In addition to a new IT management and monitoring solution integration, IGEL is showcasing their new IGEL UD2 Universal Desktop endpoint solution and their IGEL OS 11.
The new IGEL UD2 Universal Desktop endpoint solution
Today, IGEL, which makes an edge OS for cloud workspaces, is announcing a strategic partnership with IT management and monitoring solution provider ControlUp. It will facilitate an integration through which ControlUp’s real-time monitoring and analytics capabilities will be available through the IGEL Universal Management Suite [UMS]. The new solution is being demonstrated this week at both the IGEL and ControlUp booths at the Citrix Synergy event in Atlanta. The integration with ControlUp comes on the heels of a Synergy pre-announcement late last week, where IGEL announced the new version of their IGEL UD2 Universal Desktop endpoint solution.
Matthias Haas, IGEL’s Chief Technology Officer, revealed back at the IGEL Disrupt Conference in February that work was proceeding on the ControlUp integration when he discussed the IGEL road map.
“We have existing partnerships with other companies in the real-time monitoring and analytics space like LoginVSI and Liquidware, and adding ControlUp is more a matter of expanding customer choice with a customer’s preferred solution,” said Dan O’Farrell, Senior Director, Product Marketing at IGEL Technology America. “We entered into this partnership because of customer requests.”
The ControlUp platform will now be able to provide monitoring, automation, troubleshooting and analytics through the IGEL UMS for any IGEL OS-powered device, on premises or in the cloud. That information can be used to proactively handle pending issues before they happen, as well as troubleshoot issues which do occur.
“What ControlUp does is give you a level of insight into the quality of experience for the user,” O’Farrell indicated. “ControlUp is pretty cool in the way it looks at things like bootup time, and response time. It gives you a good feel of the health of the user experience, and so is a nice complement to our UMS.”
Integration between the IGEL OS and IGEL UMS and ControlUp is available now through a Custom Partition, which is the way that IGEL generally introduces new integrations. It will be fully integrated in the IGEL OS firmware for both solutions in early Q4. The two vendors will be demoing the integration at Synergy and the IGEL Booth (#204) and ControlUp Booth (#201).
The new version of the IGEL UD2 Universal Desktop endpoint solution, which is available now, will also be shown off at the Synergy event.
“We announced it last week because we wanted to give it a spotlight before Synergy, and invite people to see it at the event,” O’Farrell said. “It is the lowest price range of our full endpoint devices.”
The UD2 is Intel-powered, in contrast to IGEL’s top selling device, the UD3. The new UD2 has an integrated Intel Atom quad-core processor, with turbo boost frequency of 1.04GHz to 2GHz, which raises performance 35 per cent above the older model.
“It’s a little more capable with a faster processor,” O’Farrell said. “The older product also wasn’t as capable from a video display capability, and it had four USB ports while this one has five. The UD2 is also half the physical size of its predecessor.”
The UD2 has a narrower range of use cases than the UD3.
“This one is Ethernet only – not WiFi,” O’Farrell indicated. “If you want Wi-Fi, you buy the UD3. The UD2 is also for a stationary type of workstation. That’s the use case, in environments like call centres and life sciences, where, often for security reasons, the device is not intended to be moved.”
IGEL is also using Synergy to showcase their OS 11, which they unveiled early in the year.
“This will be the public coming out party for the latest version of our software,” O’Farrell said. “We will also be demonstrating that at the booth.”
O’Farrell said that OS 11 is more consolidated than its predecessor.
“Our line card has been getting pretty fat, so we converged a lot of capabilities into just a couple product SKUs,” he stated. “Now when you buy IGEL OS, you also get RESTful API and HA option on the management platform and multimedia codec pack. In the old days, we differentiated between task users, and knowledge users and power workers – and that’s obsolete now. Today, they all get a great user experience. RESTful API is almost table stakes now. This is all a lot simpler, especially for the channel.”
O’Farrell said that IGEL OS 11 has some purposeful messaging behind it.
“It’s more subtle, but we are positioning the IGEL OS as next generation edge solution for cloud workstations, which is why you saw our announcements with AWS and Teradici earlier this year,” O’Farrell said. “You will not hear us use this phrase at Synergy – Thin Clients. OS 11 is an operating system that can load on top of any endpoint. It’s a multi-purpose edge operating system, not just classic VDI. VDI paints you into a corner, because many organizations moving to the cloud and they look for a way to access the cloud in an efficient manner without having to load Windows 10 onto all endpoints. Our position is that you put Windows where it belongs, and not have to maintain a top-heavy OS in tens of thousands of locations. We play well with the cloud. It’s a win-win for IGEL and for the cloud vendors, because it makes them more agile.”
