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Dell today unveiled three new virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) offerings aimed at speeding deployments and giving businesses the option of on-premiseand cloud-based hosting.

Flying under the Desktop Virtualization Solutions (DVS) banner, the new product slate includes a new DVS Simplified Appliance powered by Citrix's VDI-in-a-Box software.Dell's DVS Simplified Appliance is a rack-mount PowerEdge R710 server that runs Citrix VDI-in-a-Box v5.0 and Citrix XenServer v5.6 SP2. It ships pre-configured, with Citrix's hypervisor, virtual machines and management software already installed.

The server arrives with fresh-from-the-factory support for Dell's OptiPlex FX130 and FX170 thin clients, as well as Dell Latitude systems with Ubuntu. According to the company, the DVS Simplified Appliance can have organizations up and running in just hours, help streamline IT management and achieve cost-savings -- a VDI "benefit" that organizations are still struggling to quantify.

Kumar K. Goswami, the vice president of Products for Citrix, feels that the partnership between his company and Dell will help mainstream VDI. "Combining the simplicity of the solution with the market presence that Dell has in the desktop space, we are excited about the opportunity to reshape the desktop virtualization market," said Goswamiin a company statement.

For large deployments, there is the DVS Enterprise offering. On the software side, customers will have the option of VMware View 5 or Citrix's VDI platform. Hardware-wise, Dell has crafted an all-encompassing infrastructure package that's based on its new 12G servers, as well as the company's storage arrays and networking equipment.

Dell's 12G - or 12thGeneration PowerEdge -- server platform debuted in tandem with Intel's next generation E5 chips. New processors aside, another of the big selling points is what the company calls Fluid Data Architecture. Meant to minimize I/O bottlenecks, like those that exist between storage and compute, Fluid Data uses components like flash memory to improve performance beyond the processor.

Dell is confident that its upgraded servers are up to task of supporting an enterprise VDI environment. According to Dell, DVS Enterprise can scale from as few as 50 seats to thousands of seats.

Lastly, Dell is preparing for a second quarter release of a cloud VDI option called DVS Simplified Desktop as a Service (DaaS). An expansion of Dell's existing cloud virtual desktop offering, DVS Simplified DaaS employs Desktone's Desktops as a Service (DaaS) software and hosts it in Dell's data centers.

Pedro Hernandez is a contributing editor at InternetNews.com, the news service of the IT Business Edge Network, the network for technology professionals. Previously, he served as a managing editor for the Internet.com network of IT-related websites and as the Green IT curator for GigaOM Pro. Follow him on Twitter @ecoINSITE.

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Dell Enlists 12G Servers, the Cloud for VDI Refresh