Happy Pi Day readers!  It’s day 011 of FLISH MADNESS and we are continuing our conversation on End User Computing.

To review, we discussed yesterday that three things are needed for EUC to be successfully deployed in a corporate IT environment.

1.  Device agnosticism aka BYOD (Bring Your Own Device).

2.  Application abstraction / Modern Application development (HTML 5)

3.  Secure MDM (Mobile Device Management)

We went in depth about topic number one yesterday.

Today we will discuss topic number 2:

Application abstraction / Modern Application development

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VMware has recently announced some new and exciting Infrastructure and Desktop Promotions that are currently running from August 22, 2011 – December 15, 2011.  The promotions that are highlighted in red are due to expire on September 15, 2011.

Infrastructure Promotions

Upgrade to vSphere Enterprise Plus for 25% off list – (August 22, 2011 – December 15, 2011)

• Enable a policy based automated data center by upgrading from vSphere Enterprise to vSphere Enterprise Plus. Customers with vSphere Enterprise licenses can upgrade to vSphere Enterprise Plus for 25% off the list price.

vSphere Essentials Plus with vSphere Storage Appliance (August 22, 2011 – December 15, 2011)

• A low cost shared storage offering that enables users to experience the massive benefits gained by using the live migration and high availability features of vSphere Essentials Plus. Eligible customers can purchase VMware vSphere Essentials Plus

Increase Data Protection and Compliance at No Additional Charge (June 15, 2011 – September 15, 2011)

• This promotion enables eligible customers to receive a 50-VM pack license with 12-months of Basic Support and Subscription for vShield Data Security at no additional charge with a qualifying VMware vSphere purchase.

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VMware this week at VMWORLD announced that the long anticipated web based HTML5 application delivery tool App Blast will be coming available soon.

For those that don’t know about App Blast, it is a web based delivery model for delivering ThinApp applications to any end user device capable of HTML5 and Java. With close tie ins to VMware’s Horizon App Manager, App Blast will allow IT organizations to entitle users to access ThinApp applications directly from the web to any device such as Apple’s iPad or Android based devices.

The end user will be able to access these applications without having to install it to their client device. This gives the IT organization greater control over application deployments and version control.

Stay tuned for more on VMware’s App Blast and it’s many features.

Just downloaded and getting my hands on the GA release of VMware ThinApp 4.6.2. Lots of good bug fixes and performance enhancements in this release around ThinDirect and Office 2007 application start times (cheers heard by all). Check the release notes below and stay tuned for more info as we kick the tires.

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Came across this the other day – Ericom is providing a free Beta of its HTML5 Client for VMware View.

HTML5 technology represents a new frontier in interactive browser-based applications and user experience. It’s the first VDI solution to provide native support for Chrome, safari and other browsers using WebSockets and http protocols.

Leveraging this innovative technology and integrated RDP compression and acceleration technology, Ericom’s high performance HTML5 client enables enterprises to provide users seamless access to VMware View virtual desktops – running wholly within the browser – from any HTML5-compatible web browser, such as Firefox, Google Chrome and Safari.

Although RDP-based, this technology is very interesting and key to a device-agnostic application delivery services model. Sign up for the beta if you get a moment and let us know of your results -

Being able to deliver applications and information seamlessly to any device is a huge organizational need – which shifts the “Why can’t I run these apps on my devices” conversation from an accusational criticism of the IT Group to a dialog about the pure usability of the device itself.

Enjoy -

Recently, while performing a POC for a Charlotte based law firm, we ran into a case where the client was suffering from the inability to upgrade their Citrix XenApp infrastructure to a Windows 2008 64-bit platform. The issue centered around an older version of a popular legal oriented software package called Elite which is developed by Thomson Elite.

The packaging of this application was by no definition a difficult one. .Net and a few other dependencies were installed and within 30 minutes we were able to successfully run this legacy version of the application on Windows 2008, Windows 7 and 64bit machines. Along with Elite 3.6, we also ThinApp’d IE 7 to provide access to the Elite Web Component which was incompatible with newer version of Internet Explorer.

The IE package was left clean as the client obtains MSIs directly from vendors such as Adobe, Java, and Apple and deploys them via their AD infrastructure. This allowed them to leverage their existing application deployment methods and deliver those plugins to multiple browser versions including the ThinApp’d Internet Explorer 7.

This was a “quick win” for the customer and immediately demonstrated the raw efficiencies that can be obtained by virtualizing your applications with ThinApp from VMware. This solved a major hurdle to upgrading their underlying infrastructure while also gaining efficiencies in application deployment and the user experience.

On to the next ThinApp!

One thing I always run into when talking about VMWare ThinAppp/VMWare View vs. Citrix XenApp/Citrix XenDesktop is that people are set on going one way or the other.  When in reality, ThinApp and XenApp are very complimentary products.  ThinApp can simplify your application deployment and the management of those applications.  Whether that be to traditional desktops, virtual desktops or application delivery platforms.  XenApp can simplify your deployment model with the Citrix Desktop and published applications.

However, Publishing ThinApps to Citrix Desktops or delivering as published applications can extend those management efficiencies.  You can have a single source of management for all applications in your environment and deliver to all devices/locations as well.  You can continue to reap the rewards of a Thin operating system and the packaged application mobility/reliability while also increasing your ability to deliver it to more end user devices in more geographical locations. 

Lots of reasons why a ThinApp deployment delivered via Citrix XenApp is a desirable solution.  Just another way (and a good one at that) to simplify management and increase application performance.

Remember the goal.  Any Device, Anywhere!