AppSense StrataApps helps accomplish this mission. StrataApps is all about giving people choice. Just as people want to choose their own devices people want to choose their own applications. With StrataApps users can install and manage their own personal-productivity applications on corporate-owned devices, and the beauty is, with StrataApps users are empowered to do this without the need for Local Admin rights on the desktop.

StrataApps enables organizations to employ a standard user account strategy combined with Microsoft UAC which protects the desktop and reduces associated support costs, because StrataApps dynamically elevates the privileges required to install an application (into StrataApps) on the fly.

What did IT do before StrataApps?

1. Give users Local Admin accounts – RISKY
2. Disable Microsoft User Account Control (UAC) – ILL-ADVISED
3. Package personal productivity apps like traditional apps – EXPENSIVE
4. Ignore/Deny the user’s needs – UNPRODUCTIVE 

Option 1.
We can all agree that giving users local admin rights is one of the worst things IT can do for their business’s information security. This risk is magnified when said user is in the datacenter – as they are on a VDI – since most organizations take an eggshell approach to security (hard outer perimeter – soft inside). Would you sleep well knowing thousands of users inside are logged on inside your datacenter with local admin rights?!

Option 2.
User Account Control applies standard user privileges to users in order to avoid untrusted applications from being executed, malicious code or malware from being introduced and prevents changes from being made to system-wide settings. Turning this option off for users opens the system up to potential widespread security vulnerabilities, system instability, user disruption and help desk support calls to remediate the user actions.

Option 3.
Treating personal productivity like IT managed corporate apps means the user often must go through arduous request processes, then IT must package, deploy and maintain (patch) the app, assuming the application is compatible with application virtualization & streaming technologies, AND, the IT department has the resources available to do this.  But, what about EUDA? End User Developed Apps? Those apps (often plugins) developed by power users? If IT could come close to the scale and return rate required at a reasonable price point this wouldn’t be a problem space!

Option 4.
Ignoring the user’s needs for personal productivity apps is quite possibly the worst solution for the business as it virtually guarantees unhappy, unproductive employees.

So what does IT do in the real world?
Usually a combination of the options above. IT will ignore whom they can – generally those without political clout. Package the apps they have time to – generally these are few, far between and take a long time. And give local admin rights to the rest – yes, this is a total cop out but as long as it gets the user off the phone then who will care if IT just gave the keys to the criminals.

Option 5 – StrataApps.  
So what is an upstanding IT person to do? Implement StrataApps, as the best-of-breed solution, to empower users to install and manage their own personal-productivity applications on corporate-owned devices without the need for local admin rights, whilst still allowing for UAC to protect the underlying operating system / desktop. This allows IT to focus on the core, business-centric applications and services and keeps users happy and productive. Win!

You can learn more and download AppSense StrataApps here.

I’d love to hear your feedback!

Follow me: @BillMatkovich

Bill Matkovich | StrataApps Product Manager

As you've most likely have read in our announcement today, AppSense has announced its intent to acquire RAPsphere a mobile IT company developing mobile information management solutions that enable CIOs to contend with Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) in the enterprise and beyond. However you may be wondering why and how this fits with AppSense.

The future of the desktop

One year ago I announced that I was following through on my belief that to enable the "consumerization of IT," a people-centric service focus was essential for the successful adoption of diverse client computing architectures for enterprise customers. In essence, this represents what I consider to be a requirement of the future desktop where people can choose how they want to work. People will choose traditional and new ways to be productive. In this world of choice, we have already started to see the emergence of new IT approaches such as desktop virtualization.  As I've written previously, different types of workers need to be connected with different types of apps and IT services. This increasing diversity is driving the need for user virtualization as a strategic requirement in client architectures since it drives simplification and lowers the TCO across heterogeneous environments as IT transforms to a service orientated organization. 

Enterprise Computing vs. Consumerization

There is no doubt that the consumerization of IT is causing a disruption in traditional IT organizations. Much of IT is still in the mind set of command and control and all around them executives and employees are taking the path of least resistance with better technology in the consumer world. However can this be the future? Can desire alone by enterprise executives and workers trump the very real needs of responsible enterprises that have reputations to preserve, customers to protect, fiduciary responsibility to uphold and in many cases regulatory requirements to meet? Can consumerization address these enterprise needs? Is it good enough to simply assume consumer technologies will address these needs as demands grow? Can enterprises afford to wait that long when users are demanding choice?

I don't believe that enterprises can wait as we continue to see an explosion in Tablets and Smartphones. New services like DropBox showcase what people expect to be able to use for work. Already users are embracing these new applications.  There must be a better IT approach that enables the enterprise to govern what matters and provide people with choice. At AppSense we call this approach Enterprise Consumerization. AppSense takes a people-centric approach to computing that is enabled by user virtualization. 

The democratization of IT

The consumerization of IT is no longer simply the topic du jour of keynote speakers at [pick your favorite] IT conference, it's a tidal wave that is fundamentally — and finally — shifting the balance of IT power from the centrally managed, old school IT politburo and putting the power literally in the hands of users — where it should be.  Consumerization of IT is a misnomer; what's actually occurring is the democratization of IT.  Unquestionably, a major force driving this change is BYOD.  Last year alone, it's conservatively estimated that 54% of employees used their personal devices for work — whether known to their employers or not.  In a few years, the number of personal devices will dwarf the number of PCs — tablet sales alone will pass PC sales in as early as two years. By 2016, for every PC an employee uses, 80% of users will use TWO personal devices to access corporate applications and data. It's clear that BYOD is actively causing and accelerating a tectonic shift in IT, and enterprises have no choice but to get ahead of the storm lest they get consumed by it. These devices will open the door for people to many cloud services with new app types as the gateway to the cloud.

Introducing RAPsphere, BYOApp & MIM

RAPsphere is on the cutting-edge of Mobile BYOD solutions. Unlike remote display solutions, clumsy mobile hypervisor approaches or the dizzying array of mobile device management (MDM) solutions that have flooded the market in recent years claiming to be the silver bullet for BYOD, RAPsphere understood from day zero that it's simply NOT about the device:  it's all about users, apps and data.  In fact, with the explosion of mobile apps and app marketplaces, BYOD is as much or more about BYOA -- "bring your own app" -- than it is about devices. Executives and employees alike are demanding access to applications and data enabling them to drive revenue and do their jobs irrespective of time and location, and they will not take no for an answer.  The result is a perfect storm of security and compliance nightmares that IT must bring under control. This is exactly where RAPsphere comes in.  RAPsphere enables enterprises to manage and secure native corporate apps (in-house developed and third party apps), data and connectivity on employee owned mobile devices — all in real-time.  RAPsphere provides fine-grain policy and security controls of enterprise apps/data while preserving users' native device experience — all without requiring any customizations to apps or the underlying OS.  Unlike existing solutions, RAPsphere's technology does NOT require IT to take complete control of users' devices and invade users' personal space (e.g., Airwatch, MobileIron, Zenprise) or severely restrict app choice to highly customized apps (e.g., Good Technologies).  With RAPsphere, enterprise apps live side-by-side with personal apps without the fear of compromise or contamination. RAPsphere is truly the first solution enabling security and compliance for all corporate applications, on any mobile device without impacting the user experience or infringing on user privacy…Any app, any device, anywhere and always secure – it’s what users demand, and will enable AppSense to further extend our vision into mobile IT with Mobile Information Management (MIM).

RAPsphere's value proposition and promise is both simple and powerful. RAPsphere enables enterprises to deploy and manage any application, on any device while ensuring it's always secure:

• ANY APP.  Apps developed in-house.  Apps developed by 3rd parties.  The apps that users want, the apps that users demand. Unmodified, intact. 
• ANY DEVICE.  Apps and data delivered on any edge device, regardless of operating system.  And without modifying the operating system in any way.  True end-user devices of choice.  Anything short is not BYOD — it's more of the same.
• ALWAYS SECURE.  Without modifying apps, without modifying OS's, without modifying devices, RAPsphere delivers applications securely, ensure their content and data is isolated, controlled and encrypted.

It's not about the device — It's about apps, data & people  

Today, enterprises have no solution to this problem, they only have crutches. A comprehensive solution must give enterprises the power to: 

• ISOLATE & SECURE ENTERPRISE APPS & DATA.  Enterprise applications/data — in-house and 3rd party — must be segregated from personal applications/data on mobile devices. Secure data containment and encryption for all enterprise data at rest and controls for all intra/inter data interactions are a must.  
• MANAGE & CONTROL USER, APP & DATA COMPLIANCE.  Users may own edge devices, but IT must control enterprise applications and data. That means end-to-end enterprise user, application and data lifecycle management, from provisioning to end-of-life.  That means centrally defining, setting and pushing application, data, compliance — and even location — policies without ever physically touching end users' devices. And it also means being able to be alerted when policy infractions have occurred and the power to take immediate corrective action.

It’s been a busy year in product management at AppSense:

• We’ve had Harry Labana join as CTO and some great discussions around product strategy.
• We’ve had the launch of AppSense Labs which is already delivering some exciting new technology.
• We’ve started to harness the experience and knowledge within our technical community, making that available to customers and partners at the AppSense Exchange on myappsense.com.
• Our sales teams have been going strong, expanding our customer base.
• And, with my Environment Manager hat on, we’ve now had three great feature releases of our Environment Manager product (EM).

Our latest release, announced last week, has some great features and I believe we at AppSense can be proud of it.

Why?

Because Environment Manager 8.3 continues to build on the architecture and feature sets of EM 8.1 and 8.2, further enriching and expanding the capabilities of the product.

Because during the course of developing EM 8.3, we have had some great engagements with customers, partners and implementation teams. Many of these people were involved in the design of the new features, came along to development sprint showcases, and took part in our alpha and beta programs. We have been developing the new features in partnership with our users, not just for them.

Fundamentally though, it’s because of the real benefits that the new features of EM can give our users – from cradle to grave so to speak:

• Get up and running quickly

Our new Personalization wizard with application templates gives teams a quick and straightforward way to get up and running. Not only that, but it is a repeatable way of implementing Best Practice. Just go to a new site or environment, install, point and click. Job done!

But things never stay that simple do they?

• Roll-out and extend

As well as getting up and running quickly, we’ve put a bunch of features in that allow our users to roll-out their implementation from, say, simple Proof of Concept to accommodating the most complex requirements. The list is long (see the What’s New Doc here), but EM 8.3 continues to add features that allow users to deal with complex enterprise requirements – such as configuring offline mode based on a set of rules; defining site selection by user to avoid data replication across data centres; added intelligence around desktop settings, so that these can be managed by OS version globally or adjusted for different groups of users.

• Support and maintenance with user self-service

A great new feature in EM 8.3 is user self-service. This extends the support web application that shipped with EM 8.2 to now allow end users to manage their own application settings (if the administrator allows). So, not only is the job on the Help Desk made easier (EM 8.2), but now, those costs and user downtime can be eliminated by the end user managing their own settings – backing up, rolling back, protecting a backup and all those cool things you can do with EM.

That’s just EM. Have a look at the new features in the latest products in our new user virtualization suite release and you’ll see that my other product management colleagues have been busy too.

Enjoy!

Simon Cotterill

Product Manager for AppSense Environment Manager

The AppSense Management Center is a key product in the AppSense Management Suite and is used by the vast majority of the thousands of AppSense customers for the management and deployment of AppSense configuration files. Many customers also use the AppSense Management Center for the management and deployment of AppSense Agents and upgrades to those Agents, but this can be a little more challenging given that replacing either a kernel mode component or a locked file will result in the need to restart the client computer.

Both us and our customers have known this, they have been telling us about it, we have been listening to them and working with them to design a solution.  We have looked at a number of ways of addressing this in the AMC 8.3 release, such as suppressing the system restart, but this is not recommend by Microsoft as it can leave the computer in an unambiguous state; given that some updates, such as those to the registry, will have already taken place. N.B. This is something that should also be considered when using third-party products to deploy upgrades to AppSense Agent.

Eventually, through thorough research and testing, we settled on installing Agent updates during computer startup, but before user logon, and allowing the end user to decide when the system restart would take place; with control of the postponement period firmly in the hands of the systems administrator. This is very similar to the way in which Windows Update® and Microsoft® System Center Configuration Manager work.

End users will now receive the following prompts if end user postponement is enabled:

There are a number of options in the AppSense Management Center console for controlling the end user postponement dialogs and if they appear on the client computer, below are our recommendations as to when to use each:

Immediately with postponement: Use this setting when you need to push out an update quickly, such as an important patch release or a hotfix

Scheduled with postponement: Use this setting when you need to push out updates in a predicable manner when an installation is required by a certain time each day.

At Computer Startup: Use this when either the update can wait until the end user schedules a system restart or when a remote system restart would be scheduled out of normal working hours – this is the recommended setting for servers

This was the most requested feature for the AppSense Management Center and we believe this goes a long way to satisfying that requirement, it also shows our commitment serving physical desktops not just virtual desktops.

In future releases we will be making further enhancements to the management and deployment of both agents and configuration, to allow our customers to deploy updates as quickly and as seamlessly as possible.

David Allen | Product Manager

Removing Local Administrator Rights unilaterally can kill user productivity!

Blind elevation of user rights is hazardous to your career health!

User Rights Management (URM) is like a tightrope walk; You must implement a balanced set of dynamic policies that restrict privileges enough to be safe, but, not so much as to kill productivity. Most administrators have to walk this tightrope blind and hoping not to fall. However, following on from yesterday’s announcement of a new AppSense release (blog here, what’s new page here), the Rights Discovery Mode (RDM) in Application Manager 8.5 (AM) makes the journey safe, quick and easy – keeping you, and your users alive. Let’s look at how.

A short while back I introduced AppSense StrataApps. Today, I’d like you to meet our latest release of Application Manager – version 8.5. But first let’s first review how AM precisely controls Windows desktops and applications to meet governance requirements without compromising the user’s experience and productivity.

Application Manager provides contextual control of applications using five key components:

• Application Control
• Application and User Rights elevation/reduction (URM)
• Application Network Access Control (ANAC)
• URL Redirection
• License Control

Context of when the controls are enfornced can be based on rules and conditions such as:

• User / Device / AD group
• Time / Location (internal vs. external)
• Application / File metadata (sha1, vendor, etc.)
• Scripted rules
• + Many, many more…

The new Rights Discovery Mode in AM 8.5 enables administrators to monitor, analyze and report on tens of thousands of concurrent endpoints to identify what applications and tasks require administrative privileges. RDM generates reports which can be grouped by user, computer or application to make it easy to identify trends. Applications and tasks identified by RDM can be quickly added to URM configurations with just a few clicks. Wow! That was Easy!

Default Rights Policies in AM 8.5 enables customers to simply identify the target application that requires an elevation policy and automatically assign the application to an elevation rule to further simplify the configuration and quicken the implementation of User Rights Management. Wow! That was Easy!

Below is a screenshot of a RDM report, grouped by application (this report & screenshot was taken from a standalone machine, multiple machines showing duplicate applications would show how many instances of the application in this grouping), with the Administrator very quickly and easily adding an application that has been identified as requiring Admin Rights to an Default Rights Elevation Policy for all users.  We even provide the option to do it by File Name, or for extra security, by applying a sha1 Signature for only that specific application.  Wow! That was Easy!

Note: If you switch to the 'List View' (top right of the above screenshot) you can even see how many times each application was run, and from there you can also see on which machines it was run on.  This Application Details view provides you with the opportunity to see the user, machine, commandline and start time for each instance of that application.

Listening closely to our customers and developing solutions based on their feedback has helped ensure this latest release further empowers administrators with automated configuration options to support complex environments.

Keen to hear your thoughts and feedback.

Billy Matkovich | Product Manager
@BillMatkovich

Hi all,

The news keeps coming from AppSense!

Just a short note that today we’re announcing support for the newly released Microsoft SQL Server 2012 in an upcoming hotfix of the AppSense Management Suite currently being targeted for a minor June update. The SQL 2012 release represents the latest in performance and scale from Microsoft and its key for us to support this version as soon as we can. As part of this announcement we will also be deprecating the older Microsoft SQL Server 2000 support with AppSense Management Suite 8.4 in line with Microsoft support policies and our customers naturally decreased usage of that database version.

This is an exciting piece of news that many of our customers and partners have asked us about. We’re excited to be delivering world-class performance and scale with SQL Server 2012!

Michael Kleef

Director of Business Development, Microsoft and Citrix

...You Asked.  We Listened.

I am pleased to announce that by working together with our customers and partners the world of people-centric computing takes another leap forward with today’s release of the AppSense User Virtualization platform.

This release brings significant enhancements to AppSense Application Manager, Environment Manager and the Management Center, all of which have been designed and developed to provide:

Simplified Set-up and Administration

Personalization Configuration Wizards, Best Practice Templates and User Rights Discovery Reporting enable rapid installations with reduced knowledge requirements while following our best practices.

Extended Enterprise Management Controls

Significant enhancements to Personalization Management and Agent Deployment provide greater control while also reducing infrastructure requirements and increasing end user productivity. 

User Self-Service Options

Provide your users with a more productive environment while also reducing IT service requests and to benefit your organization, IT department and user experience.

Below is a quick video clip highlighting some of the key enhancements in this latest release, enjoy!

More info.

You can learn more via the following:

What's New Webpage – here
What's New General Overview PDF –here
What's New in Environment Manager 8.3 PDF – here
What's New in Application Manager 8.5 PDF – here
What's New in Management Center 8.3 PDF – here

Some of the AppSense Product Managers will also be posting blogs with more information about their respective products each day this week, so be sure to keep an eye out for them too.

Customer and Partner Support.

At AppSense we work closely with the user virtualization community, and through a series of customer round tables, briefing sessions, technical universities, partner enablement, executive visits, alpha showcases and beta programs, we have been honoured with the opportunity to understand exact requirements from our customers, channel partners, technology alliances and system integrators, design solutions to meet their needs, have them validated and fine-tuned and ultimately help shape this latest release in conjunction with our in house research and development teams.  Below is a quick snapshot of some of the Community support:

Clifford Chance

"As a long time AppSense customer, this latest release will further simplify desktop management and help accelerate the adoption of new computing platforms.  We strive to provide the highest quality of service to our users and with mobile, tablet and cloud technologies becoming enterprise considerations; we look forward to extending our user controls to new computing platforms.”

Barry Walledge, IS Desktop Services Manager, Clifford Chance. 

University College London

“As a leading global university, with over 24,000 students and 9,000 staff we must ensure we strive to provide the highest level of service to these demanding tech-savvy users.  We believe the future of computing has foundations in a user-centric strategy and as such evaluated many user virtualization solutions and chose AppSense as a leader in both technology and operations.  We believe this latest release will also help us navigate the future of mobile and bring your own computing platforms.”

Jots Sehmbi, IT Programme Manager of the University College London

Brocade (Video Testimonial here)

“The efficiencies created by AppSense allowed Brocade to receive a return on investment in under a year.  With this latest release from AppSense and, as Brocade continues to refine its delivery strategy, our investment in User Virtualization will allow us to continue to deliver the same high level of user experience regardless of our virtualization platform or physical desktops. There really is no comparison in terms of the AppSense solution’s ability."

 Doug Lind, Lead Windows Architect at Brocade

Croon (Case Study here)

“We have been using AppSense since 2011 in a mixed platform environment with Windows 7 and Citrix. The innovations that AppSense have developed for the new User Virtualization Platform have our strong interest.  We are very much interested in this release to evaluate the self service options, next to the advanced management controls”

Jhon Megens, IT Manager, Croon Elektrotechniek B.V.

Openline

“As an AppSense Partner, I look forward to this latest release as the new features contribute strongly to simplifying and accelerating our projects. The Personalization Wizard with its application templates means we know we are consistently delivering quality installations to our customers according to AppSense Best Practices – and it is easy and fast to do!”

Ben Pelzer, Openline Consultancy B.V

 I want to say a public thank you to all involved in helping design, build and deliver this latest release.  And look forward to the communities continued supported of our solutions and working together on future releases too.

Keen to hear your thoughts.

Gareth Kitson | Director of Product Marketing. EMEA.
@GarethKitson 

The AppSense Proof of Concept (PoC) workshop is a 1 day event designed to provide all of our UK AppSense Certified Solutions Partner (CSP) engineers who have hands on knowledge of installing AppSense Environment Manager (version 8 and above) with the skills needed to scope and deliver an AppSense PoC on a customer’s site. Register to attend.

A couple of weeks back Michael Kleef posted an article on “increasing user density within a Citrix XenDesktop environment” utilizing AppSense Performance Manager.

The testing, which was carried out in conjunction with Microsoft and Citrix, demonstrated that the patented AppSense Performance Manager technology, which controls CPU at both a process and thread level, was able to increase user capacity and ensure a quality of service in a virtual desktop environment.

The benefits of running Performance Manager can also be seen on a native desktop, and in fact some of our customers now include a default configuration of Performance Manager in their standard build to ensure the desktop remains “snappy” (responsive) and prevent run away processes from consuming 100% of the CPU. (We all use it here at AppSense!) 

The recent launch of the AppSense Exchange has also provided our customers and partners alike with a number of tools and utilities to help administer, configure and demonstrate our products.

The “Performance Profiler” is one of the tools available on the AppSense Exchange and although a little out of date when it comes to the branding, (an older Blue AppSense logo back from 2007), it still today provides an excellent way to demonstrate the benefit and technology included in Performance Manager.

Over the last 9 years at AppSense I have demonstrated and assisted customers in understanding the even greater value Performance Manager (“PM”) offers XenApp environments; in the majority of cases increasing user capacity between 20 and 40% - in some cases doubling the user density!

Whilst performance manager can also manage both physical and virtual memory, (perhaps a blog for another time?); the CPU management elements of performance manager are able to control and dynamically assign CPU resource at both a process and thread level.

Thread Control

At a thread level, PM utilizes a technology called Intelligent Process Management (IPM) to clamp run away processes when the CPU hits 100%. By clamping these runaway processes, (typically by 10% or 20%), other processes can continue to run effectively without impacting other user processes. When enabled the effects can be seen in task manager…. We call this the “clamping envelope.”

A simple configuration allows the offending process to be clamped when the CPU hits 100%. The clamp is removed after 10 seconds and the reapplied if the process is still threatening performance. 

Performance Manager can also be configured from within the console to place either hard or soft limits on certain users, groups or processes; Ideal for limiting Internet explorer for instance to 90% on a XenApp server to ensure that flash based websites don’t freeze the sessions.

Process Control and the "Performance Profiler"

At a process level, AppSense PM uses a technology called “Smart Scheduling.” This technology ensures that each process gets given a fair share of CPU time and works by dynamically changing the base priorities.

To help demonstrate “fair sharing” the AppSense Exchange provides customers and partners to download the Performance Profiler tool. 

The performance profiler graphically represents how much CPU time 3 executable’s (workitems) consume vs what they actually request. By enabling and disabling Performance Manager, a very simple test demonstrates the benefits of Smart Scheduling both “before and after.”

By setting the red process to consume 100% CPU, the green -  60% and Blue only 20%, it is very easy to demonstrate how executable’s do not receive an equal share of CPU without a technology like Performance Manager.  With all else being equal, each of the 3 processes should receive 33.3% of the available 100%. Before PM is enabled you can see that the Blue worker processes doesn’t even get the 20% it actually requests.

Once PM is enabled, smart scheduling actively monitors the processes and ensures there is a fair share. This makes the box feel more “snappy” and in many cases reduces CPU queue lengths therefore getting more done in a shorter space of time!

Other features within Performance Manager include the ability to control performance based on session state. This allows granular management of performance based whether an application or session is disconnected, in the foreground, background, idle etc – ideal for saving memory and CPU cycles in XenApp / XenDesktop environments which experience a large number of disconnected sessions!

Both technologies can be used together to ensure a quality of service, increase user capacity and ensure a consistent performance in any windows desktop environment – a key part of managing the user more effectively and hence an important element of User Virtualization. 

Feel free to download and enjoy! 

I have worked in the IT industry for too many years to remember and I will soon be saying goodbye to my thirties :-( ouch!!  As you can imagine I have worked for quite a few companies in this time, and the majority of them have been software vendors spread across all markets, with the last 7 years being here at AppSense. One thing I have noticed time and time again, as a company grows, so does its customer / reseller base and the need to hold public events increases.

How these companies I have worked with have dealt with these public facing events has varied hugely; from the normal corporate drone to attempts at engaging customers with active conversations, but never really succeeding. Rarely have I seen a company actively engage the community and ask for awkward questions and suggestions on how to improve their offerings in such a public manner as AppSense. This is exactly what the AppSense University was setup for all those years ago, to engage with its external partner engineers, showcase the latest and greatest software and above all ask for feedback, be it good or bad.

I have been with AppSense as a technical pre sales consultant for nearly eight years and I have seen the University grow from a small event with a handful of engineers to this year’s event that was the best attended to date. For the last 2 years I have been responsible for the organisation and running of the University, no small feat I can assure you, however it is extremely rewarding once you see it all fall into place with a packed room of virtualization engineers itching to have their say.

This year was the biggest and greatest yet with around 100 attendees all congregating at Wokefield Park just outside Reading for the annual 2 day event. Throughout the two days were short presentation slots covering all of the technical updates on the core AppSense products such as Environment and Application Manager (look out for more info on the updates soon!).

At the end of each product section, the AppSense Product Manager took to the floor with an open microphone for a roadmap and no holds barred feedback session with the delegates. Many of the attendees commented how refreshing this was to have the “man in control” of the products taking questions and feedback directly from the community in such an open manner. After a group exercise of how would the Community change Environment Manager, it was clear that reducing the complexity of the software and upgrades were top of most people’s minds and something we have taken away with new vigour to our development teams. (again, look out for some great news on core products enhancements very soon!). Without the University, such feedback would be much harder to gather and for that I thank all of the attendees for their honest responses.

Another first was the first public showing of two new products from AppSense at the University showing how we are expanding the user virtualization sphere into the realms of data or more importantly how to reach your data. The demonstration of DataNow was probably the most talked about topic during the evening meal and drinks. Personally I am truly excited about this new product and the feedback from the event just helped to confirm the need for such a product in the UV space.

Another highlight was an in depth demonstration of StrataApps integrating with the core AppSense products showing how applications could be centralized, protected and moved around desktop builds whilst still maintaining the gold build. Again this showed all how AppSense is extending the UV space to include applications, data as well as user personalization.

Of course no self-respecting IT event would be the worthy without a chance for people to let their hair down and socialize over a few beverages and the university was no exception. Being able to meet up with old friends, chat about technology in a relaxed atmosphere and share a few beers has always been a staple of the university and helps the AppSense community keep in touch and share ideas.

Overall the feedback was extremely positive from all that attended the event and the AppSense aim of Channel Enablement was clearly demonstrated with a renewed vigour shown by consequent emails, discussions and tweets requesting training courses and exam details. I now have to process and deliver on all of the requests sat in my inbox, a task I have pleasure in dealing with and proves that the annual University is the prime event for the AppSense technical community giving them content, roadmaps and belief in AppSense.

So thank you to all that attended and made the event one to remember and see you next year. 

Steve Allan.  Senior Pre Sales Consultant
AppSense UK

@catanonia