It’s been about a month now since Cisco announced VXI (PDF overview here)– think VDI but with the middle letter mixed up for a little bit of originality. For various bits of official analysis (as I don’t know that I should claim full “official” status), you can go here (eWeek), here (ZDNet), or here (Brian Madden).

So what’s actually new here if you’ve already bought into the overall goodness that makes up VDI?

• Zero Clients — Cisco is actually introducing 2 zero clients…who’d have thought? One is standalone while the other integrates with their VOIP phones.

• Tablet Support — specific support for their Cius tablet.
• UC support — specific statements around supporting UC clients in a VDI environment (Cisco Quad, Unified Personal Communicator, and Unified Presence)

Beyond that, this is really just a combination of reference architectures, validation of various Cisco products, partnerships (Wyse, VMware, Citrix, etc.). If you’re thinking that’s not a lot from a technical perspective, you’re right — we’re mainly talking a pre-validated architecture of LOTS of moving parts and pieces.

Side-note: UCS is a fantastic architecture for VDI (speaking as someone who recently helped setup (6) traditional ESX servers for VDI)…if absolutely nothing else, I’m happy to see that highlighted.

But I’d actually say that there’s a bit more here…..if anyone had doubts about VDI being here to stay, I’d say this helps answer that. To go back to an old joke…”where does an elephant go? Wherever it wants to”. I’d add to that “and everyone pays attention”.

Validation that “there’s something to this VDI thing”? Done.