User:Michael-stanton/sandbox/Ulteo

Ulteo is a software company which provides free and open source (FOSS) virtual desktop solutions. The company is based in Caen, Calvados département, France, and has a research and development center in Colombelles.

History
Ulteo was founded by Gaël Duval, who previously created Mandriva Linux, and Thierry Koehrlen, founder of www.initalio.com, with the mission of simplifying the PC user's digital life.

In 2009, at the Open World Forum, the company received an Open Innovation Award for its Open Virtual Desktop product.

Former


Ulteo Online Desktop, the company's first product, was an online service which provided access to OpenOffice.org in a web browser and offered synchronization of files with the client. A competitor to Google Docs, it was launched on December 11, 2007. The service was subsequently expanded to host full KDE desktops. Besides 'no-install' access to applications, it also provided collaboration features, as one session could be shared between users for training purposes or joint editing of documents.

Ulteo Documents Synchronizer was a client application which synchronized local files with those stored in Online Desktop.

Ulteo Application System, codenamed Sirius, was introduced the following year. It was a complete Linux distribution, an installable version of Ulteo Virtual Desktop. The package included a Linux version of Documents Synchronizer. Operating system, applications and user data were automatically updated in the background, with no user interaction.

Ulteo Virtual Desktop, also released in 2008, was a distribution of Linux applications and a coLinux kernel, which allows Linux applications to run on a Windows system. It thus provided the Ulteo Virtual Desktop experience without requiring an Internet connection.

Current
Ulteo Open Virtual Desktop (OVD) is an open source Application Delivery and Virtual Desktop infrastructure project that can deliver applications or a desktop hosted on a Linux or Windows server to end users. It comes as a set of software packages which can be installed on a standard Linux distribution (Ubuntu, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, Redhat Enterprise Linux). Some modules can also be installed on Windows.

Ulteo OVD is an open source alternative to Citrix and VMware solutions and, as of June 2012, the only presentation virtualization solution supporting both Linux and Windows applications.