Liquidware also thinks that the capability to save directly to the AWS, Microsoft and Google object storage clouds, which is a first in this space, will also appeal to customers with a hybrid desktop computing strategy, who are not yet ready for a full move to DaaS.
Jason E. Smith, Liquidware’s VP, Product Marketing
Liquidware, which makes platform-agnostic Workspace Environment Management solutions, has announced what it considers to be a major breakthrough in the 6.7.6 version of their ProfileUnity solution. They have added native support for object-based cloud storage for the Amazon, Google, and Microsoft Azure public clouds. This lets users save user profiles directly to multiple clouds, without the use of a Server Message Block [SMB]. The company thinks this will have appeal even to customers who are not yet ready for full-blown DaaS [Desktop-as-a-Service] adoption, as part of their cloud-based end-user computing strategies.
“We have introduced major new functionality in ProfileUnity, with native support of object-based storage for Amazon S3, Google Cloud Storage, and Microsoft Azure Blob Storage,” said Jason E. Smith, Liquidware’s VP, Product Marketing. “It’s very neat because no one else has done this. When you save a user profile, you can now save data straight to object-based storage.”
The new approach leverages the APIs of the big cloud providers.
“Before, we would put a path for a profile to save to an SMB drive in the cloud,” Smith said. “Now, by leveraging the cloud vendors’ APIs, we have the ability to put in the path to an object-based storage account and put in the path to the API level. Calling on credentials is the magic we have done that no one else in the industry has.”
Now, as soon as ProfileUnity users log off, the entire profile is saved to object-based storage. When the user returns to DaaS, they connect the DaaS deployment to the same domain, and the profile will go down to the same desktop no matter where it is hosted.
A key benefit of this capability is its ability to appeal to customers who have not moved fully to DaaS, but are still in a hybrid stage.
“We are preparing customers for DaaS, but even if they aren’t yet ready for it today, the trend is still toward more cloud and less on-prem,” Smith said. “Customers are relying more on cloud-based storage. This makes ProfileUnity make sense for customers as part of their overall computing strategy, as part of a hybrid approach, where physical desktops still have a play, but where they want to make more use of cloud storage. It will help them get rid of some infrastructure. This will be a logical way to deliver Windows desktops in such a strategy. So it won’t just appeal to the low-hanging fruit of organizations that have already embraced DaaS. With this, customers in the hybrid stage don’t have to go DaaS yet, but it gets them ready for it.”
Smith said that more innovation around public clouds is likely.
“We are actively working with all three of these public clouds, and are working on strategic partnerships with all of them,” he indicated. “The AWS relationship has been made public before now, but the others have not. These relationships allowed us to do all the API integrations, and we will continue to develop new features through them.”
Liquidware is looking to use its cloud object storage support to cement itself in a visible leadership position within their space.
“We think this demonstrates our third-party leadership,” Smith said. “The largest player in this market saves everything to SQL, so can’t save to object-based storage. Smaller solutions have been acquired by Citrix and VMware. With our partners, we can assure our customers that we will be able to move quickly to always solve their future needs.”
