HP bundles XenDesktop with two blade PCs

HP said Wednesday that it will bundle Citrix's XenDesktop 3 with its blade PCs that reside in data centers.

HP's BladeSystem bc2800 and bc2200 Blade PC (statement) are designed to be centralized clients that are controlled by an enterprise. Citrix has long been able to centralize applications. By adding XenDesktop 3 to the mix, Citrix can spread its acquired virtualization software. 

The companies said that HP's blades with XenDesktop 3 offer administrator tools for remote access, configuration control, setup and user allocation. The blade PCs are available in March, said HP. 

Among the details:

• The bc2200 blade PC operates at 25 watts and has a capacity of 280 blades per rack;
• HP's blade PCs have dedicated CPU plus graphics, up to 8 GB of memory and a 80 GB hard drive;
• The bc2200 runs on a single-core AMD Athlon 64 with the bc2800 using a Turion X2 TL-66 dual-core processor. Both chips have integrated ATI graphics. 

The blade PCs come with Windows Vista preinstalled, but support XP and Linux.