We just returned from Citrix Summit 2020 in Orlando. Although this show is for Citrix community channel partners, it is the first event of the season. As such, it seems to serve as a jump start for the community each year. 2020 was no exception!

Citrix began its first events at the Swan and Dolphin in Orlando and many Synergy (Thinergy/iForum etc.) and Summits have been held there. This was the first Citrix show in many years to be held at this same venue – so it was a bit nostalgic for many of us longtime community members. I was at the first Citrix “Thinergy” in 1998 and it was a bit of a walk down memory lane to have the Citrix Summit exhibit space in the same hall this year. For a while it seemed that the community outgrew this venue but now it seems perfectly sized for Citrix Summit again. It’s not that the community is necessarily shrinking, the Swan and Dolphin have also added meeting space over the years so it is a bigger venue now.

Citrix wasted no time with quality keynotes with the latest announcements and messaging for partners. To catch the highlights you can read this Citrix blog.  https://www.citrix.com/blogs/2019/01/07/citrix-summit-19-day-1-highlights/

As for Liquidware, we were a proud Silver sponsor and we leveraged the opportunity to show off the latest version of ProfileUnity and FlexApp that had just been made generally available days before the conference. Many partners asked how we add value and go beyond Citrix UPM, WEM, and Citrix App Layering. We were happy to share with them our ability to run on any Windows desktop, manage users across all Windows OS versions and our integration with the three major clouds. We spoke to many current partners and former partners of Ivanti (including RES and AppSense) who were most interested in our dedication to the channel and the innovation they were seeing in our solutions. Innovation such as ProfileUnity and FlexApp’s ability to leverage Amazon, Google and Microsoft Azure clouds to stage applications, user authored data, and dynamic user profiles to offer customers a zero downtime transition to solutions such as Microsoft WVD and Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops on Azure.

Stratodesk/Liquidware Interview

Many of Liquidware’s vendor partner community were also attending or sponsoring  Synergy including Citrix, Microsoft, Nutanix, IGEL, ThinPrint, Stratodesk, and 10Zig. Look for partner videos from their key representatives in the next few weeks on Liquidware.com.

Liquidware was also invited to be part of IGELs partner community event Sunday evening. As an integrated partner with IGEL, with Stratusphere UX, I also was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to speak directly to IGEL partners at luncheons in the next two days. I shared our ability to have end-to-end user experience metrics with Stratusphere UX which has been integrated into IGEL’s Edge OS firmware.

IGEL Partner Luncheon – Jason E. Smith from Liquidware and Jed Ayres from IGEL

Citrix also threw a final night appreciation party at Universal Studios. It was a great evening and memorable event.

Citrix Summit seems to be a harbinger how Citrix Synergy will go every year. If this year keeps with that tradition we’ll be in store for a great Citrix Synergy in May. Hopefully we’ll see you there!

I personally took this picture while on the edge of Horseshoe Bend in Page, Arizona in 2018. The drop, just three feet from me, was 1,000 feet straight down. You can’t tell it but I was crouching so I would not dare fall…because I did not have a safety net. With a wife and three kids looking on, I had too much to risk! Many others have not been so cautious and have fallen to their death at the exact same spot. But I had a strategy to play it safe.

With Windows 7 end-of-support here (January 14, 2020), what’s your strategy to play it safe with Windows 7? Are you planning on migrating to Windows 10? Do you plan to pay up to $100 a month per desktop to keep using Windows 7? Or are you going to Microsoft WVD so you get extended support for free?

We recently delivered a free webinar that sums up the challenges for those organizations still on Windows 7. We also talk about your options. Time is ticking and you need a safety net if you still have Windows 7 desktops! View the recorded webinar now.

Cloud-hosted Windows desktops are here to stay, it’s only the speed of their adoption and early pertinent use cases that will be debated/decided on a case-by-case basis. Just like on-prem virtual desktops, not every desktop and user will immediately be a good candidate for a cloud-hosted desktop. To best take advantage of maturing cloud technologies, organizations need to assess what desktops are best for certain users. Continue reading →

Lately we’ve had more and more customers that are discovering that Citrix App Layering and Liquidware FlexApp attached application delivery make a great combination.

Citrix App Layering can be used to manage base images in a Citrix environment. The solution also offers a way to layer applications into the OS. The benefits of layering the OS are great for patching and maintaining base images. However, some customers are finding that they’d like their applications to be delivered on a more dynamic basis, simply attached from a VHD, with fast packaging options, and multi-cloud storage features. Some Citrix customers switch entirely over to FlexApp, Continue reading →

To keep desktops performing their best and with the lowest cost, Microsoft WVD desktops are best managed with a non-persistent (stateless) design. With the GA of WVD, Microsoft has introduced an ephemeral OS disk as an option to deploy VMs on Azure. Continue reading →

What you may have missed…

Microsoft Ignite was in Orlando last week as many have occurred before. This Ignite was different though mainly because there was no way to ignore the major spotlight that Microsoft was shining on Windows desktop delivery. More specifically, Microsoft had many sessions and announcements around Microsoft WVD (Windows Virtual Desktop). More on that later below.
Continue reading →

Microsoft WVD (Windows Virtual Desktop) is now generally available and a robust public preview is well underway. Customers familiar with virtual desktops, such as those running Citrix or VMware, may be early adopters.

Many organizations are asking how they can automatically harvest their existing user environments from Citrix or VMware and automatically hydrate FSLogix profile containers on a Native WVD environment. Still others may be looking at using some of their WVD entitlements, such as Windows 10 Multi-Session OS, in a Citrix or VMware environment hosted on Azure. With Liquidware ProfileUnity, it is easy automatically migrate users from any Windows desktop to Microsoft WVD.
Continue reading →

Updated: 10/01/2019 – Microsoft WVD (Windows Virtual Desktop) has set the Microsoft Windows world on its ear! Everyone is interested to learn more about Microsoft’s forthcoming Azure-hosted virtual desktop that promises to be more turnkey then any solution we’ve seen to date.

Microsoft WVD is now available so you can get started with one of the most anticipated desktop delivery platforms Microsoft has ever launched. Liquidware is a chosen inaugural partner of the Microsoft WVD partner ecosystem. As a Microsoft partner of WVD we’ve been aware of the development and the solution for the past two years.
Continue reading →

Special Guest Blog
Author: Symon Perriman
(Symon@SymonPerriman.com, Twitter @SymonPerriman)

Desktop virtualization (or “VDI”) has become commonplace for organizations which need to offload processing from their end user devices to managed desktops due to performance or security needs.  Over the past decade, millions of these temporary virtual machines (VMs) have been created and destroyed by enterprises for their remote site workers, task workers, power users, or those operating in regulated industries with strict compliance needs.

Continue reading →

(2 minute read) – Microsoft WVD (Windows Virtual Desktop) is coming and Liquidware is hearing from many customers that they plan to deploy a proof-of-concept or pilot to test the waters as soon as possible. Microsoft has a public preview program in the works and you can now register here to apply for access to the program. If you’ve been following Microsoft WVD you’ve seen that Liquidware has been named by Microsoft to the short list of focused partners that Microsoft is working closely with, as mentioned in this Microsoft blog.

Continue reading →