OK, I don’t break out the Han Solo quotes for just any occasion, so clearly something big is happening at Virtual Computer today. Earlier this morning, we made a major announcement that we just closed a $15 million series B financing round, which is big news in itself given the state of the global economy. However, equally significant is who is investing in the company. Our existing investors, Highland Capital Partners and Flybridge Capital Partners, doubled down on Virtual Computer, and we also welcomed in an exciting new strategic investor, Citrix Systems.

The addition of Citrix as an strategic investor is absolutely huge for us. I have already commented on the significance of the Citrix/Intel client hypervisor initiative and Project Independence and how they collectively stand to revolutionize corporate computing. An industry standard Xen-based hypervisor will dramatically accelerate Virtual Computer’s mission to refine PC management through client virtualization, and having two industry titans like Citrix and Intel throw their weight behind the client hypervisor model will only speed its adoption and acceptance.

Whenever the big guys jump into an emerging new technology area, there is always risk that the innovative startups who were there first will be squeezed on to the sidelines. An investment by Citrix signals that Virtual Computer’s unique vision and collection of important technology innovations have earned us a key seat at the table as these industry developments unfold in the months and years ahead.

With all of the excitement about the Citrix relationship, it is easy to overlook the significance of a $15 million infusion of capital into Virtual Computer. We have already been moving at a very good clip to outrun and outexecute potential competitors big and small, but this additional investment, which brings our total funding raised to date to $21 million, allows us to engage the hyperdrive on our go-to-market plan. It couldn’t have come at a better time as the client hypervisor / PC lifecycle management convergence we have been predicting is clearly heating up.

Traveling at light speed it not easy. As Han warned, without careful calculations you can fly right through a star or bounce too close to a supernova. However, you can’t win if you are not in the game, and I have to credit our co-founders, Dan McCall and Alex Vasilevsky, for coming up with a winning business plan and technology vision, building a winning team capable of making it a reality, and effectively steering a rocket ship that is moving faster than any of us imagined possible.

On December 29, Gartner released the latest update to its PC Life Cycle Configuration Management Magic Quadrant.  As it has in the past, the report focused primarily on traditional agent-based PC management tools such as Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager, Avocent/LANdesk, and Symantec/Altiris.  However, the commentary and evaluation criteria applied by Gartner foretells a future convergence between PC life cycle management and desktop virtualization:

“The PC life cycle configuration management tool market is mature, but virtualization, mobility, and the convergence of security and operations are affecting customer buying decisions as well as vendor R&D investments.”

Desktop virtualization has traditionally been viewed separately from PC lifecycle management, and I think this is primarily due to two current limitations of desktop virtualization products:

• Most solutions execute virtual desktops centrally on a server, which is a dramatically different model from what people know today as PC life cycle management.
• The subset of products capable of running virtual desktops on “thick client” PCs such as laptops use type 2 hypervisors requiring a non-virtualized host operating system—making PC management more complex instead of easier.

With NxTop, we are bringing together the best of both types of products without the limitations.  Virtual desktops are created and maintained centrally on a server but executed directly on a PC—including disconnected laptop PCs—without the need for a non-virtualized host operating system (and an entirely different set of legacy management tools to go with it).  This effectively makes it easy to manage thousands of PCs as it is to manage one. The IT staff simply applies patches and updates to a master virtual desktop running on a management server, and these changes are automatically applied to the associated virtual machines running on end-user PCs while maintaining any user-specific data and settings.

If a laptop PC is not connected at the time the update is published, it is not a problem.  NxTop simply downloads the update the next time the laptop connects to a network and prepares an updated virtual desktop in the background (outside of Windows) while the user continues using the previous version of the virtual desktop.  That’s right, patches and updates become transparent to the end-user.  Sound like the next generation of PC life cycle management?  We think so too.  That’s why you hear us talk about PC management more than you hear us talk about virtualization, hypervisors, etc.  Virtualization is the enabling technology, but only when you have applied them to solving a business problem like PC management do you have a marketable product.

It was exciting to see Gartner connect the dots between PC life cycle management and desktop virtualization.  Our focus is on making client-hosted virtualization the predominant delivery platform for corporate PC desktops, and once we do the lines between desktop virtualization and PC management will get very blurry very quickly.

If you have a Gartner account, you can find the latest PC Life Cycle Configuration Management Magic Quadrant here.

Since announcing NxTop in September, we’ve been saying that our solution will change the face of PC management.  While there are a number of solutions for managing desktops, NxTop is unique in its ability to apply desktop virtualization to both stationary desktop PCs and laptop PCs to dramatically improve their manageability, reliability, and security.

We continue to talk with the press and IT community about NxTop, the technology behind NxTop and our mission to use the latest in virtualization technology (a type 1, bare metal client hypervisor) to make PC lifecycle management easier than ever, including for the laptop PCs that present so many headaches to IT professionals today.

One of our more recent discussions was with Enterprise Management Quarterly. Virtual Computer CEO Dan McCall provided his perspective on the challenges faced by IT staffs in managing laptops, how managing laptops differs from managing traditional desktops, security implications, the limitation of agents and more.

Here are a few quick excerpts:

IT Managers have begun to find that the same virtualization technologies that have revolutionized the way IT data centers are managed can improve the manageability, reliability and security of desktop operating system environments.  Right now, most desktop management is done using software agents within the operating system.  This approach has reached its limit in terms of both functionality and usability.

When time comes for an IT Manager to apply a patch to the desktop operating system, they need only apply the patch to the master virtual machine running on NxTop Center.  Once the patch is applied, NxTop Center seamlessly publishes the blocks of data that have changed to all NxTop Engines subscribed to that virtual machine.

Our most significant technology innovation is our patent pending approach for isolating the four main components of the PC: hardware, operating system, applications and user data.  Allowing each of these components to be managed independently is what enables us to give IT Managers scalable one-to-many desktop management without taking the “personal” out of personal computers the way that other desktop virtualization products have.

Read the full article at Enterprise Management Quarterly and if you have any questions on NxTop, Dan’s article or Virtual Computer, let us know in the comments below or on our forums.