By Tony Paikeday, senior product line manager, desktop products, End-User Computing, VMware
Here we are at NVIDIA GTC 2015 talking with customers, partners and the industry at large about the groundswell that’s been building for high-performance virtual desktops enabled by VMware and NVIDIA. With NVIDIA GTC as our backdrop, let’s talk about why there’s so much momentum around this joint solution and hear what our new ISV partners have to say about it. I look at this in two axis – the tangible business benefits our customers are sharing with us, and the confidence we’re hearing from the ISV partners who have endorsed our solution for their end-users.
Through the Early Access Program for NVIDIA GRID vGPU, organizations for whom mission critical graphics datasets are their lifeblood have shared with us the impacts they expect to see by enabling their workforce to securely collaborate in real-time across the globe, using any device. After trying the solution, ISV partners offered very positive feedback and here is a sampling of some of the ISV partners and what they had to say.
ESRI ArcGIS Pro is a state of the art, industrial-grade GIS software package that enables organizations to visualize 2D and 3D data, along with spatial analysis. Here’s what John Meza, Performance Engineering Team Lead for ESRI had to say about their certification of VMware Horizon with GRID vGPU:
“In our most recent tests we benchmarked a single VMware Horizon View VM with Pro. The host had ESXi 6.0, managed from a vSphere Web Client 6.0. During those tests we found VMware Horizon 6 delivered a fantastic user experience. The FPS are consistently 25-30+, minimum FPS are in the lower 20’s. More importantly, watching the screen showed smooth fluid rendering and very responsive mouse and keyboard interaction.”
Check out his blog to learn more about their performance testing results.
Siemens NX is an industry leading PLM solution, whose users depend on the platform to 
develop mission-critical designs and engineering analyses. This is what Jim Rusk, senior vice president, Product Engineering Software, Siemens PLM Software had to say about this solution:
“Siemens is focused on providing our customers the best return on their PLM investment and offering a wide variety of platform choices is one way to meet this goal. Siemens worked closely with NVIDIA Corporation and VMware to test and certify the deployment of NX using NVIDIA GRID vGPU technology and VMware Horizon. The key business benefits of using the virtual GPU solution are cost reduction and flexibility. This new delivery platform will help give design engineers greater access to NX technology so they can better realize innovation.”
PTC Creo is an award-winning, scalable, and interoperable suite of product design software that delivers fast time to value. It helps teams create, analyze, view and leverage product designs downstream utilizing 2D CAD, 3D CAD, parametric & direct modeling. Brian Thompson, senior vice president at PTC Creo had this to say about Horizon and GRID:
“PTC is committed to delivering software solutions that help our customers transform their business to more effectively design and share information across the organization and with outside partners. Our customers are excited about the scalability and collaboration possibilities when running PTC Creo on VMware Horizon with NVIDIA GRID vGPU,” stated Brian Thompson, senior vice president, PTC Creo. “The mobility and collaboration options NVIDIA and VMware bring to our customers should be commended, and we look forward to completing our certification process of this joint solution offering.”
Lenovo is a $39 billion global Fortune 500 company and a leader in providing innovative consumer, commercial, and enterprise technology. Rob Herman, director of product marketing for Lenovo Workstation has been working with VMware and NVIDIA to validate the joint solution and had this to say:
“Lenovo, VMware and NVIDIA are partnering together to test and certify remote access NVIDIA GRID based solutions with industry ISVs,” says Rob Herman, director of Lenovo Workstation Product Marketing. “Lenovo X86 server platforms provide the ideal solution for customers who want to implement remote access to high-end graphics intensive software.”
Time to Kick the Tires!
Are you itching to see VMware Horizon with NVIDIA GRID vGPU in action? Then it’s time to visit Try GRID to test Horizon/GRID powered virtual desktops delivering rich, immersive 3D graphics. Visit: http://www.nvidia.com/vmware-trygrid
Want to Accelerate Your Deployment Success?
After a very successful beta / early access program that saw over 600+ applicants and 400+ active participants, NVIDIA and VMware launched a brand new program aimed at helping customers accelerate the success with deploying scalable production environments built on VMware Horizon with NVIDIA GRID vGPU. The “Direct Access” program offers unique benefits to qualified applicants so please visit the program webpage to learn more and sign-up!
If you’re at NVIDIA GTC’15, this is a great week to get connected with expertise and content that can help you mobilize your graphics workstation for the cloud. If you haven’t seen it already, check out this infographic for a quick overview, and if you’re at GTC, attend our customer panel, session S5542 on Wednesday at 10 am to hear more. If you can’t make the session, come by the VMware booth to see the solution for yourself.
