On-Demand LOB Goes Really Small

Saving space and energy are big selling points for server virtualization, but what’s a VAR to do with desktop virtualization? David Bennett, president of Connections for Business has an idea on how to use desktop virtualization that he thinks could change the industry the same way LANs did back in the 1980s. Bennett, who partners with VMware for server virtualization, hadn’t considered Citrix as a major player until a few weeks ago. That’s when his engineering team visited there and came back as converts. Now Bennett wants to offer on-demand line-of-business applications to individual professionals. For example, solo practice attorneys or realtors, which make up a huge portion of all professionals in those fields.

Bennett wants to offer them line of business applications together with office productivity applications so that they can access their applications and data from anywhere they have an internet connection, and also be able to use them offline too. That’s just the kind of functionality that is making Google Apps so popular with mobile workers. But Google Apps and Microsoft Live don’t offer line-of-business applications like PC Law or Client Matters, Bennett says.

“My engineering team spent several hours with Citrix a few weeks ago and they came back very excited about it, and I don’t see them that excited very often,” he says. “This was a compelling, money making excitement. Now they’ve got me excited about it too.”