Long Awaited VMware Thinapp Factory is now available

For those of you familiar with VMware EUC strategies you will no doubt be aware of a concept called ThinApp Factory that makes the creation of ThinApp applications easier. VMware last week have now announced this virtual appliance is now available.

The virtual appliance brings centralised administration and automation to the process of creating virtualised Windows applications. ThinApp Factory uses vSphere API's to create workloads that automatically convert fileshares of application installers into ThinApp application containers.

These workloads can be run in parallel to maximize throughput and increase ROI for virtualisation projects.

The IT department can leverage 'Recipes' during the packaging process. Recipes are simply small JSON files, which contain a redistributable blueprint of the customisations and optimisations necessary for packaging complex applications.

These recipes can be created and now exchanged freely with other customers via the ThinApp Packaging Community site.

In essence ThinApp factory allows you with a few mouse clicks to create ThinApp packages from a directory full of MSI's, which really improves the time to market of your project.

The integration with Horizon Application Manager also provides an quicker path to Horizon enable your applications and populate the Horizon Application Catalog.

Key Features:

Automates packaging of application installers into virtualised Windows applications

Leverages vSphere,vCenter for automation of workloads to efficiently package applications

Provides and utilises ‘Recipes’ as redistributable blueprints for application packaging

Provides a lightweight web UI with a dashboard for administrators to use for the entire workflow of packaging to distribution

Enables administrators to import and edit existing ThinApp projects and modify package.ini, registry, and file settings through the web UI

Integration with Horizon Application Manager application catalog for automated population of application metadata and deployment

Want to know more about it contact us

VMware looks to Big Data with Hadoop

Big data is one of the key tech trends that is now making lots of noise across those businesses with significant volumes of data (PB+).  Hadoop is one of the core architectures based upon the Apache v2 license that many organisations are looking to for big data analytics.  Facebook are one of the biggest uses of this technology.  Historically the deployment of Hadoop has gone against the grain of common practice data centre technology and is targeted at physical Hadoop multinode clusters.  Hadoop represents how data centers were deployed 10 years ago before virtualisation was mainstream."

VMware  has announced an open source project - Serengeti that lets companies easily deploy and manage Hadoop distributions in virtual and cloud environments. 

VMware clearly see the sie and value in Hadoop and want to become the defacto technology  for virtual Hadoop deployments.  VMware is aspiring to cash in on big data, a point made clear when the company acquired big data analytics startup Cetas earlier this year. VMware and Spring make it easier for businesses to create big data applications, which IT can more easily deploy via Serengeti onto a distributed cloud infrastructure.

VMware's case for decoupling Hadoop nodes from physical infrastructures is that organisations can benefit from faster deployment, higher availability, higher elasticity, and more secure multitenancy.

VMware has also announced it's adding new code to Hadoop specifically the HDFS and MapReduce projects to make them virtualisation aware. 

Microsoft to build its own tablet?

There have been many rumours going around this week about Microsoft, from them looking to acquire Yammer for ESN capabilities to more recently about them building their own tablet. This would make perfect sense and is something that we at Equanet have long believed should happen. After all they clearly know how to build hardware, just look at the Xbox.

What makes this speculation (and it is pure speculation) even more realistic is the surprise press conference they are holding on Monday; speculation has increased that Microsoft is making a major shift and unveiling its own branded and designed tablet to compete with the iPad.

The invitation, which touted a "major Microsoft announcement," provided no details of what the announcement will be about.

In the meantime, reports have surfaced, including in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal's and others that Microsoft is expected to unveil its own tablet running either Windows 8 or Windows RT.

Microsoft has always required the support of its hardware partners -- HP, Dell, Samsung, for example -- to create the PCs, laptops and tablets running its Windows software.

Microsoft might have given an indication that it was thinking about producing its own ARM-based devices two years ago when it signed a licensing agreement enabling it to build processors based on ARM architecture.

The interest that Equanet is seeing already around Windows 8 tablets is impressive and clearly building their own tablets would allow for consistency of experience and performance. Equanet has been fortunate to be running Windows 8 on a number of devices which has showed the operating system is perfectly aligned to the tablet world.

So I guess we will just have to wait and see what Monday brings and if the rumours are true.

Microsoft Windows 8 Encryption Beta Tool made available

Microsoft is making available new test versions of a number of its tools for Windows business users that are meant to complement Windows 8. 

The 2.0 version of the Microsoft Bitlocker Administration and Monitoring tool (MBAM) is now available. Microsoft has also released a new beta of Microsoft Advanced Group Policy Management and has also commitmented to a second beta of  User Experience Virtualisation (UE-V) (due by the end of this month), as well as a release candidate for its Diagnostics and Recovery Toolset (DaRT) 8, today, as well. 

These tools are all part of the Microsoft Desktop Optimisation Pack (MDOP). MDOP includes Microsoft Application Virtualisation (App-V), Microsoft Enterprise Desktop Virtualisation (MED-V), Advanced Group Policy Management (AGPM), Asset Inventory Service (AIS), Advanced Group Policy Management (AGPM),  Microsoft BitLocker Administration and Monitoring (MBAM) and Desktop Error Monitoring (DEM).

MBAM 2.0, when used with Windows 8, will reduce the time it takes to provision BitLocker to devices. It also enables self-servicing of key provision. 

There are a few ways in which your organisation can get the benefits of these technologies, if you are interested to learn more please contact us here.

Microsoft confirm the July price increase - it's not as bad as predicted

Equanet reported here that Microsoft were to increase their Volume Licensing agreements in the UK by 29% on average as of 1st July.  Due to the fluctuation of the Euro the rise is not as high as expected.  Initially it was expected the increase would vary from between 7.5% and 33.5%.

The price ranges are less than expected and are between 1.7% and 25.9% based upon current exchange rates.  Naturally the diverse nature of the license agreements means that increase will vary.  Academic, boxed product and OEM remains static.

The table below identifies the price increases but bear in mind that these are average prices aligned to SKU, so you need to contact us for accuracy and ensuring that the right advice on reducing your financial exposure.

Volume License Program                                                Average Final Price Increase

Open License Commercial                                                             1.7%

Office 365 (MOSP)                                                                         Up to 15%

Open Value/Open Value Subscription                                             25.9%

SPLA                                                                                            25.9%

ISVR                                                                                             25.9%

Government Open Value/Subscription                                            25.9%

Government Open License Programme                                           25.9%

Select/Plus                                                                                  17.7%

Enterprise Agreement/Enterprise Agreement Subscription               18.7%

Depending on how you procure your licensing will depend on the affect this will have on your business.  It may be worthwhile for some organisations to bring forward their Microsoft projects or look to alternative volume licensing agreements to fix the pre-July increase for the next 3 years.

So, although not ideal it's not as bad as first thought.  We suggest that you call our software team to work out your options, your exposure and how this can be minimised.  After all your Microsoft technologies support your IT Strategy so assessing where you are in your strategy would be prudent to establish the best route for your licensing.

Windows Server 2012 RDS Improvements

Microsoft has always had success with RDS from the days of terminal services on Windows NT through to RDS on Server 2012 often supported with Citrix XenApp for Enterprise deployments.

In the latest edition of Windows Server 2012 Microsoft has added a raft of updates that are sure to make your deployments even easier. This post will highlight some of those advancements:

Windows Server 2012 has improved RemoteFX over a WAN as well as balancing between scale and reduced bandwidth. Specific improvements include:

Adaptive Graphics

Microsoft support a mix and match approach, determining and using the right codec for the right content instead of one size fits all. Progressive rendering allows RemoteFX to provide a responsive experience over a highly constrained network.

Intelligent Transport

Microsoft support UDP as well as TCP. UDP provides a better experience over a lossy WAN network but, is not always possible dependent on the routers, and firewalls involved. RDP will automatically use TCP when UDP cannot be used to ensure connectivity and the best possible experience.

Optimised Media Streaming

Microsoft have a new codec to reduce bandwidth consumption for media content

Adaptive Network Auto Detect

In this release, the end user no longer has to set the network in the Remote Desktop Connection client: the client auto-detects the network type and, also adapts as the network changes.

Single Sign-On

In Windows Server 2012 Microsoft has simplified this by eliminating the need to use multiple certificates. Microsoft has also made it possible to use locally logged on domain credentials so that users connecting from managed devices can connect seamlessly without any credential prompts.

Metro-style Remote Desktop


In the app store Microsoft has added a new Metro-style application to provide a simple touch-first remoting experience. Discovering of remote resources, touch optimisation, easy reconnect to your favourites, are just some of the specific features added.

Email and web discovery of Remote Applications and desktops

Users now can find the correct remote workspace to connect to by just providing their email address. This removes the requirement to remember a long website URL. In addition, Remote Desktop Web Access now supports other browsers such as Chrome, Firefox, and Safari.

Multi Touch

Microsoft support full remoting of gestures (e.g. pinch and zoom) between the client and host with up to 256 touch points. This provides for a consistent experience when using a touch enabled device locally or, over RemoteFX.

Robust Pooled Virtual Desktop Collection model

Virtual machines can be created in batch from a virtual desktop template, patched by only modifying that virtual desktop template, and recreated/refreshed automatically by the RD Connection Broker. This reduces the cost and complexity of supporting a large number of users.

User Profile Disk

A major blocker for the “pooled virtual desktop collection” model has been lack of personalisation: Since the pooled virtual desktop collection is based on a common virtual desktop template, the user’s personal documents, settings, and configurations would normally not be present. User Profile Disk was added to solve this problem for either virtual machine-based or session based desktop deployments. As the user logs on to different virtual machines within the pool or different RD Session Hosts within the session collection, his/her User Profile Disk gets mounted, providing access to the user’s complete profile. Since User Profile Disk operates at a lower layer, it works seamlessly with existing user state technologies such as Roaming User Profiles and Folder Redirection.

Fair share of resources in RD Session Host

In Windows Server 2012, RD Session Host server allocates CPU, Disk I/O, and Network I/O such that a single user cannot consume resources that would negatively impact other users on the same host. Each user will get a “fair share”. This is done with minimum overhead so the CPU, disk, and network resources are used to maximum capacity.

RDS Management Interface integrated into Server Manager

RDS now includes a single management interface through which you can deploy RDS end to end, monitor the deployment, configure options, and manage all your RDS components and servers. This management interface is built into the new Server Manager, taking advantage of many new Windows Server 2012 management capabilities such as multi-server deployments, remote configuration, and orchestrated configuration workflows.

Scenario-Focused Deployment

The new Server Manager provides a scenario-focused wizard that dramatically simplifies the task of bringing up a complete RDS deployment. This wizard sets up all the roles needed for an RDS deployment, configures each server role correctly to communicate with the other roles:

Quick Start is optimised for deploying Remote Desktop Services on one server, and creates a collection and publishes RemoteApp programs.

Standard Deployment allows you to deploy Remote Desktop Services across multiple servers, allowing for a more customised deployment.

Active/Active RD Connection Broker

In previous releases the RD Connection Broker role service has supported an active/passive clustering model. This provided high availability in the case of component failure, but it did not address high scale requirements. In this release, Microsoft have eliminated the need for clustering and switched to an active/active model. With this model, two or more RD Connection Brokers can be combined as a farm to provide both fault tolerance and load balancing. This prevents the broker from being a single point of failure and also allows ‘scale out’ as load demands.

We think that this is a great set of capabilities for users reliant on session based virtualisation. VDI is a great concept and has relevance in many organisations but for costs alone we typically see a hybrid of the two and the set of features added by Microsoft provide a great hybrid approach.

Looking to Windows 2012, Windows 8 and RDS? Then contact us to see how it works in our innovation centre.  Want to see and hear the technology first hand then register for this in person event.

Citrix VDI in a Box feature set grows

Citrix has announced a technology preview of Project Aruba which improves Citrix VDI-in-a-Box, with personal vDisk technology.

Project Aruba uses vDisks layering technology, obtained with the acquisition, to manage end-user applications and preferences allowing non persistent desktops both personalisation and flexibility.

Project Aruba provides the following key features:

Personalised virtual desktops:
Project Aruba eliminates the need to create separate static desktops to carry forward end-user customisation by coupling single-instance management with the ability to have individual user workspaces for their applications and data.

Single instance management:
This provides the ultimate flexibility for IT to maintain one master copy of desktop images while preserving the personalisation of user applications and data.

Support for Windows 2008 R2:
Project Aruba manages Windows 2008 R2, Windows 7 and Windows XP –based virtual desktops – enabling customers to select the ideal virtual desktop environment based on compatibility and costs.

Windows 8 support (Beta):
Project Aruba supports Windows XP, Windows 7 and Windows 8 virtual desktops. All features of Windows 8 including the new Metro interface are fully supported. Since Windows 8 is not yet generally available, this feature is currently in Beta.

Simpler, more flexible:
Project Aruba makes management even simpler with added features such as access to multiple data stores for optimizing storage, and a touchless DTAgent that updates the desktop agent on all golden images and their desktop instances automatically when the VDI-in-a-Box software is upgraded.

Citrix Synergy 2012 Keynote Messages

Today has been the start of the Citrix end user event called Synergy, currently running in San Francisco.  Equanet has a good presence out there and have been able to report back the following messages.

Today’s announcements make it easier for companies of all sizes to go mobile – empowering employees to interact securely with any combination of people, data, apps and devices – then bringing it all together in a seamless, integrated experience for end users.

Key themes were based upon People, Data, Applications and Devices (pretty much aggregating all the areas of BYOD) into a succinct set of capabilities.

Citrix unveiled the first solution from its recent acquisition of Podio.  Citrix Podio delivers a cloud-based team collaboration platform for companies of all sizes, similar to other ESN's such as Yammer and Chatter.   Citrix also announced GoToMeeting® HDFaces for the iPad, combining video conferencing, audio conferencing and screen sharing into a single, integrated experience for mobile workers. 

Citirix also announced GoToAssist® for mobile devices which lets IT professionals provide live support from anywhere, connecting to employee computers and solving problems directly from their iPad, Android tablets or Android phone.

The second pillar of the Citrix mobile enterprise strategy is a focus on data. The core of this strategy is Citrix ShareFile, a cloud-based file sharing service ensuring that their information follows them across devices, regardless of where it was initially created and saved.  Similar to dropbox but developed for business.

Citrix also announced new ShareFile StorageZones technology, giving customers the ability to choose optimal locations for storing corporate data – either off-premise in the public cloud, or on-premise, within their own private datacenters. The new ShareFile StorageZones technology makes it easier for enterprise customers to meet security, compliance and performance requirements, without giving up the simplicity and elasticity of cloud-based data services.

Citrix also announced it is plugging ShareFile into Citrix Receiver.  As a result of this integration, end users will be able to open, view, edit, save and share documents on their personal and mobile devices, regardless of where those documents were initially created. 

The third component of the Citrix mobile enterprise strategy centers on applications.  Citrix announced a new RemotePC option as part of FlexCast.  Using RemotePC capability, XenDesktop customers will be able to quickly turn existing office PCs into distributed VDI hubs without setting up additional servers and storage in the datacenter. 

As the app world moves, an increasing percentage of business applications are being delivered as web, SaaS, cloud and mobile apps.  Citrix announced Citrix CloudGateway 2, a new update to its unified storefront solution that adds mobile application management capabilities, including full support for native HTML5, iOS and Android apps. The new CloudGateway release also adds integration with ShareFile, giving customers a single unified control point for all apps and data enterprise-wide.

The fourth pillar of the Citrix mobile enterprise strategy focuses on devices. The core of this strategy is Citrix Receiver. Citrix Receiver makes it easy for customers to support bring your own (BYO).

Citrix strengthened its client side hypervisor with the acquisition of Virtual Computer, a provider of management solutions for Xen-based client hypervisors. Citrix will combine the newly-acquired Virtual Computer technology with XenClient to create the new Citrix XenClient Enterprise edition. 

The last element of the strategy is Citrix HDX System-on-Chip (SoC) initiative, launched last October at Citrix Synergy Barcelona.  Citrix was joined by multiple partners today to unveil the first wave of devices featuring the new HDX SoC technology.  HP also unveiled a new All-in-One zero client that uses Power-over-Ethernet and consumes 13 watts of power, less than half that of comparable devices on the market today. 

The final big announcement was aimed at cloud service providers and arguably as Citrix CSP partners.  This is known as Project Avalon.  This aggregates a wide range of Citrix technologies to help users deliver any Windows app or desktop as a true cloud service. Rapidly deploy personalised Windows apps and desktops in a flexible, private cloud environment across single or multiple sites and utilise public clouds in a "capacity-on-demand" fashion. Leveraging the new Citrix CloudPlatform, powered by Apache CloudStack, makes it easy for existing customers to adopt new features at whatever pace they like. This allows them to mix and match different versions of Microsoft Windows Server®, Citrix XenDesktop and Citrix XenApp and span across any mix of public and private cloud infrastructure to host and deliver powerful, effective work styles for all users.

Architecturally it looks like the following:

So all in all I think you will agree a great extended vision by Citrix making them even more relevant within the boardroom and a flexible approach to accomodate to most scenarios.  If you need to know more contact us. 

Possibly the HP Windows 8 Slate?

The Internet is awash for rumours of an HP Windows 8 tablet, which is exceptionally thin, supports multi touch interaction and a whopping battery life of between 8 to 10 hours, oh and is expected out this calendar year.




Naturally this is a web rumour which means it also has lots of 'ifs and buts' associated with it, and first appeared on Neowin.net. HP are refusing to comment on this leak, but everyone knows that HP are working on an Intel-Based Windows 8 tablet.

The key notes to focus on is it will be running Windows 8 Professional. That means it will include the Desktop, allowing it to run existing Windows apps. It also will include encryption, virtualisation, PC management and domain connectivity. The HP Slate 8 will be 10.1 inches, 9.2mm thin according to this leak.

Other listed features include enterprise-level docking and both multi-touch and stylus support. Hopefully the docking will be good as the Samsung Series 7 dock...

If this is an accurate slide then this looks like a good move in the right direction for HP, what are your thoughts?

29%

As reported earlier this year by Equanet Microsoft has today officially released its price increases from the 1st July 2012.  The price increase averaged out stands at 29%.  The actual spectrum of increases ranges from 7.5% through to 33.5% dependant on the agreement type you hold with Microsoft.

The purpose of this increase is to provide price alignment with those prices seen across other areas of Europe due to a fluctuating euro. 

The 29% increase should not come as a major surprise to businesses (albeit painful to swallow) due to the transparency showed by Microsoft in February of this year.

There are many ways that businesses can reduce their financial exposure if they work with Equanet who can review their agreements and product plans and see how they map to proposed IT strategies.  Once we understand your IT requirements we can help you choose the right strategy and protect your budget.

Naturally each agreement is unique to your business and it is only by working with a trusted advisor such as Equanet that you can implement the buying strategy that is right for you.  Strategies such as procurement of additional products pre July through to agreements that provide price lock for the next three years.  There are many, many other ways that you can be smarter with your budget and we at Equanet are here to make sure that you make your budget work harder.

There are so many options available that once you get over the initial shock of the increase we urge you to contact us to see how we can advise you on the right course of action for you and your business.