(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.

Liquidware and Microsoft Deliver Joint Solution Brief

The Liquidware Essentials suite provides key Adaptive Workspace Management solutions for every phase of a Microsoft WVD deployment and production environment. Liquidware’s popular suite includes assessment, application planning and layering, migration, ongoing user environment management, and user experience monitoring & diagnostics.

The team here at Liquidware have been working closely with Microsoft for the past year in anticipation of the release of Microsoft WVD. We’ve tested WVD and are impressed. The Microsoft WVD team have also tested our solutions and we’re already working with select joint partners and customers ahead of the public preview.

Liquidware and Microsoft have just finalized this new joint solution brief to clearly define how we work together to deliver a modern desktop deployment from Microsoft Azure with full Application Layering, User Environment Management, and User Experience Monitoring & Diagnostics.

Liquidware Essentials provides integral solutions for every phase of a Windows Virtual Desktop deployment.

Organizations interested in Microsoft WVD can start preparing today with Liquidware Essentials by downloading a free trial version of Stratusphere to get an assessment of your current application usage, size your anticipated storage and compute on Microsoft Azure, and baseline your current Windows desktop user experience rating. A fully functioning trial version of ProfileUnity can also be downloaded free to lay the groundwork for a seamless migration to Microsoft WVD (even from Windows 7 to 10) and works to extend the functionality of Microsoft’s FSlogix profile solution with comprehensive User Environment Management features. FlexApp application layering is an integrated part of ProfileUnity and adds significant value and benefits to a WVD environment by greatly simplifying base image management and enabling applications to be layered at logon or by exclusive click-to-layer on-demand technology.

Your organization can get started on the path to Microsoft WVD today by preparing for a clear on-boarding plan, migration planning, and user experience assurance with Liquidware Essentials. For more information visit Liquidware.com.

The release of ProfileUnity and FlexApp v6.8 today is our best release ever! This release has several enhancements and new industry-first features that raise the bar.

FlexApp received numerous new features so let’s start with application layering and what’s new:

1. Object-based Cloud Storage – FlexApps can now be seamlessly stored and retrieved from object based cloud storage. This is an industry first and supports Amazon S3, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure Blob.
2. 

   FlexApp Caching – Blocks level caching of layers.

   FlexApp Caching – If you leverage cloud object-based storage you’ll want to ensure that your layered apps are always available, regardless of the stability of your cloud connection. FlexApp Caching ensures that FlexApps work smoothly by caching blocks of the layer to the local session. FlexApp caching helps ensure seamless application layering performance even if your cloud connection is temporarily lost.  Benefits include faster execution of apps and enhanced FlexApp stability on less than reliable networks. FlexApp Caching is another industry-first innovation from Liquidware.

   

   Liquidware logo = Cloud Apps – Zero Packaging

3. FlexApp Cloud Apps – FlexApp now features over a dozen pre-packaged cloud-hosted applications. These apps are ready to deploy for pilot projects and easily cloned for production environments. You guess it…this is another industry first. Cloud Apps means you’ll have zero packaging required to get started!
4. Amazon AppStream Support – Amazon AppStream is similar to publishing apps with RDS or Citrix Virtual Apps (formerly XenApp). FlexApp’s support of AppStream one AppStream server to publish multiple applications, minimizing the number of base images and servers required. This is another industry-first, FlexApp’s support of Amazon AppStream is an exclusive, you won’t find it anywhere else.

ProfileUnity has received updates as well in this release. They include:

• A new Licensing Server – ProfileUnity and FlexApp’s management console will now act as a licensing server to enable true concurrent license models. Benefits include accurate in-use ProfileUnity and FlexApp license counts, especially helpful in healthcare, government, and education.
• Faster ProfileUnity and FlexApp client execution – startup of the agent been streamlined, reducing login times for most customers by several seconds.

If you are a current customer it is very easy to upgrade to our best ProfileUnity and FlexApp release ever.Simply check the “About” tab in the admin area of your Management Console and see the update notice to upgrade your environment. If you’d like to try ProfileUnity and FlexApp you can download now and begin testing today!

With the widespread adoption of Microsoft Office 365, OneDrive, Google Drive, Dropbox Enterprise, etc., Windows user profiles are now more bloated than ever before. In virtual workspace environments this can be a big challenge because if your users don’t have very fast access to their large user profile, user experience suffers greatly. Some type of profile containers/disks are now available from most desktop virtualization vendors. Profile disks, offloading the user’s profile to a virtual disk hosted on an SMB or in the cloud, is the very baseline type of profile that you must have to have a profile persist in virtual non-persistent desktop environments.

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Brief Overview: Windows Virtual Desktop (WVD) was announced a few days ago at Microsoft Ignite in Orlando. We at Liquidware think it’s a really big deal. You may have seen that Liquidware is mentioned in Microsoft’s announcement blog as already having incorporated support for WVD.

What is Windows Virtual Desktop and Why It’s a Really Big Deal!
With Microsoft’s announcement they are evolving their modern desktop technologies (formerly RDmi) to deliver, for the first time ever, a turnkey Windows Virtual Desktop hosted exclusively on Microsoft Azure Cloud. More specifically, WVD is a multi-user version of Microsoft Windows 10 that is only available on Microsoft Azure – workloads and storage will be hosted on Azure.  This is significant because previously customers had to procure everything they needed on prem or in the cloud of their choice and then assemble the parts. The solution is touted to be cost-effective because, as of now, any customer with a Windows 10/Microsoft 365 and E3/E5 or F1 subscription is eligible for WVD at no additional charge except for Azure compute and storage costs (which you’d have to pay in any cloud scenario).

Microsoft is marketing WVD as truly turnkey saying you can, “Quickly virtualize and deploy modern and legacy desktop app experiences with unified management—without needing to host, install, configure and manage components…”

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If you missed VMworld 2018 this year, you missed some great End User Computing momentum! This was Liquidware’s 10th VMworld but it was personally my 12th show. The week before leaving I came across my VMworld backpack from the second VMworld in 2005 and decided it was time to put it to use, more on that below.

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The experts at WhatMatrix recently awarded Liquidware FlexApp first place when compared to standard/included Application Layering from VMware and Citrix.  Many criteria were considered and you can see the full report here.

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Microsoft Inspire is their worldwide partner conference and it will be held at the Mandalay Bay Conference Center next week in Las Vegas – July 15-19, 2018.

We’re proud to have been asked and to be participating in a speaking session on Remote Desktop Services (RDS): Partner business opportunities for hosting Windows desktops and applications on Microsoft Azure.

The panel will be chaired by Microsoft’s Principal Program Manager Lead, Remote Desktop Services, Clark Nicholson.

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If you are a former AppSense or RES customer and are uneasy about changes from your longstanding UEM solution in the wake of acquisitions by Ivanti, consider Liquidware ProfileUnity.

We’ve made it Easy to Switch
We’ve recently on-boarded several large customers with 5,000, 10,000 and 20,000+ user desktops.  We’ve even developed a best practice methodology to get your users switched for minimum or zero downtime. We even have trained AppSense and RES staff to help you with the transition! Furthermore, we now have an additional European office in the Netherlands to service this area. Continue reading →

Many Citrix, VMware, and Microsoft RDSH customers leverage ProfileDisk and Profile Containers to handle large profiles for non-persistent VDI and RDSH environments. ProfileUnity accomplishes this by containerizing all or part a users profile to virtual disk. One of the use many ProfileDisk use cases that has been proven over the years is Office 365 Cached Mode & Indexing. ProfileUnity also has the ability to “containerize” parts of the profile onto VHDs that the solution automatically manages.

Office 365 cached mode is especially useful for Outlook by placing a local copy of your mailbox(es) on your desktop. This local copy performs more seamlessly than relying on a network/cloud copy of the same mailbox(es).  The problem with this on with non-persistent VDI comes because mailboxes are rather large, often gigabytes in size. Folder redirection, roaming profiles, profile tools from Citrix & VMware, and Microsoft UE-V can’t handle this use case for many reasons.

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Last week Citrix Synergy 2018 happened in Anaheim, California. This was the 21^st Citrix Synergy by my calculation. I was at the first Citrix “Thinergy” in 1998 at the Swan Hotel in Orlando. The conference remains one of the most Windows desktop focused conferences in the industry.

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