AppSense had this single SKU on the roadmap before their acquisition by LANdesk, but further integration is coming, including bringing LANdesk’s patch management offerings in for an even fuller security solution
Jon Rolls, Vice President, Product Management at AppSense
LAS VEGAS – AppSense is now part of LANDESK, but continues to put out solutions under its old brand. At Citrix Synergy here, AppSense announced its new Endpoint Security Suite, which brings together two existing products, AppSense Application Manager and AppSense Insight, in a single SKU.
“The new suite both provides a single SKU at a better price and provides a clear intention of our direction,” said Jon Rolls, Vice President, Product Management at AppSense.
“AppSense Application Manager is all about application and privilege control, building a policy and enforcing it with lockdown and blacklists,” Rolls said. “AppSense Insight, on the other hand, is good at discovery of user activity and behavior to help make informed decisions.”
At this change, the primary benefit to the customer from the new suite is the price break from the single SKU, but additional value is on its way, Rolls said.
“Later in the year, they will be integrated more fully, and we want to get customers on board now with the concept,” he added.
AppSense’s tradition has been making it easier to deploy and migrate applications, but the company has long been aware that its technology was also being used in a security role.
“AppSense has been reluctant to become a security company, but the application control stuff was just exploding, so we finally decided to market and focus more on it,” Rolls said. “There is definitely more of an emphasis now on the security play, and on talking up this solution.”
The Endpoint Security Suite provides more security and management control over applications running in the Windows 10 OS. The AppSense Insight solution provides more data on user endpoint experience to better develop the application and privilege control policies. AppSense Application Manager actually sets those policies. It lets IT allow the Windows 10 start menu and select Windows 10 system components to run, while also being able to control and block unapproved Universal and Win32 applications. IT can also block the Win 10 Edge browser to restrict the use of unapproved applications and uncontrolled browser activity.
Longer term – but not too far off – the plan is not only to better integrate these two solutions, but bring them in with LANDESK’s complementary patch management.
“LANDESK does have some limited application control, but the longer term plan is to integrate that into the AppSense technology,” Rolls said. “What LANDESK has which we don’t is patch management, where they are best of breed. The ultimate security punch would be bundling the enforcement and the discovery with the patch management, to completely close off exploits and make sure users can’t do anything stupid.
“That’s the future, but I would like to get it to market this year,” Rolls said.
LANDESK’s acquisition of AppSense closed on April 19, and things will continue unchanged until AppSense’s fiscal year concludes at the end of June.
“We have also announced that nothing changes until the end of the calendar year, and that the AppSense channel program and pricing will remain, although we may start cross-selling,” Rolls said.
Rolls said that the actual integration of components will happen at very different speeds, depending on the underlying complexity.
“For example, the integration between LANDESK service management and AppSense DesktopNow that’s being done now is a straightforward integration. LANDESK Xtraction, which provides alerting and reporting, is already connected to one of our databases. These kinds of connections will take 2-3 weeks to build and we can get that to market relatively quickly. Some things we may never integrate. Others will take 6 to 12 or even 18 months.”
The AppSense Endpoint Security Suite is available now.
