Virtual Desktops for Disaster Recovery

By Greg McNevin

January 25, 2008: Kidaro has unveiled a new take on virtualisation, tying desktop virtualisation into a disaster recovery solution which enables employees to load their work desktops on their personal PCs.

Kidaro says its Desktop DR enables enterprises to improve business continuity by distributing corporate-controlled virtual desktops on DVDs, USB drives, or over the Web. Employees can then securely access corporate resources and data from their home PCs, or recovery centre computers.

The company claims that while most large enterprises have disaster recovery plans in place for mission-critical applications and data centres, many have failed to plan for rapid recovery of end user desktops - a critical link in the business continuity chain.

Even if the data centre is recovered quickly, if hundreds of desktop computers need to be rebuilt and provisioned a company could be looking at days of additional downtime in a best case scenario.

Aside from simple distribution, Kidaro says the solution includes integrated encryption and leak prevention features for data security, and adds that the virtual desktops can be also be used as an everyday remote computing platform, installed on-demand for business continuity and even used in completely disconnected situations.

“Many enterprises have 'checked the box' on disaster recovery for their data centres, but are risking extended downtime because there is no cost-effective solution for rapidly provisioning replacement PCs for employees,” said Carl Wright, vice president of corporate strategy at Kidaro. “Kidaro changes the equation, providing a secure, simplified solution that leverages existing hardware instead of using brute force to duplicate existing capabilities.”

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