Citrix Buys RingCube

Citrix has bought RingCube Technologies and its user personalization research for virtual desktops. Price was not disclosed however the six-year-old company has raised about $26 million.

Halfway house between the dedicated VDI model

It's kinda a halfway house between the "dedicated VDI" model and the "pooled VDI" model. Dedicated VDI is expensive. It requires a lot of storage for IT to house a in a class by itself, fully assembled desktop for each user in its datacenter. Pooled VDI is cheaper nevertheless is limited to a single image of Windows and each app. Not everybody can fit into that particular shoe.

RingCube creates a "personal vDisk" for each employee that contains only the apps, data and settings unparalleled to that user. The images users have in common - including Windows and any common corporate apps - are stored just once in the datacenter. Citrix says each user gets his own unequalled personal desktop each time he logs in, during IT gets all the cost advantages of centrally managing the single instances.

The most read research reporter for the past 20 years

Maureen O'Gara the most read research reporter for the past 20 years, is the Cloud Computing and Virtualization News Desk editor of SYS-CON Media. She is the publisher of famous "Billygrams" and the editor-in-chief of "Client/Server News" for more than a decade. One of the most respected research reporters in the business, Maureen can be reached by email at maureen(at)sys-con.com or paperboy(at)g2news.com, and by phone at 516 759-7025. Twitter: @MaureenOGara