Enviroman (Oliver Sills, Product Manager for AppSense Environment Manager) was in the office the other day, pestering me about signing a petition to change the Environment Manager “colour” from green to Tangerine – something to do with some UK footy club. I told him the Budgie Smugglers don’t look any better in Tangerine, so stop sitting on my desk :-)
Just about then the phone rings, it was a Solution Architect from a large software company. “Tell him about Personalization”, Environman whispers in my ear. I covered the phone, told him to go way, and went back to the call.
Turns out one of his clients was trying to deploy 600+ Virtual Desktops, and it had just dawned on them that Policy, Profiles and the User Personality had become a nightmare to maintain when using a Non Persistent Pooled Desktop environment.
Think about it – each user, every time they log in, has a brand new base model PC.
This Client did a Proof of Concept – easy – P To V a couple of desktops, load a client, connect in using RDP – jobs a good’un – look Mum no hands – I’m doing VDI :-)
So then they ticked all the boxes, app compatibility – tick, ease of use – tick, centrally managed and deployed – tick, user acceptance – tick, user personalization – tick – hey, not so fast.
You CAN have a tick in that box if you are talking One to One, dedicated hosted virtual desktops for a small number of users – otherwise, you need to think again.
It’s like when I started talking to the Aussie market about AppSense back in 2004 “Yes I hear what you say, but I’ve only got 5 servers – it’s not a problem” 6 months later “Yes I hear what you say, but I’ve only got 10 servers – it’s not a problem” 6 months later “Our farm is out of control, now we have 15 Citrix servers we now understand what you guys were on about 6 months ago”
As we always say – we don’t hold a grudge – and we don’t ever say “I told you so”. After all we’re from AppSense – we’re here to help :-)
Virtual Desktops are starting to ramp up, and unfortunately with some clients projects, the devil will be in the detail.
Like the client we are now helping, they thought the “Profile Stuff” built into the VDI solution would be the easy bit. “There’re tools built into the base product” they say – yes there are, but those built in tools can be compared to other in-built free software like NTBackup – yes it will backup a file, but it’s not granular enough, and it just won’t cut it in an Enterprise environment – that’s why companies invest in a Third Party backup products.
AppSense is exactly the same. Built in “Profile” tools or features are o.k. for a simple small deployment where one size fits all, but the reality is most organisations will need more. The reason for this is simple, profile management tools are there to solve profile issues such as bloat and logon times.. they are not designed to be cross platform, cross delivery mechanism personalization solutions, not to mention the need for policy action control also.
It’s just not as easy as saying “We use Roaming Profiles and redirected folders” – try reimaging every PC in your business, every morning, and see if it causes a few hassles for users.
So we keep plugging away out there – educating the market in advance, some clients “get it” up front and they’re the ones with the smooth running, no surprises VDI projects.
As for the rest of you – we’ll be here, happy to answer questions, happy to show and tell – all with passion and enthusiasm.
After all – we’re from AppSense – we’re here to help :-)