What do you want to see from OS Deployment software?

I’ve been going over some research in the server management space. A lot of research firms lump visionapp Server Management (vSM) with products that just do OS deployment, such as Ghost and Acronis. But some of the research has surprised me.

For instance, the research experts say that there’s no market for OS deployment tools for companies with under 500 managed nodes (servers + workstations). Yet in a recent survey, over half of the companies with under 250 workstations were using more than one OS deployment tool in their company!

I must confess that I don’t get the reason for this. Are OS deployment tools “purpose-built” — in other words, are some software titles better for certain deployments, and other software titles better for other deployments? I can leap to all sorts of conclusions over what this means — that no software out there is adequate for any one customer’s OS deployment needs, or that this software is based on specific user preferences, or that this software is so inexpensive that customers can afford to have more than one solution — but it’s all conjecture. And the research firms don’t have the answers.

So, if you use more than one OS deployment tool — why?

visionapp IT virtualisation seminar at Tate Modern in London

visionapp CTO Rick Dehlinger will provide the keynote at the visionapp IT Virtualisation Strategy and Solutions Seminar.

This event will be held at the Tate Modern in London on May 14th, with Rick Dehlinger delivering the keynote: “The Future of Application Delivery.”

In many ways, our industry is at an inflection point. The virtualisation and application delivery market spaces have collided. IT is being forced to deliver with less and adapt quickly to the challenging economic times. The rate of change and innovation in technologies, business models, and consumption patterns is dizzying! In this context, getting some perspective on the future of the industry may be more than an interesting aside – it could be a matter of survival.

This session will provide valuable perspective based on discussion content from Citrix Synergy 2009. At Synergy, there was a panel discussion with some of the most respected technologists in the industry, including Rick Dehlinger (CTP, CTO of visionapp), Bernard Tritsch (CTP, CTO of Immidio), Brian Madden (CTP, Industry Analyst), and high-level technical people at Citrix Systems, including CTO Simon Crosby, Chief Architect Brad Petersen, and Director of Technology Strategy Michael Harries.

Rick will present the thoughts from the Synergy panel and the 5 most important technology trends impacting our industry.

Contact visionapp UK at +44 (0) 20 7282 1710 if you or any of your team would like to attend. (You must reserve a seat to attend.)

Congrats to HP!

We didn’t win the Citrix Ready solution of the year 2009 — that award went to Hewlett-Packard — but we are honored to be a finalist!

If you are at Citrix Synergy, stop by our booth (#550) and see our finalist-worthy products in action. The opening night party is at 7 PM in the MGM Convention Center’s Expo Hall.

visionapp: Finalist for Citrix Ready Solution of the Year!

visionapp is a 2009 finalist!

Citrix announced this week that visionapp has been chosen as a finalist for its 2009 Citrix Ready Solution of the Year award.

I was thrilled to hear that we were a Citrix Ready Solution of the Year finalist. I’m excited about the work our engineers have done with compatibility with the new Citrix XenApp 5.0 and Provisioning Server, and I’m really happy with some of our customer wins where we’ve been able to keep Citrix customers happy with their entire infrastructure. I’m excited to come to Synergy and continue the success our products have had together!

By the way, visionapp will be in Booth 550 at Synergy. Stop by — we’ll have a show special going on!

Wow, another great review!

So, as most of you readers know, I’m the director of marketing for visionapp North America, and I’ve been trying for MONTHS to get our products reviewed by the press, whether it’s IT journals, trade publications, or websites–and I’ve run into roadblocks and dead ends.

The Editors of CoreDownload gave vRD 2009 5 stars!

I don’t know if the world has just had the stars all align or what, but we’ve gotten several great reviews of visionapp Remote Desktop 2009 in the last week or two. (Actually, I do know what it is–we’ve had a coordinated effort by our marketing team in Germany and our project manager from the USA who’s been working from the German offices for the last few months, so kudos to them!)

At any rate, the editors of CoreDownload just gave visionapp Remote Desktop 2009 5 Stars! (That’s their highest rating!)

ThinComputing.net review of vRD 2009

Michel Roth of ThinComputing.net just posted a review of vRD 2009.

Michel Roth of ThinComputing.net reviewed vRD 2009

In his review, he covers many of the new features of vRD 2009. As someone who works with RDP connections a lot more than I do (since I’m in the marketing side of things), he lists the features in a different order than I’m used to, and discusses some of them in detail. I hope you’ll find his review useful!

You can also download vRD 2009 from the ThinComputing.net website.

MTM adds visionapp to its best practices

We just announced the expansion of our strategic partnership with MTM Technologies, Inc., the largest Citrix solution advisor in North America. MTM is now incorporating visionapp Server Management 2008 (vSM 2008) into its Access Practice as the leading tool and methodology for building stable, reliable, and easy-to-maintain server farms. MTM is also announcing a free one-day virtualization assessment during March to determine how best to reduce operating expenses in customers’ environments.

“The customers using visionapp software tools report a 30% savings in their IT operating expenses,” said Chuck Fritz, President and CEO of visionapp North America. “We’re pleased that MTM—the largest Citrix reseller in North America—is using our tools to bring the same kinds of savings to their Citrix customers.”

MTM offers a free 1-day virtualization assessment

Jed Ayres, MTM’s senior vice president of partner management and marketing, said, “We strongly believe that visionapp products will address some of the biggest concerns of our Citrix customers. Lowering operating expenses and increasing productivity are two of the biggest driving factors for companies in today’s economy, and have always been goals of MTM’s industry-leading Access Practice. Together, MTM and visionapp can provide an end-to-end solution to help companies deliver on the leadership and the vision they need to succeed in these challenging economic times.” Ayres added that the March promotion of the one-day assessment would help companies best determine how to lower their operating expenses. The assessment will be free until March 31, 2009.

Putting The Cloud in simpler terms

I’ve heard a lot of people over the last few weeks ask what The Cloud is. Many organizations say they’re all about The Cloud; analysts say that The Cloud is the Next Big Thing. Suddenly, so many companies are suddenly on The Cloud that it’s ridiculous.

Sure, it's pretty, but what exactly is The Cloud?

So what is The Cloud, and what does it mean for the average business? The technical folks at visionapp may cringe at the oversimplification, but as I see it, The Cloud is basically when a task the user performs is performed over the Internet instead of a local computer. Implementing the task can be started on one’s workstation using a client (Skype is an example of this) or a web-based interface (such as everybody’s favorite SaaS example, Salesforce). The computations, though, are not done on that user’s workstation or in the user’s company’s server room; from the user’s perspective, it’s done “over the Internet.”

In reality, of course, the processing is done (most often) on the software vendor’s own servers in the vendor’s data center. This makes a lot of sense when the task that you want to do requires a large investment on your part. For instance, part of Salesforce’s success is that the in-house resources needed for a CRM system are huge, and it’s much easier to pay $50 a month per user and start today than $10,000 or more to start a CRM project that may not be ready for a few months.

visionapp is actually doing a lot of this today, especially in Europe, with technology based on its visionapp Workspace Management platform. One of the largest telecommunications companies in the world are hosting business applications over The Cloud using visionapp technology. And the telecommunication company’s customers are seeing a much lower initial investment, lower requirements for their own workstations, and lower maintenance costs — adding up to a lower cost of ownership and lower operating expenses.

Want to use another protocol in vRD 2009?

vRD 2009 has added support for many more protocols in addition to RDP (including VNC, Citrix ICA, Telnet, SSH, and HTTP/S). If you want to use another protocol–no matter what the default protocol is for the object–follow these directions.

Choose another protocol for a connection.

To connect via a different protocol, select the connection, then right–click. Next, select Connect with Protocols…, and choose the protocol you want to use.

Go to the vRD 2009 site and click Try Out to download the evaluation version today!

Shortcuts in vRD 2009

If you’ve begun to use visionapp Remote Desktop 2009, there are a few shortcuts to some of the new functionality!

To quickly refresh sessions and find out who is connected to any/all of the computers in a folder, right-click on the folder and select Refresh Sessions All.

Organize the contents of folders by choosing the folder, then right–click and select Sort Alphabetically.

Since vRD 2009 can now support a lot more protocols than just RDP (including VNC, Citrix ICA, Telnet, SSH, and HTTP/S), how do you figure out which protocol each connection uses? Easy — just hover over a connection to see which protocol it will use by default!

Go to the vRD 2009 site and click Try Out to download the evaluation version today!