Nutanix expands on-premises desktop offerings with Frame buy

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.

The eventual plan is to deliver desktops as a service to their users from multiple clouds.