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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Summary: Today we’ve announced the availability of options to have your user profiles hosted as a service on Object-based Cloud storage (Amazon S3, Google Cloud, or Microsoft Azure Blob). This industry first innovation is not BETA, it’s available now and only from Liquidware.

DaaS is now inevitable for most enterprises. The value proposition is maturing to the degree that DaaS is now viable for most organizations. Not all desktops will be the right fit for DaaS at first but the early mover desktops that Liquidware is seeing move to DaaS are call centers and task workers. Knowledge workers and power users will follow quickly as the world feels comfortable and DaaS offerings more fully mature. You’ll likely end up a hybrid approach – with some on-prem desktops and some DaaS desktops.

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One of the many feature benefits in ProfileUnity is its ability to persist Office 365 Outlook Search Indexing from non-persistent desktop, DaaS, RDS, and Citrix XenApp sessions. This is very helpful to end users because in a non-persistent environment you would not want to keep indexing or OST files in the users roamed or streamed profile because the files would be quite large and cause a slow logon. If you turned on local indexing for each non-persistent Outlook session, the indexing process would need to start over again, causing many resources to be used each desktop session.

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Yes, Windows 10 to Windows 10 migrations are now officially a “thing.” Confused? Don’t be, read on…

By several indications, Windows 10 adoption rates are not even at 50% for enterprise sized businesses, and plenty are still running Windows XP, Windows 7, and Windows 8.1 in pockets. However, even as Windows 7 still dominates the market, Windows 10 is still coming on strong.

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Profile Containers/Disks for Windows desktops enable Administrators to offload the entire user profile to a profile disk (VHD or VMDK). This approach allows for an otherwise large profile to be read at a block-level (very efficient) over the network. Liquidware ProfileUnity features the option to use a ProfileDisk™ and containers in ProfileUnity. They can be great – except when they are not.  Here are the Pros and Cons that you should know before you rely solely on a profile container/disk to provide an excellent user experience.

Pros

• Great for offloading Office 365/Outlook caches
• Ideal to solve Outlook indexing conundrums for virtual desktops like XenDesktop, XenApp, and VMware Horizon.
• Really great at keeping cloud storage (Microsoft OneDrive, Dropbox, Amazon Drive, Google Drive, etc) on a virtual network drive.

Cons

• Run in the user context only and therefore can’t pick-up or virtualize other areas of the user profile outside of shell folders.
• Profiles are exactly like a local profile except it is on the network so they are susceptible to profile corruption.
• They are locked to a Windows OS version so you must have a disjointed profile disk/container for every OS the user logs onto, the user cannot migrate their profile or co-exist it with another Windows version.
• Network only – there is no method to go offline. Laptops that even occasionally leave the office are not a candidate for a profile disk/container.

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Every feature that has been incorporated in Liquidware FlexApp is in the product because either a customer has requested it or our experienced development and product management teams knows first-hand how important it is to a provide a seamless, enterprise, and scaleable application layering solution.

FlexApp layering has emerged as a leader as a scalable enterprise-ready layering solution. If you are evaluating layering solutions or working on a RFP (Request for Proposal), consider a solution that leads the market with multiple ways to save time, make users more efficient, and save money.

Here are 10 exclusive ways that FlexApp sets the bar for application layering in the industry.

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ProfileUnity and FlexApp v6.7 was recently made generally available with new and innovative features that further simplify User Environment Management and Application Layering. The new version includes advancements that you won’t find in basic profile management and layering solutions from Citrix, VMware, or any other vendor.

Let’s get right to the innovation.

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Citrix Synergy 2017 is still fresh on our minds. If you didn’t make it to Orlando this year here is a look our experience.

I cannot recall a more enthusiastic attendee crowd at a Citrix Synergy! This year many attendees seemed to make a beeline for our booth. Maybe it was our re-brand to “Liquidware,” or latest version of FlexApp Layering and demos of XenApp Session isolation – and how it compares to Citrix App Layering, or perhaps it was our involvement in becoming one of just a few select M7 party sponsors. Let’s breakdown the highlights.

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Citrix, VMware, and Amazon are racing to the cloud to serve customers that want desktops/workspaces with less management, lower costs, and (hopefully) better
performance. But we must ask the question, “Is every desktop user a good candidate for DaaS?”  While increasingly the answer is “yes,” for office workers, it’s not the right answer every time. How do you know who is a candidate? How do you ensure a satisfactory User Experience? And, how do you deliver cloud based desktops with the same benefits as on premise desktops?

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