Virtual Bridges, makers of the VERDE™ suite for desktop management and provisioning, today announced the immediate availability of VERDE Hosted™ Powered by Rackspace®,the world’s leader in the hosting and cloud computing industry., This new offering provides the first and most comprehensive hosted desktop virtualization solution for VDI, disconnected, and branch-office desktop users worldwide.

Complementing Virtual Bridges’ VERDE On-premise™ desktop virtualization, VERDE Hosted addresses an organization’s unique requirements for infrastructure, CAPEX and OPEX budgets, and payment options.  VERDE Hosted is specifically targeted for customers that do not want to incur the upfront CAPEX costs of deploying a Desktop Virtualization solution. VERDE Hosted can further drive down total cost of ownership (TCO) beyond VERDE On-premise, today nearly 40 percent lower than any competing solution.  VERDE Hosted and VERDE On-premise both offer virtual desktops in VDI, disconnected and branch-office modes.  Because VERDE Hosted does not share any infrastructure, customers will benefit from VERDE Bridges’ access to Rackspace’s award winning customer service called Fanatical Support®.

According to industry analysts, interest in hosted desktop virtualization is increasingly attractive to organizations mandated with Desktop TCO (both CAPEX and OPEX) reductions.  Gartner estimates that about 15 percent of professional desktop PCs will migrate to hosted desktop virtualization by 2014, effecting approximately 66 million connected machines.  Coupled with upgrade cycles accelerated by Windows 7 availability, many companies will pass on costly hardware upgrades, opting for hosted desktop virtualization to deliver the new operating systems to their users.

“Virtual Bridges is resetting the expectations associated with desktop virtualization, delivering a solution that can deliver immediate value without the need to deploy and manage any infrastructure on their premise,” said Christopher Rajiah, Director of North America Channel Sales for Rackspace.  “The VERDE Hosted solution provides a new approach for the many organizations looking to substantially reduce the costs of supporting desktop environments and for whom a hosted solution best suits their business goals.”

“Virtual Bridges has formulated an approach that will appeal to a wide array of organizations,” said Judith Hurwitz, President and CEO of Hurwitz & Associates.   “Whether on-premise, hosted, or a federation of both, the flexibility of deployment options, coupled with a compelling total cost of ownership and ease of deployment, creates a compelling business case for organizations evaluating desktop virtualization solutions.”

Customers can select from three VERDE Hosted Editions:

* Silver Up to 100 seats;   6 month contract

* Gold Up to 500 seats;   1 year contract

* Platinum Up to 1,000 seats; 1 year contract

Additionally, a paid pilot will be offered on a monthly basis, a risk-free approach to explore the benefits of VERDE Hosted without requiring on-premise infrastructure, enabling customers to transition to hosted desktop virtualization in one day.

All VERDE Hosted editions come with the complete VERDE Suite, and a Rackspace managed and dedicated infrastructure including a Cisco firewall and VPN, IDS (only in Platinum), physical servers, and internal storage. Gold and Platinum editions also come up with industry leading NetApp storage solutions for reliable and efficient storage for Gold Master images and user data. Organizations can also choose a custom configuration to meet their needs.   Customers with an on-premise desktop virtualization solution can augment their infrastructure with VERDE Hosted to use for disaster recovery, or to support external or remote users.

Today’s announcement underscores the commitment of Virtual Bridges to provide its global customers with a partner ecosystem comprised of the world’s most successful solution providers. “Virtual Bridges is proud to once again set the bar for the market by delivering groundbreaking innovation to help organizations transform the total cost of ownership of desktop computing”, said Jim Curtin, Virtual Bridges’ CEO. “With this announcement, we are extending our TCO leadership, improving our ease-of-deployment leadership and extending the functionality of our solution beyond anything available in the industry”.

About VERDE Suite

Virtual Bridges VERDE Suite is the industry’s most comprehensive Desktop Virtualization solution that

enables organizations to deliver Desktop-as-a-Private/Public Cloud service. The VERDE solution lets enterprises transform their desktop TCO by simplifying desktop management, improve security and compliance by centralizing the administration of desktop images and data, and increase the organizational agility and productivity by quickly providing desktop and application access to end users on any client machine (PC, Mac, Linux, thin client, home computer or on a portable drive) and any time.

About Virtual Bridges

Virtual Bridges, Inc. develops desktop virtualization solutions for enterprise, small-to-medium and managed- service- provider businesses to transform desktop total cost of ownership, increase security and compliance by centralizing the administration of desktop images and data, and increase  organizational agility by quickly providing desktop and application access to end users on any client machine.  Venture-backed Virtual Bridges is headquartered in Austin, Texas. https://vbridges.com