Virtual Computer Ships NxTop 2.0 Enabling Broad-scale Adoption of Desktop Virtualization
Virtual Computer, the company redefining PC lifecycle management through virtualization, today announced Version 2.0 of NxTop. Based on 12 months of development and feedback from hundreds of deployments, NxTop 2.0 provides a mature platform for organizations evaluating or implementing their next generation desktop initiative.
“The response to our 2.0 release has been phenomenal,” said Dan McCall, president and CEO of Virtual Computer. “Since 2008, hundreds of companies have used our software and confirmed that NxTop’s distributed execution architecture is superior to the more costly approach promoted by VDI vendors. NxTop is the only client virtualization product in the market with the performance, scalability and maturity for real-world implementations.”
Advanced Deployment and Management Capabilities
NxTop 2.0 comes with a host of new management and security features designed to increase desktop IT productivity:
- Deployment of NxTop Center as a virtual appliance: Enables NxTop Center to operate in high-availability mode using Hyper-V’s automated failover and load-balancing features. In addition, Managed Service Providers (MSPs) can now share a single hardware platform to manage multiple customers, making NxTop an ideal management platform to lower the cost of managing small and medium sized businesses.
- Staged virtual machine updates: Allows patching of a single shared image and patch delivery to one or more users or groups for testing. Upon testing completion, the patch can be delivered, with the click of a button, to all users.
- Multi-language support: Most large-enterprise customers have global operations. To aid in international rollouts, NxTop 2.0 now provides the ability to create virtual machines in a dozen popular languages including Spanish, French, German and Japanese.
- Automated profile migration: Upgrading to Windows 7 can present a major challenge to large organizations. For example, the target PC must be taken out of service and user files and personalization settings must be migrated, and end-users must be trained on new features before they can be productive. NxTop 2.0 simplifies this process with a new tool that can automatically migrate users from their current XP environment to a new virtualized environment based on XP, Windows 7 or both. When combined with NxTop’s existing automated deployment features for Windows 7, and ability to run both XP and Windows 7 side by side, moving a large group of users from XP to Windows 7 has never been easier.
- Hardware Compatibility Checker: Many of the Intel based laptops shipped in the last two to three years have shipped without Virtualization Technology (VT), a requirement for NxTop Engine. To help IT administrators quickly find compatible machines, NxTop 2.0 provides a tool that can analyze a user’s PC and verify that it will run NxTop Engine.
A Seamless Experience for End-Users
End-user productivity and the user-experience are core NxTop 2.0 features. NxTop Engine now provides an operating system independent control panel with a familiar look-and-feel that blends seamlessly into Windows XP, Windows 7 or Linux. Enhancements include:
- Direct access to the NxTop control panel from within Windows
- Configurable “hot key” shortcuts to control various hardware on laptop machines (multi-monitor switching, volume control, mouse control, platform locking, and others)
- Better power management and platform sleep functions
- Intuitive design that avoids the need for end-user training
“The end-users I work with have varying levels of technical knowledge and many are located at sites with few, if any, on-site IT resources,” noted Clint DeWitt, owner of Southwestern Computer, an Arizona-based NxTop system integrator. “NxTop 2.0’s enhanced user interface enables us to deploy virtual desktops non-disruptively to task workers while providing more advanced users with access to the full power of the NxTop platform.”
Pricing and Availability
While “bare-metal” client virtualization is a major topic among virtualization vendors, NxTop is the only generally available solution that customers can try and buy today. A free evaluation download of the full NxTop 2.0 software suite is available as well as a cloud-based live demonstration system. Pricing is on a per-PC perpetual licensing model.
(Editorial Note: Registration is open for “What’s New in 2” webinar series.)
About Virtual Computer, Inc.
Virtual Computer, Inc. is redefining PC lifecycle management by making it as easy to manage thousands of PCs as it is to manage one. NxTop®, the company’s flagship PC management product, combines a bare-metal client virtualization platform with a powerful central management system, which dramatically reduces PC management costs while improving reliability, security, and the end-user experience. NxTop advanced virtualization technology isolates the main components of a PC — hardware, operating system, applications, and user data — allowing each to be managed independently. Founded in 2007, Virtual Computer is privately held and headquartered in Westford, MA. Visit www.virtualcomputer.com.