Nutanix expands on-premises desktop offerings with Frame buy | Virtual Reality

Nutanix, maker of hyperconverged systems for building on-premises cloud-like environments, has agreed to buy Frame, a supplier of desktop apps as a service.

Nutanix already supports virtual desktop infrastructure; adding Frame expands on the offering because Frame specializes in high-performance, specialized apps, rather than just a generic Windows or Linux desktop.

Frame, also known as Mainframe2, was founded as a cloud workstation platform, providing desktop applications as a service but with the considerable scale from the server. Clients can get the performance of a super-powered desktop workstation from their laptop thanks to streaming of compute-intensive apps from the cloud to a browser.

Frame users can run a compute-intensive app, such as Autodesk, through an HTML5-capable browser. The apps run on a server and the application is delivered to the endpoint device browser through an optimized H.264 video stream.

For that reason, Frame is sometimes incorrectly described as a form of VDI, when it needs some kind of desktop or other internet browser device to run it. It’s available both as an on-premises installation and as a service from Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure.

In a statement announcing the purchase, Nutanix said it was looking to address customer requirements for desktops as a service in the midmarket, while continuing its long-standing support for large-scale VDI projects delivered via enterprise data centers. This includes continued support for VMware Horizon View, as well as remaining Citrix Ready certified for Citrix XenDesktop and XenApp.