Today Citrix announced the acquisition of RingCube for an undisclosed amount, a company that offers a virtual desktop customization and management platform. In a release Citrix explained how RightCube eliminates what it called the “great VDI tradeoff,” the choice between virtual desktop customization and efficiency may enterprises have to face.

RingCube works by creating a personal ‘vDisk’ for each user that contains all the unique files and data they saved. While all of these type of items are stored individually, RingCube only hosts one copy of software that all of its users share, such as Windows and certain business apps.  This means that instead of storing thousands of unique virtual desktops or assemble completely identical ones like more mainstream solutions do, RingCube manages to offer a combo of pooled VDIs and user customization. This also makes migration a lot easier.

“RingCube also makes it easier for customers to make the move from physical to virtual desktops. By isolating all user-specific apps and settings in personal vDisks, IT can be certain that each user’s new VDI desktop will behave exactly the same as their previous physical desktop, making the move entirely transparent to users.”

It’s quite clear what a major boost the company’s offering can provide to Citrix’s XenDesktop. So much so that during the announcement the latter even took time to highlight that VMware View, its competition, doesn’t have a similar feature yet.

Citrix and VMware are competing in more than one area, and the latter is also working on strengthening its portfolio. The company will roll out new data loss prevention (DLP) features for  vShield 5 at the upcoming VMworld conference.  vShield is based on technology developed by EMCs’ security subsidiary RSA, though it will not feature end-to-end DLP according to a VMware’s Dean Coza.