Ericom Poses As Desktop Virtualization 'Alternative To Citrix'

Ericom is an application and desktop virtualization vendor, and as of Tuesday, one of the few to announce early support for Microsoft's Hyper-V.

As Citrix expands its desktop virtualization product line this week at its Synergy 2008 user group in Houston, Ericom is posing as the "low-cost alternative to Citrix."

Ericom's core product is PowerTerm WebConnect, which grants access to virtual desktop machines via Microsoft's Windows Terminal Services. The end user may be on the LAN, WAN, or any IP network, including the Internet, because PowerTerm WebConnect supports Teradici's implementation of PC-over-IP, which delivers the end-user presentation of a central Windows server via a portal on an IP network.

Ericom's approach allows either Windows or Linux as the operating system of the virtual desktop, with the user presentation delivered to a remote PC or thin client. Ericom can support 35 brands of terminals or thin clients.

Hypervisors supported include VMware's ESX Server and open source Xen-based hypervisors, including XenSource Xen, Oracle VM, Virtual Iron, and Sun xVM. In addition, PowerTerm WebConnect also supports Microsoft's Virtual Server and Hyper-V.

"We are very hypervisor-agnostic. The hypervisor is being commoditized. You cannot expect organizations in the future to have only one," said Dan Shappir, VP of software development for the company, which is based in Closter, N.J., with R&D in Jerusalem.

Ericom's PowerTerm WebConnect ties end users into managed pools of virtual desktops or virtualized applications through Microsoft's Windows Terminal Services. PowerTerm WebConnect also integrates with Microsoft Active Directory for user ID and authentication, said Ilan Paretsky, Ericom's VP of marketing. Ericom is a gold-certified partner of Microsoft and also has a working relationship with VMware. PowerTerm WebConnect Appliance for VMware is a software appliance offered on VMware's virtual appliance marketplace.

Citrix and VMware not only supply hypervisors and virtual machine management software but connection brokers for tying hundreds or thousands of end users at a time to pooled virtual machines. Ericom's PowerTerm WebConnect is the default connection broker for Oracle's Oracle VM hypervisor, said Shappir.

Ericom was founded in 1993 as an application access software supplier.