Managing desktops is always one of the main struggles facing enterprises. Add in complex application management and the issues increase drastically. Software solutions are often geared towards relieving this pain. Over the last few years, the concept of converting the … Continue reading
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.
Liquidware Labs chose Citrix Synergy to announce to the end user computing market
that we’re now simply “Liquidware.” The time for VDI experimentation in the industry has come to an end. Now more than 1,700 organizations using Liquidware solutions in production to run their physical, virtual, and cloud based desktops. We gave out cold hard cash to celebrate. Everyone that participated won a minimum of $1 and many people won a lot more! Look at this attendee that won $100! Using Liquidware solutions is like money in the bank!
We also announced several new features for FlexApp layering at Synergy. If you have not checked out FlexApp you are doing yourself a HUGE disfavor. We encourage you to try Citrix App Layering first, if it does not work for your needs you should check out FlexApp! Unlike Citrix App Layering, FlexApp truly decouples apps from the underlying operating system. With this approach, applications are not prone to “breaking” with OS update and changes. You can truly package most apps once and they work across OS versions as long as they are the same bit (32/64). And yes, FlexApp can layer complicated applications with drivers and services too. When you choose FlexApp, you can go on building and maintaining your base OS images with Citrix PVS or MCS just as you always have and let FlexApp do its thing to layer apps just in time just after user logon. In the forthcoming version, FlexApp Layering will deliver apps to Citrix XenApp users with session isolation…or on a per user basis without affecting other user’s sessions. Industry first Click-to-Layer capabilities were announced too, enabling users to get FlexApps on demand just by clicking their icon on the desktop. If a user doesn’t need an app, it’s not delivered, it’s that simple. If you don’t have time to compare Citrix App Layering to FlexApp, we’ve done it for you. You be the judge.
Furthermore, we announced that we’re extending ProfileDisk features to Citrix XenApp users. ProfileDisk will now support multi-session XenApp sessions and each user can get their robust profile from VHD! This takes care of Office 365 use cases where the profile can be very large due to Outlook and OneDrive caching and sync. ProfileDisk automatically takes care of Outlook, while our VHD profile containers can easily keep the current sync of OneDrive, Dropbox and more. This gives a quick logon without bloating XenApp servers and we’ve long supported XenDesktop in this capacity.
Stratusphere UX was prominently on display as well, we were showing off the latest reports, discussing the ease of scalability to deployments with thousands of users, and revealing new agents for Mac OS to close friends. NVIDIA asked us to show off our latest GPU metric and reports in their booth and our very own Chris Walker attracted quite a crowd!
VMblog.com stopped by and interviewed us about what we were showing as well. Here’s their 3 minute video overview.
Liquidware was one of just a few exclusive vendors to sponsor the week’s most sought after party, the M7 Partner event. The M7 are a group of key Citrix partner integrator that lead the way in selling, consulting, and implementing Citrix and Liquidware solutions. We were happy to step up and be a major sponsor this year in the absence of other vendors that were absorbed by acquisitions this past year. The competitive landscape for User Environment Management, Application Layering, and Monitoring has changed dramatically in the past year and Liquidware continues to lead on all three fronts. If you haven’t given our Workspace Environment Management solutions for physical, virtual, and cloud a try yet you need not wait any longer. Download and try them today.
I’ve blogged in the past about the login process (see “Boot and Login Visibility: Make a Solid First Impression with Stratusphere” and “Liquidware Cloud Login Analysis”). The importance of optimizing the machine boot and login process cannot be understated. It … Continue reading
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?
Citrix released Citrix App Layering last week. The Citrix solution layers applications, and optionally the OS, to Citrix desktops and XenApp servers. We’d encourage every Citrix customer that has access to the solution to try it, after all most features are included in the Citrix stack while some advanced features are reserved for Citrix Platinum customers. Ever since the recent introduction of Citrix AppDisk, Citrix customers seemed to have longed for something more capable so it’s good news to customers now that they have another method of layering in their stack to try in the form of Citrix App Layering. When layering works correctly the image management and application delivery benefits of layering can be tremendous.
In the past, I’ve covered topics such as Breaking Down Silos and Changing Your Point of View and Outside In versus Inside Out. In these and other posts, the theme has been about putting the user first. Regardless of where you might be in the user lifecycle: performing activities such as assessing, designing, migrating or 
validating a proof of concept or pilot; or operationally, looking at ongoing monitoring, diagnostics and troubleshooting; or perhaps you’re checking the health or optimizing your platform or infrastructure… In all cases the message and concept is simple: Put the user at the center of workspace delivery and management.
After the release of Windows 10 Anniversary update last August, Windows is now solid and we fully recommend your organization giving it a serious look. If you are not already moving users, you should start planning your move right away. But are you ready?
Here are four key questions your organization needs to consider before migrating your users to Windows 10.
The move to virtual desktops, whether full on-premises VDI or a managed desktop as a service (DaaS) in the cloud, can be wrought with hidden challenges. Some of these challenges are technical, and some political; however, the result is the same: disruption, not meeting user expectations and greater risk to user productivity. These challenges or 
visibility gaps are amplified in larger environments as there are more fingers in the pie, often combined with distributed technical responsibilities.
Ultimately, the question you should be asking yourself is who owns accountability to the user experience. If delivered properly, the desktop or workspace should appear to be a consistent and familiar experience—regardless of whether it is delivered atop physical PCs, virtualized locally or delivered as a service in the cloud. But who gets the light shined on them when things go astray? Is it the desktop team? Perhaps the infrastructure folks who own the storage, servers and network are to blame? And in the case of DaaS, this demarcation becomes a lot more imprecise.
Citrix announced today that they’ve acquired Unidesk for layering. Full disclosure: we’re a leading Citrix Ready partner and a former competitor of Unidesk, with our FlexApp layering solution. I’d like to share Liquidware Labs’ perspective. Citrix briefed Liquidware Labs last week and we thank them for the official confirmation of the rumor that has been around the last couple of months. I asked firsthand how it will be available and those details are below.
