Gazoo Raises $1M to Sell Cloud VDI to College Students
Virtual desktop infrastructure is becoming one of the fastest blooming facets of cloud computing. The ability to provision a desktop PC and provide it to an end user instantaneously is attractive over the current model of staging a personal computer with a hard drive. Gazoo is a startup that is putting a different twist on VDI; Gazoo has created cloud workspaces using Amazon Web Services and they aim to sell the service to college students as a way for them to centralize all of their computing related tasks. Founders of Gazoo note that if your laptop were stolen, misplaced or if a critical component failed, your academic progress could be at risk. With Gazoo, incidents such as these shouldn’t be of any concern to you.
Scott Morton, CEO of Gazoo, explains Gazoo in its simplest form. In an interview with The Eagle, Morton says, “It’s all just an interactive movie of your computer. It’s no different than Netflix.” Morton and his COO Chris McDonald explain that the screen is actually streamed to the user and that no computing takes place on the user’s machine. This allows students to connect to their private virtual desktop from computer labs on campus, labs inside classrooms or on a student’s mobile device such as their smart phone or tablet. Instead of carrying around a laptop, Gazoo gives students a way to login to their virtual desktop from the computing devices already at their disposal.
Gazoo will start test piloting its program on the campus of Texas A&M. While Gazoo can be used by anyone, Gazoo has started by targeting students with a deal that lets students rent a virtual desktop for $40 per month or $169 per semester. Gazoo assures the students that the software they need is preinstalled therefore the user simply gets a username and password and they can begin computing. Gazoo will simply use student licensed version of the applications in the cloud that will be deactivated once the student decommissions their virtual machine.
Gazoo has received a positive response from investors. In fact, CEO Scott Morton mentions that they have had to turn investors away. Morton mentions, “We simply don’t need the capital.”
