As of today Scense 7.6 (build 1234) will be available for download. Scense 7.6 includes our approach to user profile management: Scense Live Profiles. Next to Live Profiles, Scense 7.6 includes product enhancements and improvements and a number of fixes. The release notes and known issues can be found below: More… »

Windows user profiles are critical assets in today’s desktop environments. They aim to increase end user productivity by ensuring a predictable and familiar user experience and reliable access to personal data. A Windows user profile that is unavailable or broken will inevitably result in helpdesk calls and loss of productivity. For years, we have relied on classic Windows (roaming) profiles to provide end users with settings and data. End users demanding flexibility, Windows OS migrations and new technologies like desktop and application virtualization have proven Windows (roaming) profiles to be insufficient to support our demands. As a result a new market with alternative profile management solutions was created.

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Hosted desktop virtualization has been around for quite some time now. The benefits are well known, the technology matures but adoption remains low. In 2009, Gartner expected a 15% market share for corporate desktops in 2014 resulting in 66 million connected devices. Today we know that these numbers will be lower, much lower. But why?

High capex and\or the financial crisis might be part of the problem but is for sure not the main cause. Even large service providers, offering hosted virtual desktops as a service (pay as you go) are also not meeting the numbers they aimed for.  So it is not just about the money.

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Virtualization, in its roots, has been around for many decades starting with the mainframes in the late 1960’s, but only in the last decade virtualization has been broadly accepted and became mainstream. The best known virtualization technology “Virtual OS” was actually popularized in the last 5 years. At the same time the virtualization reference model called the “Virtualization stack” started to evolve into one of the preeminent known architecture models for our current modern IT infrastructure.

In essence the Virtualization Stack allows us to decouple the different infrastructure layers used to create the fundament of the IT infrastructure for organizations. In the past, all IT layers were bound together and were dependent on the weakest link in the chain. Because of virtualization technologies we can now add or remove IT layers without jeopardizing the total IT infrastructure framework we have built for our organizations. This virtualization stack is also becoming one of the essential pillars for the IT trend of Cloud Computing (being Private/Public or Hybrid Clouds). We will cover the Cloud Computing’s ins and outs in one of our future whitepapers.

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In order to support partners, suppliers, and customers dispersed across the globe, the workforce has become more mobile, and work happens wherever business takes place. As businesses compete in a global economy, they rely on their mobile workforce to ensure product innovation and customer satisfaction. It is therefore critical for businesses to provide their workforce with easy access to the right data, tools, and applications to do their jobs successfully—at any time and from anywhere.

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Thirty four years ago the first generally available personal computer (called a microcomputer in those days) was released by Apple, the Apple II, and in 1981 IBM brought us the Personal Computer (PC) for business usage. Since then the PC has been a device that has been adopted by both the consumer market (thanks to Microsoft and Apple) and the corporate market (were IBM, HP and Intel played a prominent role). Although both markets have been highly successful, there has always been a Chinese wall between these two markets. Now in 2011 the wall between these two markets is gradually being taken down as the border between “Work and Play” is getting less clear by the day.

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A Scense implementation has minimal requirements on hardware and software. This blogpost discusses the requirements needed for a succesful Scense implementation

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With Scense, the deployment of MSI, VSA, Thinapp and AppV packages is very easy. The ultimate challenge for a lot of Scense administrators however is the deployment of applications like Microsoft Office. This blog will discuss the deployment of Microsoft Office 2010 by using a Generic Application Object.

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The Scense module Repository Management was used for years by our customers to manage application repositories centrally and distribute applications unattended and conflictfree. Because of developments like Windows Installer, application virtualization and our own Adaptive Installer, the need for a module like Repository Management diminished. A recent customer survey reveiled that all customers using this module started projects to shift to other application distribution methods. Because of that we decided to end the support of this module in the near future. 

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Last week I downloaded Gartner’s Industry research addressing the CIO’s agenda for 2011 and more particular, of higher education CIO’s: The 2011 Higher Education CIO’s Agenda: Lean Controlled Growth, 30 March 2011 (Jan-Martin Lowendahl and Amos Auringer).

The results and key findings are very interesting. Most higher education institutes are starting a renewed focus on growth. Cost reduction is being replaced by optimization and cost control and the uncertain technological landscape (we prefer calling that a dynamic market) forces them into improvement projects for their technological infrastructure or the implementation of new flexible environments. Addressing this agenda is off course a no brainer. As a workspace management vendor, we exist because of the challenges mentioned in the top 5 of the priority list.

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