VMware View 4.5: No RTO Virtual Profiles – But if it did, would it be enough?

Comments over VMware’s decision to not ship Virtual Profiles (the technology VMware gained through their acquisition of RTO software) with VMware View 4.5 continues to rock around the Internet. There are people who bought RTO Virtual Profiles before the acquisition by VMware, who are now upset about the dropping of support (this can be seen in Bridget Botelho’s article on SearchVirtualDesktop.com – Virtual Profiles customers endure VMware acquisition of RTO Software – where RTO customers have now switched to a User Virtualization solution from AppSense) . There are also people who thought that the inclusion of Virtual Profiles in View would solve their user virtualization problems and who now will have to wait longer to try it out, some of which actually purchased VMware View on the premise that RTO Virtual Profile technology would then be included in VMware View 4.5.

All of this misses the point. Whether the RTO Virtual Profile technology makes if into VMware View or not, simple “profile” replacement/management products are not sufficient to successfully virtualize the user. To understand why this is the case we need to stand back and look at the overall objective of desktop virtualization and hence how it achieves its benefits and also the purpose of Profile Management technology. The overall objective of desktop virtualization is to create a more manageable PC platform. The problem with PCs has been that as soon as it is used it becomes unique, and hence has to be supported as such – a more complex and expensive proposition.

The way in which organizations are achieving cost and service delivery goals through desktop virtualization is through componentization, standardization and automation: Treating the client image as a number of separable components that can be standardized and delivered automatically, on demand. Only by doing this can greater efficiency be achieved in the images users are running, which reduces user management costs by eliminating configuration drift which impacts service delivery.  Those components consist of OS, corporate apps and the user – not just a user profile, but, ALL aspects of the user.

Profile Management focuses primarily on optimizing the delivery user personalization settings.  An important part of the user environment, but by no means is this everything that constitutes you as a user in an organization. In addition, such profile management technology was developed to solve the issues of Roaming Profiles in Server Based Computing environments where profiles were subject to bloat, corruption and lead to increased logon times.  Server Based Computing environments that had a consistent operating system and application delivery mechanism, so the user profile was always compatible with the environment i.e. Server 2003 requires Version 1 Windows Profiles where as Server 2008 requires a Version 2 Windows Profile.   However in VDI, where different operating systems are used, the same roaming profile cannot be shared and so the profile management technology to speed up logon times is rendered useless.  Likewise, with Application Virtualization, not all user settings are saved to the profile, and so profile management is again irrelevant if the profile is not capturing the settings in the first place.

Another way to think of this is that VDI achieves economies of scale across the estate by letting us manage a single instance of each of the desktop components no matter how many users use it. Techniques in use to achieve this include OS streaming and linked clones to deliver the operating system; application virtualization and application publishing to deliver applications; plus user virtualization to deliver all the user-specific aspects of the machine. User virtualization is a critical component in this model because it allows us to deliver a user experience that is familiar and acceptable to the user while giving IT the ability to standardize the underlying components and deliver them as they wish. The user environment consists of all user-specific aspects of the machine and may include user personalization to deliver a familiar look and feel, personal applications where these are allowed, user data, and the ability for the organization to set up the environment as necessary and in accordance with corporate policy. In many ways, the user environment becomes the key to successfully managing in the componentized model because it represents what the user and the business regards as important.  It is also very difficult to standardize the user environment, and this is therefore where the real value-add in future desktop estate management lies; a user-centric approach to client computing, not a device or resource-centric view.  This makes it critical to select a user virtualization solution with high levels of manageability and scalability.

With this context it is easy to see that a simple profile replacement product would not meet the needs of any but the most simplistic of implementations. The question should not be ‘when will VMware have a profile replacement capability?’ but ‘when will VMware customers use View with their user virtualization platform?’.  That platform should allow all aspects of the user to be virtualized and delivered back into the desktop the next time the user logs on. That desktop could be VMware View delivered, Citrix XenDesktop delivered, locally installed, published through Citrix XenApp, virtualized with App-V, ThinApp – or any combination of the above.  This way, users get the familiar and productive experience that they would expect, and IT can more effectively manage the platform regardless of desktop delivery mechanism and configure the desktop based on the user or device context.

Any desktop and application personalization solution that is tied to just one platform, profile management for example, is inevitably inefficient. This is evident in Cox Communications whereby they found even when trialing RTO Virtual Profiles prior to the acquisition with VMware View, found profile management alone to be insufficient and instead invested in AppSense User Virtualization to enable the adoption of their virtual desktop roll out. – click this link for PDF

In short, businesses need to give user virtualization their full attention when selecting a solution and not expect that a simple profile replacement product included with a single platform could meet their needs.

Thoughts?

Thanks.
Gaz

451 Group Report: Cox Comm’s deploys VDI with AppSense over ‘Persona’ / Profile Management

In a recent post of mine, I highlighted an article Andrew Wood published discussing if ‘Persona’/Profile Management really is User Virtualization/User Environment Management by another name.

Andrew highlighted that the technology VMware recently acquired from RTO Software (Virtual Profiles), while good at reducing user logon times, does not provide enterprise scalable Personalization and Policy Management.  Instead, organizations need to consider a user virtualization solution to enable mass adoption of desktop virtualization technologies.

Coincidently, The 451 Group have just published a case study confirming exactly what Andrew covered, through the use of a real life VMware View customer that was unable to adopt VDI with only logon time / profile management technology from RTO Virtual Profiles (which will at some point be incorporated into VMware View)

Cox Communications is one of the largest telecoms in the US, with more than six million customers and 22,000 employees.  They started their VDI Proof of Concept back in 2008 but unfortunately the initial test users hated the non-persistent virtual desktops as every time they logged off, they lost all of their settings and IT staff would have to spend 20mins reconfiguring individual desktops. 

In a bid to resolve this issue, Cox investigated the use of profile management technology coupled with the non-persistent virtual desktops.  Individual persistent virtual desktops had already been discounted because storage costs & image management would prohibit scalability.  

In the first round, Cox trialled RTO Virtual Profiles, but found that while it may reduce logon times, it did not scale well.  Cox next tried AppSense user virtualization, and like for so many others, voila – it just worked.  All user specific information was virtualized and saved away from the non-persistent desktops and instead stored in the AppSense User Virtualization Infrastructure and would then reapply this to any desktop, regardless of how it is delivered to a user, across any OS or 32/64bit boundary.

This goes someway to prove, that while it is nice to reduce your logon times, it is more important to have your latest settings, data, applications and desktop configuration policies, regardless of how it is delivered – otherwise users simply reject the new virtual platform and physical desktops will remain a pain for many corporate IT environments.

Further to Andrew’s article, this also proves some of the comments made when VMware acquired RTO by the likes of:

Jon Wallace on InsideTheRegistry.com: The RTO Acquisiation – What Now For AppSense and RES Software?

 Brian Madden on BrianMadden.com: Confirmed: VMware buys everypart of RTO Software, except what the owe Citrix

Martin Ingram on this AppSense Community Blog: Congratulations to VMware and RTO Software

While it is good that VMware now have profile management technology, like Citrix with User Profile Manager, this shows that profile management technology is for reducing the pains associated with roaming profiles (which are more suited for use in RDS and XenApp environments, certainly not complex & dynamic virtual desktop environments) such as corruption and logon times.  It is not a user virtualization solution with enterprise scalable infrastructure, for enabling mass adoption of desktop virtualization within the enterprise.   AppSense are proud to continue operating as pioneers in the user virtualization space, with our technology chosen by enterprises as part of their desktop management projects globally…

A copy of The 451 Group report can be found here:  The 451 Group User Deployment Report – Cox Communications deploys VDI

Thanks

Gaz

Congratulations to VMware and RTO software

Congratulations to all at RTO software – Further to VMware announcing they OEM’d RTO Virtual Profiles back at VMworld 2009,  Vmware has just announced that they have bought three of their products for incorporation into View. RTO goes forward with Tscale, their performance management product and they will presumably continue to innovate with more products in the future.

Congratulations to VMware. You now have a profile management solution gets you base level personalization and the possibility to extend what you have bought over time.

I have been saying for quite some time that base level personalization is a must-have for all desktop virtualization vendors – it is a glaring omission if it is not present. But personalization is only a small part of user virtualization and VMware will have their work cut out if they want to deliver all aspects of the user environment at enterprise scale.

More critically though, there is a fundamental problem in a user virtualization solution that only works across a single vendor’s products – there is no such thing as a single vendor customer. Customers already have a mix of different technologies serving their users: Desktops, Laptops, server based computing, application virtualization and an increasing proportion of hosted virtual desktops. In the future they will have client virtualization and other technologies, maybe layering, maybe images on a stick. Unless all the technologies come from the single vendor, VMware in this case, then customers will have to manage the user environment in different ways for each technology – an expensive and wasteful approach.

User virtualization solutions must deliver across all platforms in the business.

Martin Ingram

KISS and make-up

I’ve always been a massive advocate of ‘KISS’ – Not the grease-paint laden 1970s glam rock band (although I do own a few dozen of their albums and sport their band logo on my arm!) – the concept of ‘Keep It Simple, Stupid’.

In my opinion, one of the most important factors in designing and building software is to ensure that the user interface, and the concepts behind the software itself, are kept as simple and intuitive as possible.

There’s no point in implementing a killer feature if that feature is too complex and too difficult to actually configure and maintain as it may result in confused end-users and, inevitably, a redundant piece of functionality.

On the other hand, by reducing the complexity of a particular piece of functionality too much, software vendors run the risk of making that particular feature totally inflexible and to some extent of little to no use to the end-user at all!

Therefore, there has to be a balance between simplicity and flexibility.

A good product needs to be designed well, proven to work and simple to understand. Take the rock group KISS as an example. They started way back in the early 70’s with a lead guitarist, a bass player, lead vocalist and a drummer. Add some make-up and a track list of great songs and a global brand was instantly created. The concept was simple.

Start tampering with a working formula and things start to go wrong.  Change the appearance (i.e. remove the make-up) and the ‘product’ becomes misunderstood. Start making things more complex and consumers become disillusioned.

“If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!”

AppSense Environment Manager can be seen as a complex product. It can be used in a variety of ways to solve a variety of different environment problems.

So, have AppSense delivered on the concept of ‘KISS’ with Environment Manager? Have we provided a killer product that is simple to understand, yet flexible and compelling? Maybe, maybe not. There is always room for improvement. However, improvement must not come at a cost to the consumer.

Our next product release, currently scheduled for Q1 2010, aims to introduce improvements to the way the software is currently configured and maintained, without adding unecessary complexity or introducing the risk of ‘breaking something that used to work’.

So,  ‘Keeping It Simple, Stupid’ is, ironically, not a simple task. However, by adopting the concept, it may save you many ‘Crazy, Crazy Nights’ trying to put things right in the future.

AppSense Win Best Desktop Virtualization Solution At VMworld

Live from VMworld 09, AppSense – the world leading User Environment Management solution provider – are extremely pleased to be awarded Gold in the Best Desktop Virtualization award for AppSense Environment Manager 8.0.

AppSense beat off strong competition from Liquidware Labs for their Desktop Virtualization Diagnostics tool, Stratusphere, and Workspace Virtualization vendor Virtual Computer Inc. for their NxTop product.

Like most that witness the capabilities of AppSense, the VMworld judges said “AppSense rocked our boat… It offers the most complete user environment management system out there.”  This comes as a further endorsement (following the recent announcement from Citrix) on the importance of a true UEM solution to enable enterprise adoption of VDI at lowest possible cost over and above basic in-built profile management technologies.

AppSense Environment Manager enables IT to deliver fully personalized virtual desktops from just a single set of OS and Application images, enabling scalable user adoption.  UEM allows organizations to implement virtual desktops at much lower TCO than using Profile Management alone.  “UEM addresses not just personal settings and profile data, but also the initial configuration of a desktop, including applying user installed applications, providing a ‘follow-me’ personality with cross operating system platform support, as well as enterprise-scalability and end-to-end visibility. Personalization settings can be managed across multiple operating systems, desktop delivery mechanisms and on virtual, physical and offline devices.” explains Pete Rawlinson, VP of Marketing for AppSense.

Oliver Sills, Senior Product Manager for AppSense Environment Manager said, “As you can imagine, we are delighted to win such a coveted award at this prestigious event.  We are continually working with our customers and partners to develop the solution and I would like to dedicate this award to our strong and committed development teams who have worked tirelessly to produce such a great product.”

Looking ahead, AppSense will continue to work with customers to enable some of the largest VDI deployments in the world, along with the development of the UEM solution set… with some extremely exciting product developments in the pipeline…

A list of the winners from the other categories can be found here

Further to my blog post, the official AppSense Press Release on winning this award can be found here

Jon Wallace, Senior Solution Architect and Head of US System Engineers

Live from VMworld – VMware to OEM RTO Virtual Profiles™ into VMware View

Live from VMworld 2009 – A press release shows that VMware are to OEM the RTO Virtual Profiles Product into VMware View.

On the recent announcement at VMworld 2009,  VMware are planning to OEM the RTO Virtual Profiles™ technology into VMware View – this is great news, and yet another proof point of the importance of user personalization in the virtual desktop space.   It looks as though VMware have made a similar move Citrix did some months back when they acquired SepagoPROFILES for inclusion into their Xen line, and it makes total sense.

Let’s take a minute to appreciate the basic premise of how to reduce desktop TCO through virtualization.  The only way to deliver cost-effective virtual desktops is to standardize the corporate image.  However, if you standardize, then you also have to provide personalization capabilities in order to get the user adoption needed to make the transition to virtual desktops a success.  In this respect,  providing some level of personalization baked into platform solutions such as View is necessary.

By adding RTO technology, VMware will leverage the Windows User Roaming Profile –  which has been successfully used in Terminal Services environments for many years.  This will certainly ease some of the pains typically associated with Roaming Profiles, such as profile corruption and slow logon times.  However, in more complex, enterprise environments, something more than profile management is required to provide a local PC equivalent experience from a virtualized, standard corporate desktop (as Sumit Dhawan has explained here).   Personalizing a virtual desktop requires the ability to automatically set-up and configure the desktop based on the user’s role and context (e.g. what printers they can use, what drives they can access, use of peripheral devices), support for the installation and persistence of user-installed applications, as well as the application of all user-customized settings across all applications.  All these in combination are known as the ‘user environment’, and the most important characteristic of the user environment is that it is client OS and delivery mechanism agnostic – effectively providing a ‘follow me’ user personality anywhere, using any delivery method and to any device.  This is simply not possible using profile management alone, and why a User Environment Management Solution is required.

The thing is, most companies don’t have homogeneous desktop estates.  This is true in physical PCs today and will also be the case in their virtualized equivalents.  Companies typically use combinations of delivery technologies, applications (corporate and non-corporate), client OS and devices to deliver an optimum, productive working experience to their employees.  Based on extensive experience with many customers rolling out desktop virtualization projects, we know that successful (i.e. low-cost, high adoption) virtual desktops require the ability to automatically deliver non-persisted, leveraged corporate OS and apps on-demand from a centralized source.  To this fresh, clean desktop session must then be added the independently-managed user environment as described above – note this must be added selectively in response to user actions.  We are well beyond profile management now!

Adding RTO Virtual Profiles into the View offering will certainly enable VMware’s customer base to start to roll-out Windows XP based virtual desktops (Windows Vista & Windows 7 will be supported in future releases)  in a controlled way, while providing some personalization capabilities.  As these implementations start to grow, the need for a more comprehensive treatment of the user environment will become essential.

User personalization is an exciting and rapidly-growing space!  We’re working closely with VMware, Citrix, Microsoft and our joint customers to ensure successful and viable virtual desktop roll-outs …..we look forward to seeing this vital part of the new desktop paradigm grow in importance over the coming months and years!

Pete Rawlinson
VP WW Marketing, AppSense

Live from VMworld 2009 – A press release shows that VMware are to OEM the RTO Virtual Profiles Product into VMware View. Press Release can be found here