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AppSense – Follow-me-data “Project Orca”

AppSense CTO Harry Labana announced a new upcoming “Follow-me-data” product from AppSense “Project Orca”

The Project Orca technology has desktop clients for both Microsoft Windows and Apple OS X along with mobile clients for iOS, Android and Microsoft Windows Phone OS.  For those devices where Project Orca is not capable of providing native access, a HTML5 based web client is available taking advantages of new features of the language to provide exceptional functionality.

For further informations about “Project Orca” click here

Citrix & AppSense – Desktop Transformation Model Partnership White Paper & PoC Kit

The Citrix and AppSense relationship demonstrates over ten years of joint respect, understanding & recognition and engagement with each other as leaders in our respective fields.   Together Citrix and AppSense have developed and delivered solutions into some of the world’s largest and most demanding computing environments which can be read about in our numerous joint Case Studies and Video Testimonials, for example:
Citrix.com – Managing Finance Users with AppSense User Virtualization
Citrix.com – Managing Healthcare’s Roaming User with AppSense

One of the main drivers behind a joint AppSense and Citrix solution, is to enable and adopt a Desktop Transformation project, such as a Citrix XenDesktop environment, faster, with less risk & disruption, at lower cost and with maximum user acceptance.  Best practice and the first step in transforming your existing desktop to a low-cost, dynamic Citrix XenDesktop is to virtualize the user first, separate them along with all of their information from the existing platform, swap out and move to Windows 7 on Citrix XenDesktop, then re-apply the user and all of their relevent settings and data to the new environment.

This best practice to ‘Simplifying Desktop Transformation’ can be seen in the Citrix and AppSense White Paper within the Citrix Desktop Transformation Model:  AppSense User Virtualization – Extending the value of Citrix and forming a strategic component of the Citrix Desktop Transformation Model (DTM), which can be downloaded from Citrix.com here.

Below are a couple of highlights from the paper:

“The Citrix Desktop Transformation Model (DTM) is designed to help customers get from “wow to how” and quickly realize the many benefits of desktop virtualization. Citrix has worked closely with customers and partners – in this case AppSense User Virtualization – to develop the first industry-endorsed, repeatable method for transforming desktop computing from today’s device-centric, distributed management paradigm, to a more user-centric, virtualized model.”

When used with your Citrix Desktop Transformation Project, AppSense User Virtualization provides:

Other topics in the White Paper include:

Upon reading the White Paper and when you are ready for your next steps in Desktop Transformation, you may be interested in the joint Citrix and AppSense Proof of Concept Kit, details of which are also in the paper in the ‘Further information and next actions’ section.

There are other documents created by Citrix to help educate and cover the benefits of User Virtualization in your Citrix environment such as the Citrix Case Study on AppSense – Leading User Virtualization Solution. which provides more information on why “Citrix recommends the use of AppSense for advanced user personalization and desktop configuration requirements in enterprise environments.”

Further information can be found within the Citrix Featured Partners pages, which highlights their leading Citrix partners in their respective fields and how they add further value and form a strategic component of Desktop Virtualization and Transformation – AppSense and XenDesktop Featured Partner Page

I hope this is of help and provides insight on managing the user component of the desktop as part of your Citrix Desktop Transformation Model, please let me know if you have any questions or would like any further information.

AppSense Management Suite updated

AppSense have updated their Management Suite 1st April 2011.

This build of AppSense Management Suite contains updated versions of the Management Center and Application Manager

The build numbers for the individual products are as follows:

  • Application Manager 8.2.64.0
  • Environment Manager 8.0.959.0
  • Performance Manager 8.1.106.0
  • Management Center 8.1.305.0

New Features in Environment Manager 8.0.959.0

Support for Citrix Offline Plug-in 6.0

New Features in Application Manager 8.2.64.0

  • Elevating the download of web components

    Components, such as ActiveX controls, need to be downloaded and installed to run. A standard user will typically need an elevated level of permission to allow the component to install. The new functionality will give Application Manager the ability to elevate user’s rights to successfully install allowed ActiveX controls and web downloads.

  • Elevating for application Install

    Some ActiveX controls are just boot-straps that install a ‘downloader’ application. These downloader applications also need to be elevated and be installed by the Administrator. The new functionality changes the actual owner of the token, as opposed to just adding it to the Administrator group. This is a subtle difference that is required to allow this feature to co-exist with typical Application Managers Trusted Ownership rules.

  • Configuration snippets

    To allow an application to download and install there are a number of entries that need to be added to the Application Manager configuration. We will supply preconfigured pieces of configurations (snippets) that can be imported into an existing, open configuration which will populate all the areas that need setting, combining the application entitlement and user rights entitlement

  • User Interface Modernization

    The Application Manager User Interface has been brought up to date with a new look and feel and an improved user experience

New Features in Performance Manager 8.1.106.0

  • Variable Memory Optimizer Analysis Resource Control

    Enables the amount of CPU utilization that Optimizer analysis uses to be configured, please contact support for details.

  • Limit Analysis on Highly loaded machines
    Memory Optimizer Analysis will now not analyze if the machine that has Performance Manager installed is running at greater than 80% CPU.
  • Memory Optimizer Analysis re-architect
    Memory Optimizer Analysis has been re-architected to take advantage of an internal caching strategy making it far more lightweight on the endpoint

If you have access to MyAppSense.com, you can download the new versions of the AppSense Management Suite there ;=)

/Enjoy

“The Ultimate” Group Policy Search tool

Microsoft have released a website called http://gps.cloudapp.net/ which is powered by Windows Azure.

Group Policy Search is one of many new services that Microsoft is attend to provide free, yes free information…

I would like to give credits to my collegue “Thomas Storgaaard” who gave me hint about this website, so why not share it out in the public.

What is Group Policy Search
The Group Policy Search is a online  Group Policy search tool for Microsoft Active Directory Group Policy Settings.

Filter your Group Policy Search to following products:

  • Internet Explorer 5/6
  • Internet Explorer 7
  • Internet Explorer 8
  • Internet Explorer 9
  • Machine Policy Settings Only
  • Miscellaneous
  • Office 2007
  • Office 2010
  • User Policy Settings Only
  • Windows 2000
  • Windows 7/2008R2
  • Windows Server 2003
  • Windows Vista/2008
  • Windows XP

This tool is great, when you work with Microsoft, Citrix and special combined with AppSense.

/Enjoy

AppSense Environment Manager 8.0.905.0

AppSense have released a new version of AppSense Environment Manager 8.0.905.0
Feature Information
  • This release contains bug fixes only.

Bugs Fixed

This is an agent only release which contains the following fixes:

  • Initialize Unicode logging earlier so that all output is present in the debug logs
  • Incorrect Unicode string format specifiers in logs.
  • Temporary files for downloaded personalization config are not being deleted after a config poll.

Download from www.myappsense.com