Citrix & AppSense: Citrix Desktop Transformation Model Partnership White Paper & PoC Kit

The Citrix and AppSense relationship demonstrates over ten years of joint respect, understanding & recognition and engagement with each other as leaders in our respective fields.   Together Citrix and AppSense have developed and delivered solutions into some of the world’s largest and most demanding computing environments which can be read about in our numerous joint Case Studies and Video Testimonials, for example:
Citrix.com – Managing Finance Users with AppSense User Virtualization
Citrix.com – Managing Healthcare’s Roaming User with AppSense

One of the main drivers behind a joint AppSense and Citrix solution, is to enable and adopt a Desktop Transformation project, such as a Citrix XenDesktop environment, faster, with less risk & disruption, at lower cost and with maximum user acceptance.  Best practice and the first step in transforming your existing desktop to a low-cost, dynamic Citrix XenDesktop is to virtualize the user first, separate them along with all of their information from the existing platform, swap out and move to Windows 7 on Citrix XenDesktop, then re-apply the user and all of their relevent settings and data to the new environment.

This best practice to ‘Simplifying Desktop Transformation’ can be seen in the Citrix and AppSense White Paper within the Citrix Desktop Transformation Model:  AppSense User Virtualization – Extending the value of Citrix and forming a strategic component of the Citrix Desktop Transformation Model (DTM), which can be downloaded from Citrix.com here.

Below are a couple of highlights from the paper:

“The Citrix Desktop Transformation Model (DTM) is designed to help customers get from “wow to how” and quickly realize the many benefits of desktop virtualization. Citrix has worked closely with customers and partners – in this case AppSense User Virtualization – to develop the first industry-endorsed, repeatable method for transforming desktop computing from today’s device-centric, distributed management paradigm, to a more user-centric, virtualized model.”

When used with your Citrix Desktop Transformation Project, AppSense User Virtualization provides:

Other topics in the White Paper include:

Upon reading the White Paper and when you are ready for your next steps in Desktop Transformation, you may be interested in the joint Citrix and AppSense Proof of Concept Kit, details of which are also in the paper in the ‘Further information and next actions’ section.

As a founding member of the Citrix Ready program and long-standing Citrix Ready Leadership Partner, which has seen AppSense named as Citrix Ready Solution of the Year, there are other documents created by Citrix to help educate and cover the benefits of User Virtualization in your Citrix environment such as the Citrix Case Study on AppSense – Leading User Virtualization Solution. which provides more information on why “Citrix recommends the use of AppSense for advanced user personalization and desktop configuration requirements in enterprise environments.”

Further information can be found within the Citrix Featured Partners pages, which highlights their leading Citrix partners in their respective fields and how they add further value and form a strategic component of Desktop Virtualization and Transformation – AppSense and XenDesktop Featured Partner Page

I hope this is of help and provides insight on managing the user component of the desktop as part of your Citrix Desktop Transformation Model, please let me know if you have any questions or would like any further information.

Thanks

Gaz

AppSense to Join Virtualization Community at BriForum Europe

BriForum is nearly here!

Blogger and analyst Brian Madden’s annual virtualization geekfest returns to Europe next week (10-11 May) at the Chelsea Football Club in London, and as with all community events, AppSense is proud to be an event sponsor along with Citrix and Intel.  The AppSense team will be turning out in a big way to take in and contribute to the jam-packed agenda of great virtualization community content.

We’ll dive right into the deep end on Tuesday as AppSense’s Benny Tritsch will put his independent community hat on (not AppSense hat) and join respected independent consultant Shawn Bass to reprise their popular session “RDP, RemoteFX, ICA/HDX, EOP and PCoIP VDI: Remoting Protocols Turned Inside Out.” If the past is any indication, this will likely be one of the most attended and discussed sessions at the event as two of the sharpest guys in the space drill into how graphics and media remoting works and do a head-to-head comparison of the most popular protocols.

Later on Tuesday, our newly appointed VP and CTO Harry Labana and Brian Madden will team up for the other must-see session of the day, “The Future Desktop: What Should it Do and What Should it Look Like?” There is no shortage of new desktop and application delivery approaches these days, and there are even more views and opinions on what is on offer and what best suits specific use cases. Wondering where is it all going and to what degree will IT teams be able to rise to the occasion? You can bet that Harry and Brian will each have some insightful and provocative perspectives, and that neither will hold back from speaking their mind.

On Wednesday, Brian will join AppSense technical minds Benny Tritsch, Simon Townsend, and David Shepherd, as well as highly respected Citrix CTP Pierre Marmignon, owner of www.CitrixTools.net and the free (and controversial) Virtual User Environment Manager solution, for a roundtable discussion on the state of User Virtualization. This all-star group will cover the key elements of User Virtualization, the types of solutions available, and how it is being applied in practice today.

AppSense’s Jon Wallace, like Benny Tritsch, will be wearing his non-AppSense, independent hat when he delivers his session “Mandatory and Default User Profile Tuning.” A recognized expert on the Windows registry and user profile architecture and author of www.InsideTheRegistry.com, Jon will demonstrate a practical collection of tips and tricks for optimizing log-on speed and usability when using mandatory and default user profiles. These tips are useful regardless of whether AppSense products are being used, so it’s a great opportunity for attendees to tap AppSense’s unmatched Windows profile knowledge.

As an event sponsor, AppSense will also sponsor the Geek Out Game Show, along with Citrix and Intel, on Tuesday at 5:35pm to 6:35pm

Throughout week, the AppSense team will also be manning the Demo Lab, so if you are attending BriForum Europe, be sure to stop by to say hello. It should be a great week!

For a the full agenda on this great event, please visit http://briforum.com/Europe/agenda.html   

See you all there!

Virtualization Review: The Many Faces of Desktop Virtualization

Simon Rust, VP of Technology, AppSense (Twitter @SimonARust ) has posted a very interesting article on his VirtualizationReview blog – The Many Faces of Desktop Virtualization.  In this article Simon describes some of the many technologies used to ‘Virtualize a Desktop’ and how these differ from ‘VDI’

Topics include:

• Operating System Provisioning
• Remote Desktop Services
• Client Hypervisors
• Client-side Hosted Virtual Desktops
• Application Virtualization

You can read the article in full on VirtualizationReview.com here

Cheers!
Gaz

Citrix Webinar! – How AppSense User Virtualization adds value to Citrix XenDesktop & FlexCast

Citrix are hosting a webinar showing why they awarded AppSense as the Citrix Ready Solution of the Year by demonstrating how AppSense User Virtualization adds significant value to Citrix XenDesktop and FlexCast technology. 

“Citrix recommends the use of AppSense for advanced user personalization and desktop configuration requirements in enterprise environments. AppSense enables standard, componentized non-persistent virtual desktops to be personalized across a range of desktop and application delivery technologies and platforms.” (quote taken from the Citrix Ready  case study: AppSense – Leading User Virtualization Solution is Citrix Ready)

What will attendees learn/gain/benefit?
Through FlexCast technology, Citrix XenDesktop delivers corporate desktops and applications to all user types in the organisation. AppSense extends this by providing a fully personalised and configured desktop experience for all user types, which means that all user related information can be applied to any desktop, regardless of which Citrix FlexCast technology is used to deliver the desktop, or operating system being delivered. When considering the move to a new virtual Citrix XenDesktop environment, AppSense User Virtualization is proven to help simplify and reduce the time and cost of any Desktop Transformation project.

Time and Date:
The webinar is scheduled for 1500hrs – 1600hrs (BST) on Monday 16th May

You can learn more about the webinar and register your place on CitrixChannelTraining here

Look forward to seeing you there!

Gaz

Financial Tech Forum Guest Article by AppSense: So Much Desktop Virtualization, So Little Time

In addition to his resident blog on Virtualization Review – Virtualizing the User, Simon Rust, VP of Technology, AppSense (Twitter @SimonARust ) recently provided a guest contribution to the Financial Technologies Forum LLC – The Bull Run: Where FinTech Talks.  In this article – So Much Desktop Virtualization, So Little Time – Simon examines the potential size of the VDI Market and based on his 10 year experience within AppSense working with the worlds largest Financial Institutions, looks at some of the main challenges they are facing in their move to VDI.

Simon also details how leading finance houses are overcoming such challenges with the inclusion of User Virtualization technologies as part of their migration to a virtual desktop estate.

The article can be read here

AppSense Sponsor Citrix Partner Accelerator Events – Register Here

As the Citrix Ready Partner of the Year, AppSense is happy and proud to once again be sponsoring the Citrix Partner Accelerator 2011 events in Dublin on 17th February and in Birmingham on 10th March. Along with Citrix and our joint distributors, we’ll be there to deliver Commercial & Market updates including joint Go To Market initiatives between Citrix, Microsoft & AppSense, answer your questions and ensure you can maximize Citrix adoption in 2011 through User Virtualization.

If you haven’t already done so please register for Birmingham or Dublin today.

Also at the events, find out more about why out of over 15,000 Citrix Ready Partner Solutions, Citrix presented AppSense with The Citrix Ready® Solution Partner of the Year Award, and recommends AppSense as the leading User Virtualization provider. Read the Citrix Ready Case Study on AppSense here.

If you would like to arrange an appointment with the AppSense event team, please contact ChannelMarketing@appsense.com or speak to your AppSense Channel Manager.

We look forward to seeing you there!

Best Regards,

CDC selects AppSense over the competition for mix of over 10k Citrix and Physical Desktops

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) selects AppSense (Citrix Ready Solution of the Year)  to provide a seamless & personal user experience across their physical desktop and new Citrix virtual desktop environment.

CDC have over 10,000 unique visitors accessing their Citrix infrastructure from multiple device and site locations on a monthly basis and found that personalization was unable to effectively roam between desktops using only Roaming Profiles.  Further more desktops must be dynamically configured with different security rules, access permissions and lockdown when the user access their desktop from different locations or devices.

As part of any large-scale deployment of a User Virtualization solution the CDC performed due diligence and evaluated other technologies on the market, however found;
“AppSense is the market leader in the user virtualization space so it was an easy decision for us. We evaluated other products but AppSense was really the only solution out there that could scale and do what we needed. We knew AppSense was the right approach to deliver the best experience for the user and the best way for our IT department to manage the system.” – Lee Eilers, Remote Access Services Team Lead – CDC.

CDC also decided on AppSense as their strategic solution for the universal support of managing the user across locally installed applications, Citrix delivered applications, and Microsoft App-V applications.

Personally i think this is a great case study as it covers:

•  The requirement for (AppSense) User Virtualization (UV) in a large virtual desktop environment
•  As per many of our other Enterprise customers, the number of UV seats is actually bigger than desktop virtualization seats as it also spans Physical Desktops
•  Policy is also of huge importance and only AppSense provides the granular controls required.

You can read the PDF case study by clicking on the image below – other customers case studies and videos can be found on both AppSense.com and Citrix.com

Thanks to all at CDC and AppSense for great work on this leading deployment of Citrix, Microsoft and AppSense technologies.
Cheers

Gaz