Citrix Press Release: AppSense uses Citrix GoToMeeting to boost sales.

I opened my Google Alerts folder this morning and was pleasantly surprised to see an alert for ‘AppSense’ being part of a Citrix Press Release.

The announcement focuses on our extensive use of Citrix GoToMeeting and GoToWebinar technologies to interact with colleagues between our global offices and of course customer and partner interaction also.

Below is a copy of the Press Release:

AppSense Boosts Sales and Engagement with IT Managers Using Citrix Online’s GoToMeeting

Leading provider of user environment management solutions utilises online meetings to collaborate, demonstrate and present

Chalfont, UK. – 2^nd February, 2010: – AppSense, a leading provider of user environment management solutions (UEM), has boosted its sales efforts and market expansion plans by using Citrix® GoToMeeting® to engage online with enterprises and their IT departments worldwide. The easy-to-use online web conferencing tool has also delivered 40 per cent cost savings due to the all-you-can-meet, flat-fee pricing model.

AppSense is using GoToMeeting to present the AppSense product portfolio to prospects and hold briefings with existing customers and partners. The reliability and rich features of the online meeting tool are enabling AppSense to provide flawless demonstrations of its technologically advanced solutions and hold sessions with multiple participants no matter where they are located.

GoToMeeting features AppSense is using to maximise the effectiveness of its online collaboration approach include:

• Annotation tools – to draw, highlight and point to items of interest on the screen
• Sharing capabilities – to instantly change presenter or share keyboard and mouse controls
• One-click meetings – that can be set up on the fly or scheduled via easy integration with Outlook
• Total audio – so participants can join via VoIP, phone or a combination of the two

“We spend a lot of time interacting with our prospects, customers and partners and being able to visually demonstrate new products and technologies is so much more effective than explaining it in words,” said Angela Cunvin, Marketing Manager. “GoToMeeting allows us to quickly and easily jump onto impromptu web meetings to talk through more technical aspects of our products, which makes the job of our staff a lot easier and their time more productive.”

With a focus on global expansion, AppSense has also rolled out GoToMeeting to its travelling employees, who need to collaborate with each other while they are on the road, as Angela Cunvin explains: “Real-time communication is key for our staff to work productively and effectively with an increasingly global customer base. GoToMeeting offers us the instant connectivity of email or a messaging service, but with the richness of collaboration achieved through face-to-face meetings.”

“Many businesses now operate multiple sites in worldwide locations, making face-to-face meetings expensive, inconvenient and difficult to arrange. AppSense is demonstrating how GoToMeeting can break down borders and enable companies to learn, share and collaborate, no matter where they are,” says Andrew Millard, Director of eCommerce, Citrix Online EMEA.

To learn more about GoToMeeting and to try the product free for 30 days, visit www.gotomeeting.com

About AppSense
AppSense is the leading provider of user environment management solutions for the enterprise, with over ten years proven track record in the virtualisation space. User environment management is a proven method of reducing desktop management costs by treating the user environment independently of the desktop and delivery method. This separation enables IT to standardise the corporate desktop and automate the delivery of the user’s working environment, significantly reducing operational cost. For more information, visit www.appsense.com

About Citrix Online
Citrix Online provides secure, easy-to-use online solutions that enable people to work from anywhere with anyone. Whether using GoToMyPC® to access and work on a remote PC, GoToAssist® to support customers, GoToMeeting® to hold online meetings or GoToWebinar® for large online events, our customers are increasing productivity, decreasing travel costs and improving sales, training and service on a global basis. We have more than 35,000 small and medium-sized businesses using our products, and hundreds of thousands of individual professionals as customers. A division of Citrix Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ: CTXS), Citrix Online is based in Santa Barbara, California, with satellite offices and data centres throughout the world. For more information, visit www.citrixonline.com.

About Citrix
Citrix Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ:CTXS) is a leading provider of virtualization, networking and software-as-a-service (SaaS) technologies for more than 230,000 organizations worldwide. Its Citrix Delivery Center, Citrix Cloud Center (C3) and Citrix Online Services product families radically simplify computing for millions of users, delivering applications as an on–demand service to any user, in any location on any device. Citrix customers include the world’s largest Internet companies, 99 percent of Fortune Global 500 enterprises, and hundreds of thousands of small businesses and prosumers worldwide. Citrix partners with over 10,000 companies worldwide in more than 100 countries. Founded in 1989, annual revenue in 2008 was $1.6 billion.

DABCC Video Podcast – Citrix XenDesktop + AppSense = Enterprise Desktop Virtualization Solution

As you may be aware, Citrix recommend AppSense as the leading User Environment Manager solution and together we promote a joint XenDesktop + AppSense solution for large enterprise environments.

Further to the joint Citrix XenDesktop & AppSense collateral that can be found on the Citrix webpages, leading industry analyst and commentator Doug Brown from DABCC brought Derek Cheung (Senior Product Marketing Manager for XenDesktop, Citrix) and myself (Product Marketing Manager, AppSense) together to record a Video Podcast.

The podcast covers an overview of Citrix XenDesktop 4 and when, why and how AppSense is essential in certain environments and has enabled some of the largest Citrix deployments where we together share some 4,000+ customers.

“In this video Derek and Gareth discuss the requirements to create an enterprise desktop virtualization solution along with where AppSense fits in to Citrix’s solution stack.”

For further information and to see this video podcast in full, please visit DABCC via this link.

 Hope you enjoy the podcast as much as we did making it :)

Citrix XenDesktop + AppSense User Environment Management

Desktop Virtualization Technical Briefing with Citrix, Microsoft, AppSense and more key ISV’s

Learn the difference between just throwing in a VDI solution, and designing a true Desktop & Application Delivery Architecture. Learn why most VDI projects fail, and the best practices that will show a solid ROI to your CFO/CIO.

Don’t try to bolt-on a Frankenstein solution, – come hear from our team of technical experts. You’ll also experience a great networking opportunity to meet your peers, and learn from their projects as well. Some questions we will help you answer…

• Why is desktop virtualization different than server virtualization
• Is VDI the same thing as Desktop or Application Delivery (hint: it is not)
• What architecture/designs are available
• What are the SAN requirements for Desktop Delivery
• How do you handle user profiles
• How is printing different with virtual desktops or Terminal Services
• When do you use Terminal Server based Application Delivery versus Desktop Delivery (or both)
• What licensing is needed from each manufacturer to implement a solid desktop virtualization architecture

A solid line up of technical presenters; from Microsoft, Citrix, AppSense, and AGSI coming to a city near you…

 10/27/09 – Raleigh, NC

10/28/09 – Charlotte, NC 

10/29/09 – Charleston, SC

 More details: http://www.advantec.us/events-dtv.htm

To register: http://www.advantec.us/eventspdtv-reg.asp

DABCC Podcast – AppSense (Martin Ingram) And Doug Brown Discuss Citrix XenDesktop 4 & User Environment Management

Douglas Brown interviews Martin Ingram, Vice President of Strategy at AppSense. Douglas and Martin discuss the recent release of Citrix XenDesktop 4, what this means for the desktop virtualization, AppSense, and VMware. Martin also talks a bit about their upcoming “user installed applications” technology which will allow end-users to install their own applications and have those apps roam with the user while allowing IT to centrally manage these ‘one off’ applications centrally.

The podcast is hosted on DABCC.com and can be found here

DABCC Podcast

AppSense Announces Support for Citrix XenDesktop 4 with Leading User Personalization Technology

The Only Partner Technology Recommended by Citrix to Ensure All Users Receive a Fully Personalized Working Environment at the Lowest Possible Cost

AppSense, the leading provider of User Environment Management solutions for the enterprise, today announced full support for Citrix XenDesktop 4,a groundbreaking new Citrix product designed to make virtual desktops a mainstream reality for hundreds of millions of corporate employees for the first time ever.

“AppSense has been working closely with Citrix and our joint customers for many years and we commend Citrix on this bold and significant move. By combining two market-leading products and introducing FlexCast technology to accommodate every user type, Citrix has been instrumental in further reducing the barriers to mainstream virtual desktop adoption,” said Charles Sharland, Chairman and CEO, AppSense. “As the only enterprise solution recommended by Citrix to provide comprehensive desktop personalization for all users, we look forward to providing our Citrix customers a way to scale their virtual desktop estates at lowest cost and with maximum user adoption.”

AppSense, a Citrix partner of over 10 years with some 4000 joint customers around the world, provides technology solutions that enable low-cost, standard desktop images to be delivered to employees as fully personalized desktops. This ensures maximum user adoption from just a few corporate base images, reducing cost, complexity and risk. Their User Environment Management solution is the only technology to provide on-demand desktop personalization across all delivery methods and operating system versions.

Based on this unique level of customer experience, AppSense is well positioned to work in conjunction with Citrix FlexCast to provide centralized management of the user personality for task workers, knowledge workers and power users in both server and client-hosted desktop environments.

“We look at the desktop in a different way at AppSense,” stated Pete Rawlinson, VP WW Marketing at AppSense. “We effectively separate the desktop into three layers; corporate operating system, corporate applications and the user. By managing all aspects of the user independent of the desktop, IT are able to standardize the corporate operating system and applications, delivering them on-demand only when needed. The combination of Citrix XenDesktop 4 and AppSense User Environment Management enables companies to truly eliminate unnecessary desktop management costs while ensuring users of all types receive the very best working experience – even in the most heterogeneous environments.”

This layered model looks to be the way forward for mainstream virtual desktop adoption, as Rachel Chalmers of The 451 Group states:

“Separating out operating systems and applications and provisioning them dynamically means that desktops can be assembled per session and disposed of when the session is over. To make all of this work like a physical PC, though, administrators need to store stateful user settings and preferences elsewhere. Separating out this layer of user data is what we call user virtualization. Citrix ecosystem vendors pioneered the art of maintaining these user profiles in terminal services environments, and AppSense has led the way in adapting it to desktop virtualization.”

AppSense will be a sponsor at the upcoming Citrix global online event on October 20, 2009, “Secrets, Lies and VDI: Dispel the Myths and Uncover the Truth about Desktop and Application Virtualization”.   Click here to register your place…

Citrix XenDesktop 4 – Now Includes XenApp.

Today Citrix announced the availability of XenDesktop Version 4, to be released in November 09.  This is a significant announcement as it incorporates the combining of XenDesktop and XenApp into one (marketed) product – XenDesktop 4.  Effectively, XenDesktop 4 is now the Citrix virtual desktop solution for all user types (including task workers on TS) with XenApp providing the application / TS side.

Citrix have made a bold and significant move here.  By combining their new VDI solution with their long-standing and highly penetrated server-based computing solution, they have not only created a compelling product and simplified message, they have also provided a nice VDI on-ramp to their existing XenApp customer base, enabling them to potentially take a decent piece of market share. XenDeskop 4 will provide Citrix customers an easy on-ramp to VDI while maintaining their existing XenApp investment, as well as enabling them to leverage other technologies such as Microsoft Hyper-V and VMware vSphere.

What this move demonstrates is the high importance the major players like Citrix and VMware are now putting on VDI.  We’re starting to see some major moves in the space as companies make a play for market share and I’m sure there’s a lot more to come. 

As Citrix points out in their press release, the quality of the user experience is of paramount importance in the mainstream adoption of this new desktop estate – a desktop estate that will combine terminal server, server- and client-hosted VDI, blade systems, physical desktops and myriad other technologies, to deliver the lowest-cost, highest quality desktop to the employee.  Maintaining a consistent, personal and productive environment to the user regardless of how the desktop is delivered seems set to become a major objective in this ‘new world’.  Using Citrix FlexCast™ to accommodate the needs of all user types could be used in conjunction with a personality management solution to ensure a ‘follow me’ persona across all delivery mechanisms – effectively making the method of delivery seamless to the user.

With Windows 7 on its way, this could be just the catalyst needed for the VDI adoption curve to change its trajectory……….

AppSense Achieves Record Growth in Q3

Despite such tough economic times, I am very pleased to be part of an industry sector that despite budget cuts, is operating at a profitable level and achieving record growth.  Virtualization is a core part of many computing environments, and as technologies progress greater costs reductions can be achieved and as such is able to secure IT CapEx budget and continue to fuel virtualization development.

AppSense have experience profitable year on year growth since inception back in 1999, yet despite all the financial trouble we read about on a daily basis, 2009 has proven to be a record breaking year for AppSense.

A huge part of this success has come from our strong Channel, following huge investment and years of close relationships.  With that said, to accommodate the huge uplift in demand for our solution set, AppSense have now reached out to a leading training company to help provide technical support and knowledge transfer for our ever growing Channel.

Further details on this can be found in this press release.