ClearCube Technology is aiming to take its PC blade architecture to a wider corporate customer base with the introduction of cheaper blade designs and new technology to let its blades run any application, even those involving demanding graphics capabilities.

With its new A Series of PC blades, ClearCube has cut the cost to below $1,000 (£534) per blade for the first time, making its kit comparable in price with enterprise desktops from the likes of Dell, the company said.

"This puts us back into the mainstream desktop replacement business and also into markets where we might have been two-and-a-half times the capital expenditure of a cheap PC," said ClearCube president and chief executive Carl Boisvert.

At the same time the firm has introduced a new I/Port console, the I8330, which enables workers to operate multiple displays, view video streams and plug in USB peripherals such as Flash storage, all over a remote connection.

"The blade can be in your office, and you can access it from a hotel room or home, even if the app requires heavy graphics, multi-monitors or live TV, and we’re the first vendor to allow the user to plug in USB storage [remotely] and download to it," Boisvert said.

The new kit will allow ClearCube to sell to customers outside its core verticals of healthcare, finance and government departments, the company said. These customers bought into PC blades because the centralised solution is more secure, and also allows for users to be quickly switched to another blade in the event of hardware failure.

"We're the world leader in trading floors, but now we can go into reception areas and call centres. This will really launch PC blades into the mainstream," said Boisvert.

Although ClearCube's blades now have price parity with desktops, they still have big advantages in manageability, "A guy can now manage a couple of thousand blades remotely with our solution," he said.

The model A1010 PC blade is based on a 3GHz Pentium 4 processor with 512MB memory as standard, and can be accessed by Tablet PCs and other devices running Microsoft's RDP protocol, as well as the I8330 I/Port.