Category Archives: ProfileUnity

Any Desktop, Any Broker, Anywhere: Future-proofing Your Windows Desktop Deployment with Liquidware

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The world of Windows desktop deployment has become increasingly complex with so many options available in the market today. From traditional laptops and desktops, to virtual desktops deployed on-premises, or in the cloud using solutions like Amazon WorkSpaces, Amazon AppStream, Nutanix Frame, Citrix Virtual Apps, Microsoft AVD, or Microsoft CloudPC – there are numerous choices to make.

However, choosing a deployment method also means choosing a broker and deciding whether to deploy on-premises or in the cloud. This can lead to vendor lock-in where your users’ profiles might be tied to a specific deployment method, making it difficult to move to another option. Moreover, you may not be able to move your applications from one deployment method to another, and the user experience might not be consistent across different deployment methods.

To address these issues, Liquidware offers a “Switzerland” approach to Windows desktop deployment with its ProfileUnity™, FlexApp™, and Stratusphere™ UX products. With these solutions, you can abstract your user’s profile and application deployment from the underlying OS and platform, making it easier to switch deployment methods without affecting user experience.

ProfileUnity abstracts the user’s profile from the OS with any deployment method, whether physical, virtual, or cloud based. By using ProfileUnity, you can future-proof your deployment options by putting your users under management with your existing deployment method. ProfileUnity’s portability engine ensures that the user’s profile can be saved to any storage medium, including SMB and cloud storage, and restored to any OS, of any version, on any platform.

FlexApp abstracts application deployment from the OS and platform, allowing you to take advantage of fewer images and pools to manage. By abstracting your applications with FlexApp, you can easily move to any new deployment method while keeping the same application delivery model. This ensures that your users have access to the same applications, regardless of the deployment method.

Stratusphere UX helps you monitor user experience on your existing deployment method and ensures that users get the same, or better, experience when you switch to a new deployment method. It continuously monitors your user’s experience to make sure you don’t unknowingly decrease user satisfaction.

In conclusion, with the current state of acquisitions and the evolving end-user computing market, it is essential to future-proof your Windows desktop deployment options. By using Liquidware’s ProfileUnity, FlexApp, and Stratusphere UX products, you can abstract the user’s profile and application deployment from the OS and platform, making it easy to switch deployment methods without affecting user experience. With Liquidware’s solutions, you can ensure that your users have a consistent and seamless experience regardless of the deployment method you choose.

Instant Application delivery with FlexApp 6.8.5 Cloaking

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Instantly delivering applications to users can be a challenge, as even FlexApps can take some time to activate. For instance, it may take 14 seconds for 15 FlexApps to become available. This can cause users to log in to their desktops before the application shortcuts for all 15 apps are ready to use.

To address this issue, we’ve introduced FlexApps on boot. However, the current implementation of FlexApps on boot has a small drawback: all FlexApps on boot are visible to all users logging in to the RDS host or desktop pool. This necessitates creating multiple pools to segment applications that are layered on boot. While this reduces image management, it increases the number of pools to manage, even if they come from the same image.

But with ProfileUnity FlexApp 6.8.5, we have new technology that solves both image sprawl and pool sprawl. When you assign FlexApps on boot, you now have the option to cloak the FlexApps that a user is not entitled to at login. For instance, if you have two apps on boot, one for accounting and the other for marketing, both apps are layered into the OS on boot, so users don’t have to wait for layering to occur. During login, however, the marketing user won’t be able to see the accounting app, and vice versa.

In addition, we offer predictive block caching. FlexApps are typically streamed over the network, but it’s sometimes better to run the app from our block cache to speed up the user experience. However, downloading all the needed blocks can take time. With predictive block caching, we know what blocks are needed to achieve near-native speeds, eliminating the need to download all blocks while the user waits.

To summarize, we remove activation times (FlexApps on boot), launch times (block caching), download times (predictive block caching), reduce image management (using FlexApps), and reduce pools (FlexApps on boot with cloaking).

To accomplish this, first set up ProfileUnity as a Service. then enable the “Enable Cloaking for on-boot FlexApps” checkbox in ProfileUnity FlexApp 6.8.5 when assigning FlexApps on boot. Then, in the normal login configuration, assign the relevant on-boot FlexApps to the appropriate users. This will ensure that users only have access to the applications they need, while reducing image sprawl and pool sprawl.

Overall, this approach simplifies application delivery and management while improving the user experience. Users can log in quickly and seamlessly access the applications they need, without being burdened by unnecessary apps or activation times.

ProfileUnity with FlexApp 6.8.5, Best Practices out of the box!

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Capturing applications with FlexApp can sometimes be challenging, and there are a few best practices that are critical to success. However, these steps can be time-consuming, and it’s easy to overlook important details. In some cases, this can lead to an unsuccessful deployment.

To simplify the process and ensure best practices are followed, ProfileUnity FlexApp 6.8.5 now includes out-of-the-box tools and features to help streamline the application capture best practices.

First, FlexApp now includes a built-in runtime installer, which allows you to easily install all the necessary .NET and C++ runtimes on the packaging OS. This eliminates the need to track down individual runtimes from Microsoft, saving time and reducing complexity.

Second, FlexApp also includes a custom optimizer tool specifically designed for capture. This tool ensures that the capture OS is optimized for the capture process, with minimal extraneous activity or noise. This is especially important since you may not have access to VMware’s or Citrix’s optimizer tools, and different optimizer settings are required for capture OS versus end user images.

Finally, FlexApp automatically performs rollbacks in between captures to prevent cross-contamination between applications. This ensures that each application is captured in a separate layer, without interfering with other applications layers.

By incorporating these best practices out-of-the-box, ProfileUnity FlexApp 6.8.5 simplifies the application capture process, reducing the risk of errors and ensuring a successful deployment. With these tools and features, you can capture applications quickly and easily, and deliver them to users with confidence.

ProfileUnity and FlexApp v6.8.3 r2 is Now Available for Download!

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We’re excited to deliver the latest version of our User Environment Management and Application Layering solutions in ProfileUnity and FlexApp v6.8.3 r2.

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ProfileUnity and FlexApp v6.8.3 r2 Management Console

The new r2 version builds on v6.8.3 that was first available earlier this year. Version r2 has updates to our existing features and a few new features as well such as VHDX support for ProfileDisk and FlexApp and hourly billing for the AWS Marketplace. This solution also remains available in the Microsoft Azure Marketplace as BYOL.

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MSIX App Attach and FlexApp – Better Together

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Now that Azure WVD is GA, you are starting to hear more about MSIX and the strategy of attaching applications to a WVD OS. MSIX is the Windows app package format that provides a modern packaging experience to all Windows apps. The MSIX package format preserves the functionality of existing app packages and/or install files in addition to enabling new, modern packaging and deployment features to Win32, WPF, and WinForm apps.
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Amazon WorkSpaces and FlexApp Working Together

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Amazon Workspaces Overview “Amazon WorkSpaces is a fully managed, secure desktop computing service which runs on the AWS cloud. Amazon WorkSpaces allows you to easily provision cloud-based virtual desktops and provide your users access to the documents, applications, and resources … Continue reading →

Microsoft Application Strategy Discussion 2019

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I have spent most of my career discussing applications and how to manipulate them. It is safe to say that 2019 has seen some techtonic shifting in the application space.

Microsoft, has surfaced (no pun intended) to mix it up in the application space again. MSIX is a new application installation format with a goal to become the new defacto standard for application packaging baselines.

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FlexApp Integration with Amazon AppStream 2.0

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At the end of 2018, the Amazon AppStream 2.0 team released a new dynamic application framework feature that allows third party tools to help manage application entitlements and deliveries in real time. Liquidware is excited to announce that both ProfileUnity … Continue reading →

ProfileUnity – Defining User Experience

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ProfileUnity has been around for a number of years in the Liquidware portfolio. It delivers user environment management, including user profiles, secure policies, and access to user authored data. Sounds simple right?  After all, there are other one-off tools in the market that handle these individual things.  What sets ProfileUnity apart?  Why use it when you may already have “free” single use case tools or a solution provided by another vendor?  Read on my friends…

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First off, the Liquidware portfolio (ProfileUnity, FlexApp, and Stratusphere UX) is completely agnostic by not favoring a particular desktop delivery platform.  Really, what we are managing is Windows. That’s it.  We have no requirements for a particular broker, hypervisor, cloud, anything. In fact, with all three products, you can manage Windows across physical, virtual and cloud.  Are your desktops completely physical today and you are looking at moving some or all of them to virtual or full cloud. Or are you even going back to physical desktops?  Liquidware has you covered the entire way.

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An instant hit! The Liquidware partner training 2018 – Spring edition

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After almost two months of planning and preparations, on February the 26th we opened our doors to the first ever Dutch Liquidware partner training, here in Amsterdam. Joseph Ahn, our internal trainer flew in from Austin, Texas to provide four days, with an optional fifth of intensive training and certification around ProfileUnity, FlexApp and Stratusphere UX.

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