching how to deliver such a product as well as who might be the target customer.
“We’re looking at enabling ways we can move performance from under the desk and into the data center. We're not saying this is the only way to go, because there are always going to be people who want to have a workstation at their desk, but there is a growing interest because of the benefits of centralizing applications and data,” said Rik Thwaites, Dell's head of business development in Europe, the Middle East and Africa.
The process is likely to take some time. “There will be certain markets and user types that are going to lend themselves to it more readily than others, and as we go through 2013 and 2014, we will build up a picture of how we are going to enable it,” Thwaites explained.
Dell’s DaaS solutions allow the company’s enterprise customers to build their own virtual desktop infrastructure. Called Dell Desktop Virtualization Solutions, they typically serve workers with business applications running on a hosted Windows desktop.
Workstation users, on the other hand, have more diverse needs as well as much stronger performance requirements. "It's not quite the same as offering DaaS, which is very horizontal and all you need is a CPU and integrated graphics does the trick. With workstation applications being so diverse, a little bit more thought needs to go into it in terms of addressing certain markets," Thwaites said.
Among other difficulties, Dell must gain support from software vendors that develop workstation applications. Most users and developers are concerned about application performance in a cloud environment.
"There's a lot of discussion and work to be done around how we interact with our software partners because there's Autodesk, which fully embraces virtualization, and Siemens (News - Alert) with NX, which are good to go, but a lot of companies like Dassault are a little bit more resistant," Thwaites said.
Edited by Rory J. Thompson