Oracle said that the new Virtual Desktop Infrastructure enables virtual desktop images, reduces administration overhead, lowers total cost of ownership and increases security.

Virtual Desktop Infrastructure 3.2 features: global hot-desking for administrators to link multiple, and global datacenters; multi-company capability to enable one deployment for sharing resources and serve multiple domains and directories; and enhanced video and audio support for all supported virtual desktop operating systems.

In addition, the new Oracle software provides built-in Windows virtual desktop provisioning; desktop re-provisioning; memory sharing and memory ballooning for Windows virtual desktops; and enhanced backup, notification, and storage settings.

The new software offers a choice of virtual desktop operating systems including Windows 7, Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 2000, Oracle Enterprise Linux, Ubuntu, and SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop.

The new version also provides a built-in virtualisation host to integrate with VMware vSphere and Microsoft Hyper-V; and support for Oracle Sun Ray Clients and new PC and Macs.

Oracle Linux and virtualisation engineering senior vice president Wim Coekaerts said that the latest improvements in scalability, multimedia, and administration can help remove the barrier to entry for organisations considering virtual desktop architectures, and allow them to increase IT efficiency and flexibility.