My dad spent his career as a tool and die maker; working on machine and metal cutting tools to support manufacturing and pre-production processes. While I never acquired these skills, I appreciated the benefits of this experience—when we broke something, we spent the time understanding the fix and typically went down to the shop and made a replacement part. As I grew older and began to find my way in the world, it occurred to me something had changed. We no longer fixed things; remediation evolved into a simple swapping of component, without the diagnostics and troubleshooting I had observed as a youth.
Category Archives: Stratusphere UX
Outside In. Inside Out. What’s the Difference?
Liquidware Labs has been at the leading edge of next-generation desktop delivery and desktop transformation since its inception in 2009. Our founders came from the worlds of server virtualization and professional services to bring products to market that not only … Continue reading
PC Lifecycle Management: An Outdated and Unnecessary Pilgrimage
Are you spending time on an outdated and unnecessary pilgrimage? Continue reading
Dare To Compare — You’ll be Glad You Did!
Hi, I am Chris Akerberg, President and COO of Liquidware Labs. I’ve never been one to write blogs but I felt compelled to share a few of my thoughts during this very exciting time in our market space. You’ve probably been hearing a lot of noise about upcoming innovations from the key players in desktop technologies. All this noise, for us, is great news. We are happy the market is getting further educated on the true value of cutting-edge developments in User Environment Management, Application Layering and End-user Visibility. Today, VMware has given this feature set a specific name ( Workspace Environment Management). Whatever you want to call it we have believed for years these key elements would be needed to successfully deploy VDI – especially non-persistent VDI — remember those debates during VMworld 2013 spearheaded by Gunnar Berger?
However, the reality is that, we at Liquidware Labs have been quietly and confidently promoting this vision and executing on this strategy since our inception in 2009. It is validating and exciting to see the market “heat up” recently over these core pillars of VDI and desktop management. We haven’t been making noise, but we’ve been making some serious progress. And we ask that you “Dare To Compare” us against any other offerings on the market today. You can trial and learn more about our Essentials Suite Bundle or TRY 25 FREE licenses today. You will be glad you did. Continue reading
Stratusphere Visibility: Two Ways
One of the greatest features of Stratusphere is its ability to dive deep and easily expose the exact detail and information you need. Our customer-facing engineering teams often get asked questions about the best way to find this, or what … Continue reading
The Yin and Yang of Virtual Desktop Workloads
The philosophy of Yin and Yang is about perceived or apparently opposite forces, which are actually interconnected and complementary. This duality can be found in nature, in medicine … well … just about everywhere. In fact, it’s even present in in the ongoing management and operations surrounding virtual desktop workloads.
On the one hand, you have the IT infrastructure and architecture. I’m talking about the servers and storage as well as the image and application strategy. On the other hand, you have the user. This organizational force drives business—and can be the bane of an IT professional’s existence. Continue reading
VMware “Discovers” Workspace Environment Management (WEM)
By now, many of you have probably heard that VMware is planning to add User Management features to Horizon with their planned acquisition of Immidio. Many will look to the leaders in the UEM market for their reaction. Not to be too cliché but VMware’s “WEM” (Workspace Environment Management) positioning validates the Liquidware Labs User Environment Management, Application Delivery with Layering, and User Experience solution set that we’ve been delivering for years. Continue reading
Stratusphere API Builder
A few months ago the Stratusphere API was introduced. This API provides a fast and easy to understand method of extracting the various metrics and data captured from Stratusphere UX/FIT directly through a URL call. This data can be extracted into various formats including JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) and CSV files. This gives the ability to integrate the Stratusphere UX/FIT data into any tool you may use without having to understand all the intricacies of the underlying Stratusphere database.
Now with the release of Stratusphere 5.7 using the API has gotten even easier. Now included is a graphical tool, called the Stratusphere API Builder. With this new tool you can quickly build API URL calls with simple graphical point and click selections. In this post I’ll showcase the power of the Stratusphere API, and the ease at which you can use employ Stratusphere metrics and information to perform tasks such as performing ad hoc application audits. Continue reading
Eliminate Blind Spots and Extend Visibility with Stratusphere
Stratusphere UX is a comprehensive monitoring, performance validation and diagnostics solution for organizations that support physical, virtual and mixed-platform desktop environments. And for those of you involved in virtual desktop and virtual application delivery—specifically, 
I’m referring to platforms and architectures such as VMware View and RDSH, as well as Citrix XenApp and XenDesktop—you know the care and feeding required to stay ahead of the curve and deliver a positive user experience is no easy task; there are blind spots aplenty.
Ultimately, being proactive with respect to these architectures is about keeping users happy, reaping operational efficiencies and being able to quickly remediate issues when things go bump in the night. In this post, I’d like to introduce you to Stratusphere 5.7, which is now generally available. I’d also like to take this time to share a few ways you can help eliminate some of these blind spots and extend visibility into your next-generation desktop. Continue reading
We Told You It’s Always Been About the User (and the Applications)!
Without a lot of fanfare, pomp or circumstance, Microsoft made a recent change to its Windows licensing model. Truth be told, it was a significant change. I won’t rehash all the details, as you can read it direct from Microsoft here. The new model is a great thing for VDI as it reinforces the software giant’s new-found support of mobile devices, BYOD and a device-agnostic world. Good for you, Microsoft! Continue reading