Nutanix inks deal to swallow desktop apps-as-a-service cloud flinger

Hyperconverger's cloud services parts to get Framed

Hyperconverged player Nutanix has agreed to buy Frame, a supplier of desktop apps-as-a-service, for an undisclosed sum.

The San Jose storage firm is hoping to up its on-premises VDI offerings as it builds out its cloud services with the acquisition.

Frame, also known as Mainframe2, was founded in 2012 by Ivan Vuckovic, Marjan Panic, and CEO Nikola Bozinovic as a cloud workstation platform, providing desktop applications as service. The firm allows clients to turn high-powered, compute-intensive apps streamed from the cloud to a browser on a low-powered desktop or notebook.

Although described as a form of VDI, it's not really traditional virtual desktop infrastructure as you need a desktop or other internet browser-running device to access it. Boxinovic has blogged: "We've focused on ... the delivery protocol that makes virtual desktop and app delivery possible for any application on the planet."

Frame users can run graphically intense 3D tools for visualisation, science and engineering, and design through an HTML5-capable browser. Its software runs user apps on servers in the cloud and delivers the user interface to the end-point device browser as an optimised H.264 video stream.

Customers include Adobe, Autodesk, Siemens, VMware and others.

Nutanix said it was looking to "address customer requirements for [desktops-as-a-service] in the midmarket, while continuing its long-standing support for large-scale VDI projects delivered via enterprise data centres. This includes continued support for VMware Horizon View, as well as remaining Citrix Ready certified for Citrix XenDesktop and XenApp."

The hope is that the hyperconverged firm's customers will be able to deliver desktops-as-a-service (DaaS) to their users from multiple clouds.

US-headquartered Frame, which has engineers based in Serbia, took in a $16m A-round in May last year, along with a couple of seed rounds in 2014, with one being for $2.5m, plus a $10m venture round in June 2015 – that's $28.5m known funding.

It has several marquee customers and a slick, cloud-native product. Nutanix is likely to have paid rather more than $28.5m for Frame.

Frame will be available following the closing of the acquisition on third-party clouds from AWS and Azure. Availability on the Nutanix Xi Cloud and Google Cloud Platform will be announced at a later date. ®