nGenx Expands Partner Program Around DaaS

While desktop virtualization in all its forms may not have taken the market by storm, there is an argument to be made that the rise of the cloud may finally force the technology and economic issue. To address that opportunity, nGenx launched an expanded channel partner program around a desktop-as-a-service (DaaS) offering that is designed for managed service providers to resell.

As the price point for delivering DaaS via the cloud continues to drop, internal IT organizations are discovering that desktop computing environments are becoming too diverse for them to manage on their own as more devices, such as Apple iPads and Google Chromebooks, enter the workplace, said Max Pruger, chief sales officer for nGenx. The end result is a recipe through which the demand for DaaS as a managed service is increasing, while the delivery of that service via the cloud is becoming more profitable for the MSP, he said.

“We’re starting to see DaaS starting to really scale,” said Pruger. “We’re reaching the point where DaaS is less expensive than the internal IT organization doing it themselves.”

Elements of the channel program for the nFinity nWorkspace service from nGenx include the ability for MSPs to white-label the service under their own brand, access to a partner portal to manage sales, customer support and billing, access to a training program and access to cloud applications, such as Microsoft Office 365.

Previously, providers of the DaaS offering could market the fact that they were offering desktop services in a way that offloaded the task from the internal IT organization. But many IT organizations resisted making that shift because they could provision a desktop on their own far less expensively when all the costs for delivering a virtual desktop were fully loaded.

The degree to which internal IT organizations will give up control over those desktops to an MSP remains to be seen. However, even if the potential size of the DaaS market increased by only 20 to 25 percent, that could represent a huge boon for MSPs that, for all intents and purposes, have previously been locked out of the market.

Michael Vizard has been covering IT issues in the enterprise for more than 25 years as an editor and columnist for publications such as InfoWorld, eWEEK, Baseline, CRN, ComputerWorld and Digital Review.