AppSense Sponsor IDC Desktop Virtualization Conference

AppSense are a Platinum sponsor at VMware and IDC’s Desktop Virtualisation Conference 2011, which is being held in London on the 15th February 2011. The conference will focus on giving delegates a clear insight into how to unravel what is available in the market today, how vendors are developing their technology offerings and what you can and should be doing now to ensure that you make the most of the opportunities available.

So, what is user virtualization?
AppSense is the world leading provider of User Virtualization solutions to enterprise organizations. User Virtualization manages the user component of the desktop to ensure a seamless, consistent, personalized and configured desktop across all delivery mechanism, platforms and accessing devices.  AppSense technology works with VMware to enable low-cost, standard desktop images to be delivered to employees as fully configured & personalized desktops. AppSense ensures all user types, from task worker to power user, experience the highest quality working experience both inside and outside of their virtual desktop.

AppSense technology is used in the largest environments in the world at companies such as HSBC, Barclays, RBS, JPMorgan Chase, Lowes, United Airlines, Wachovia and ESPN. And is chosen by leading System Integrators such as CSC, DELL, IBM, HP, Fujitsu and Accenture as part of their reference architects and/or offerings.

AppSense Presents…
Gareth Kitson, Senior Marketing Product Manager from AppSense will be discussing “User Virtualization: Ensuring a seamless user experience across all desktop, all devices, all locations” at 10:00-10:25am in the main conference room. In addition, experts from IDC will make presentations on the status of desktop virtualization end-user requirements and future trends.  

Register Today!
As an end user you are entitled to a free place at the conference.

You can register at http://www.uk.idc.com/DV11 entering ‘AppSense Guest’ in the special promotional code box, thereby bypassing the payment process.

If you would like further information or to book an appointment with our on site sales team, please contact marketing@appsense.com.

 
We look forward to seeing you there!

Best Regards,

The AppSense Team

Website: http://www.appsense.com
Email: marketing@appsense.com
For all enquiries please call: +44 (0) 845 223 2100

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

AppSense Wins Best Desktop Software of 2009 at the TechWorld Awards

AppSense are very pleased to announce that AppSense Environment Manager 8.0 has won another high-profile award – The TechWorld Best Desktop Software Product of the year 2009.

The Techworld Awards reward innovation for all aspects of the IT industry and are evaluated on strategy, creativity, innovation and effectiveness. Winners are selected by an independent panel of judges consisting of highly respected individuals from the IT industry and Techworld editors.

This new award is a great achievement and comes only a short time after AppSense Environment Manager recently won Gold in the Desktop Virtualization category in the Best of VMworld 2009 Awards Program.  Combined, these awards, along with our recent record growth and ever strengthening relationships with Citrix, Microsoft and VMware confirm AppSense as the clear leader in the User Environment Management space.

Here is a copy of the AppSense Press Release to accompany this recent award:

AppSense Wins 2009 Techworld Award

AppSense Environment Manager 8.0 announced Desktop Software Product of the Year

 New York, NY – November 18, 2009 – AppSense, the leading provider of user environment management solutions for the enterprise, today announced that AppSense Environment Manager 8.0 has won the Desktop Software Product of the Year award as part of the Techworld Awards 2009. Recognizing both products and users, the Techworld Awards reward innovation for all aspects of the IT industry and are evaluated on strategy, creativity, innovation and effectiveness. Winners are selected by an independent panel of judges consisting of highly respected individuals from the IT industry and Techworld editors.

AppSense Environment Manager is the only enterprise solution that enables standardized desktop environments to be fully configured and personalized without the need for cumbersome profiles or scripts. From server-based computing environments through to virtual and physical desktops, AppSense Environment Manager ensures users always receive a consistent, predictable and personalized working experience. Full desktops can now be configured and business rules applied on-demand, enabling compliant, personalized virtual desktops to be quickly delivered to thousands of users at lowest possible cost. Additionally, AppSense technology is used in conjunction with many third party systems integrators, including CSC, HP, EDS, Dell and IBM.

“We are honored that AppSense Environment Manager has been recognized as the best solution to sit on the desktop by the Techworld editors and members of the IT community,” said Peter Rawlinson, vice president of worldwide marketing at AppSense. “AppSense’s unique approach represents a fundamental change in the way the corporate desktop is constructed and is a core solution in all desktop environments, providing a stable and consistent user environment. With the introduction of Microsoft Windows 7 and a huge uplift in VDI adoption, AppSense looks forward to continuing to provide enterprises with our award-winning solutions, allowing them to increase user productivity and dramatically decrease operational costs.” 

This award comes on the heels of the recent Gold award in the Desktop Virtualization category in the ‘Best of VMworld 2009’ awards for AppSense. For more information about the Techworld awards and to view a complete list of winners, please visit http://awards.techworld.com/2009/winners/.

About AppSense
Founded in 1999, AppSense is the leading provider of user environment management (UEM) solutions for enterprise organizations. UEM is a proven method of reducing desktop management costs by treating the user environment separate from the desktop and delivery method. This separation enables IT to standardize the corporate desktop and automate the delivery of the user’s working environment, significantly reducing operational costs. AppSense technology is used around the world by companies such as JPMorgan Chase, Lowes, United Airlines, Wachovia, Wal-Mart, ESPN and CB Richard Ellis. AppSense has main offices in New York and Manchester, England with additional offices in Palo Alto, London, Munich, Melbourne and Amsterdam.

PR Contact:
Heather Fitzsimmons
Mindshare PR
+1 (650) 947-7400
heather@mindsharepr.com

Please click on the TechWorld Winners Logo to be taken to the TechWorld Awards page to view the winners from other catagories.

Thanks to all those who have helped make Environment Manager the leading UEM solution that it is:)

AppSense Channel on YouTube

A few weeks ago AppSense HQ was the center point for our quarterly Systems Engineering / Pre-Sales Conference..

I thought, while I have 30 or so consultants at my disposal, to take this opportunity to catch them off-guard and have them white-board some of the key AppSense messages and overviews.

Videos / Whiteboard Presentations include (amongst others):

• User Environment Management Overview
• Windows 7 and VDI Overview
• Eliminating the need for Roaming Profiles
• Rolling-back User Personalization Settings
• Automatically Blocking Unauthorized Executables
• Controlling Microsoft Application Per Device Licensing
• Client & Cloud Computing

These videos have now been uploaded to YouTube and are available for viewing here – at the AppSense YouTube Channel

I hope these are of use to people, and where possible, I am keen to read your comments, so please do leave a note of your thoughts on there :)

AppSense on YouTube

Sharing Personalization Settings between Operating Systems – Debunking the Myth

I have recently heard, from several different sources, that it is “best practice” not to share user profiles, or personalization settings, between different operating system platforms. On the surface, this seems a sensible limitation since different operating systems have different user profile structures. 

Vista and Windows Server 2008 (WS08) put most profile data somewhere in “\users\%username%\appdata”, whereas XP and Windows Server 2003 (W2K3) may place it in “\documents and settings\%username%\application data” or “\documents and settings\%username%\local settings” or somewhere else entirely.

We can’t predict where the data will go for a given application which doesn’t help us understand the “splatter” that it makes in the file system. This folder lottery is further compounded by the fact that Vista and WS08 implicitly add the “.v2” extension to any profile path you define for a user. What this results in is that with a roaming profile solution, you are forced to have different profiles, and therefore different settings, between XP/W2K3, which implicitly use a “v1” profile, and Vista/WS08 which explicitly use a “v2” profile (even though the path defined for this profile does not actually include the “.v2” extension).

Applications should get the paths to use within the profile folder hierarchy by using operating system API calls that are the same between the different operating systems but will yield the correct folder for the operating system it is being run on. Unfortunately, not all applications are written this way and some will make assumptions about paths and maybe even hard code them which is likely to cause problems even before operating system migration, particularly in Terminal Server/Citrix XenApp environments.

There is also the class of setting that is actually different between the different operating systems. Take for instance the good old desktop wallpaper which most people, if pushed, will confess is the one item that makes their PC experience “personal” (while this is not an essential productivity related personalization setting, it does however provide a good example as to how even the most basic of settings fail to migrate between OS platforms)  Although users don’t know, and indeed do not need to know, they are actually stored in different file formats between XP/W2K3 and Vista/WS08. Therefore if the setting for this, which is stored in the user’s registry hive, was just unintelligently transplanted between the two operating systems then one of the desktops wouldn’t show the correct wallpaper.

Some implementers may say that it is a good idea to start with clean profiles when moving from one operating system to another system since it is a good opportunity, in their view, for a clean start and to leave all the myriad of settings behind that aren’t apparently used for anything and just clutter the profile. However, against this has to be weighed the cost of the user having to re-personalize their applications and desktop. This costs both in terms of time (both users being interrupted during their workflow as they find a toolbar or application setting they need is missing, and then having to remember where and how to re-make the customization, which could be different to how they would have changed the option on their old OS)  and also can cause a certain amount of resistance when these users tell their yet-to-be-upgraded colleagues is that this great new operating system, which has been months in planning, has lost all of their settings and they are struggling to find the new ways to set things the way “they should be”.

Enter AppSense Environment Manager. All of the technical issues outlined above are addressed by Environment Manager making the migration from one operating system to another, and back again if required, a much less painless experience and instead now becomes an automated, seamless process for both the user and administrator alike. The files used by an application within the locally cached profile folders are stored in a relative, rather than absolute, form in the Environment Manager database which then allows them to be subsequently put back in the correct, operating system specific, folder hierarchies. Because Environment Manager functions on a per-application basis, it can much more accurately target which settings need to be brought over onto the new operating system and it also silently transmogrifies items and their settings, such as desktop wallpapers, to help ensure that seamless migration that administrators dream of. All this, of course, is done with next to no configuration by administrators so they do not need to understand the intricacies of any of the applications and subsequent registry settings and profile structures the user uses. This helps make for quick and easy migrations, although I don’t personally like the term “migration” since it implies a one way movement whereas Environment Manager provides bi-directionality with no extra effort.

So in summary…While it is right to say that it is NOT best practice to share ‘roaming profiles’ across OS platforms, AppSense Environment Manager dispels the myth that sharing ‘personalization settings’ between operating systems is not a recommended best practice –in fact AppSense recommend you embrace it…

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