Novell eDirectory with VDI? No Problem. Unidesk has the solution for you! (VMware View does not)

Many people think Microsoft Active Directory is the only directory in use these days. I hear it all the time:

”Novell eDirectory? No one uses that.”

Contrary to popular belief, there are many customers who do use eDirectory as their authoritative identity source and want to leverage it for VDI.

As the customer in http://communities.vmware.com/thread/204389 says, "I work for a regional government agency and eDirectory is widely used as identity vault for thousands of users. It would be awesome if VMware View had generic support for LDAP or at least for eDirectory, which is regarded as one of the most scalable and flexible directory services."

Other Novell customers tell us: “I don’t want to have to install Active Directory to mirror eDirectory just to get VDI to work!”

But that's what's required - see:

• http://www.thatsmyview.net/2009/06/05/how-to-use-novell-with-vmware-view/
• http://blogs.vmware.com/view/2009/05/novell-and-view.html

This week, two conversations I had with customers started with their praise for Unidesk's eDirectory integration. Both customers are government-based agencies, albeit in different countries, and both are now using Unidesk to deploy their internal virtual desktops by directly leveraging eDirectory. While eDirectory support is what enabled us to get past the initial RFP, it's our management capabilities that are now truly delighting them.

“Before finding Unidesk, we had gone through more than 3 VDI pilots over three years… Just the way you do things is so unique – it just makes sense. Unidesk works fine in our VMware environment with eDirectory and Leostream. And if we do choose to go to AD sometime down the road, we won’t have to switch tools.”

So, if you are a Novell eDirectory customer and you're looking to deploy VDI on VMware vSphere without lots of extra cost and complexity, contact us. We'll be glad to delight you. (Don’t worry Microsoft customers - we work great with Active Directory, too!)

-Nicole Reineke
Unidesk Director of Product Management

Follow me on Twitter @NicoleReineke

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