Virtual Desktop Infrastructure is not exactly top-trending news for tech analysts at the moment, according to Calvin Hsu (pictured), vice president of product marketing at Citrix Systems Inc. The virtualization technology hosts desktop operating systems on central servers within data centers. After generating a thick flurry of hype several years ago, many industry experts have pronounced VDI, if not dead, at least dull. There is a small problem with their attitude, though: They never asked the customers, Hsu stated.

Demand for simple-to-operate VDI never waned in enterprises and midsize businesses, according to Hsu. With a second wind from Hyperconverged Infrastructure, vendors — namely Citrix and Nutanix Inc. via a new partnership — are bringing new solutions to the market.

This week, theCUBE spotlights Calvin Hsu in our Guest of the Week feature.

“Analysts don’t necessarily feel the day-to-day pain of managing a desktop,” Hsu told Dave Vellante (@dvellante) and Stu Miniman (@stu), co-hosts of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, during the Nutanix .NEXT event in Washington, D.C. (* Disclosure below.)

Reinforcing this point, Hsu said that analysts who’ve held such jobs in the past are still excited about VDI. Enterprise information technology managers, administrators and employees who deal with desktop OS snafus daily are very much interested in VDI solutions, he explained, adding that these customers are still trying to get a handle on some very basic desktop management issues. They probably trail the industry and analysts by three to five years, Hsu estimated.

For example, implementing Office 365 and ensuring it functions for all end-users presents IT with a case suitable for VDI. Many businesses groan at the challenge of making Windows 10 updates; VDI could ease the transition, Hsu stated.

Infrastructure for novices

If companies aren’t yet up and running with VDI, it is likely due to inefficiencies that weighed the technology down in past years, according to Hsu. “That was one of the things that always stood as a barrier to adoption in the early days,” he said.

There were quite a few different infrastructure parts that IT managers and admins had to fit together to give a VDI system life. “You’ve got to be an expert in networking, you’ve got to be an expert in storage, you’ve got to know all the server side infrastructure, the virtualization that goes with it, and then you’ve got to also know the desktops and the app part of it,” Hsu said. All interacting components were often too busy for one or even several persons to master.

Relief finally arrived in the form of hyperconverged infrastructure, Hsu said. When used for VDI, HCI’s condensed hardware and tightly integrated software layer abstracted much of the complexity away.

“VDI is kind of getting that second booster in its life cycle” thanks to HCI, Hsu said. Now instead of 20 people on deck to get a VDI system running, it might take just a few. With an HCI base, organizations can deploy VDI, and now they have a simple, reliable way of implementing the solution, according to Hsu.

Citrix and Nutanix mash HCI and cloud

The call for employee-friendly VDI and HCI’s ability to run it underpin the Citrix-Nutanix partnership. The companies are at work on the Citrix Workspace Appliance. This is not just a product name, but a program. CWA will optimize HCI and the Citrix cloud to automate VDI setup and simplify operation.

CWA will “point [the HCI system] at the Citrix cloud and then download all the resources that it needs in order to run a Citrix workload on it,” Hsu said. “Running and operating [CWA] is more like running and operating a cloud service than it is even operating a local infrastructure port.”

CWA will use the Citrix XenServer virtualization management platform. The company has tailored XenServer over time for Citrix workloads and technologies, plus Graphics Processing Unit support and malware detection. It is now primed for a new employee-experience focused VDI, Hsu stated. He wants CWA to simplify and automate not just deployment, but day-to-day operation of VDI down to employees’ experience on web or mobile applications.

“I think there’s a lot more we can do from a day-two perspective — operationally,” he said.

Beyond CWA, Nutanix and Citrix may have additional collaborations in their future, particularly in hybrid infrastructure, Hsu stated. Nutanix’s hybrid cloud strategy aligns with Citrix’s own philosophy in that area, he concluded.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the Nutanix .NEXT US 2017 event. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for Nutanix .NEXT US. Neither Nutanix Inc. nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE