Most of the improvements to Stratusphere are plumbing enhancements which may be more dramatic to Liquidware partners than to customers.
Workspace management solution maker Liquidware has announced the 6.1.3 version of their Stratusphere UX user experience monitoring and diagnostics solution for physical PCs, virtual and cloud-based desktops. Released just after the focus at Microsoft’s Inspire partner conference, which had a heavy emphasis on Windows Virtual Desktop [WVD], it comes as WVD creates strong new opportunities for launch partners focused on the space like Liquidware.
“This was the first time that we exhibited at Inspire,” said Jason E. Smith, Liquidware’s VP, Product Marketing. “We have done Ignite before, but we felt that this was the right time to do Inspire because of the driving force we see coming around Windows Virtual Desktop.”
Smith emphasized that WVD created enormous buzz at Inspire for a vendor like themselves that was connected to the launch.
“We were one of only a handful of partners in the ecosystem around WVD, and while there were multiple sessions about it, what I found compelling was the number of partners on the floor who approached us about adopting their long- standing practices,” he said. They had not dealt with virtual desktops before, but because of WVD, they were looking for guidance. We were at the right place at the right time for a lot of partners looking to develop virtual desktop practices around WVD.”
“WVD is a potential disruptor to End User Computing, but it aligns very nicely to the course that we have been on since Day One,” said Kevin Cooke, Product Director for Stratusphere UX at Liquidware. “We have always supported Windows at scale and helped organizations transition from the way that they consume or deliver Windows, including making sure that they run in an optimal fashion. There is a very strong message around having the right set of technologies at the right time, which create opportunity for channel partners. These are all things we have been doing from Day One, and this is the right place and right time for us.”
The enhancements in Stratusphere UX 6.1.3 are not specifically related to the WVD opportunity, but continue the process of enhancing and refining concepts previously introduced, particularly with the 6.0 release and its reworking of the product infrastructure.
“This release is about enhancements,” Cooke said. “It’s about turning up the volume and lowering the barrier even further in terms of making information actionable. There are a lot of small enhancements in terms of performance and back end relating to scale and visibility. They enhance what Stratusphere has always been about, capturing a large data set in workspace analytics, whether to do proactive things like monitoring or reactive ones like troubleshooting, that partners can wrap services around.”
A key add is a new native agent for Stratodesk NoTouch OS-based devices.
“Stratodesk is one of our alliance partners,” Cooke stated. “Our very lightweight Connector ID key will now run natively in Stratodesk. This allows customers complete end to end visibility whether the issue is in the data centre, on the wire or the end device itself. That’s a profound value-add, especially for anyone adopting thin clients who are concerned about the performance of the device itself.” Official Connector ID Key support was also announced for Microsoft Windows Server 2019, and early support for Windows 10 Multi-Session, and for WVD, once the latter becomes available, likely around or just before the Microsoft Ignite timeframe in early November.
“We have also made multiple ‘plumbing’ improvements relating to APIs and dashboards,” Cooke said. “The value of this to our service delivery partners is profound. It’s also great for partners who have wrapped around us, because it enables even easier unfettered access to data we collect, and allows for the ability to create views through dashboard customization that meets specific needs.” Queries to support widget data views have been optimized to provide better responsiveness, and visual indicators have been added to provide component loading progress and status of background data refresh.”
Other enhancements add more granular control capabilities.
“These changes provide more granularity in terms of access control – who can edit, add or delete – and around management,” Cooke indicated. “For example, we have a very large regional bank customer in the northeast that has leveraged us for quite some time, as a managed service. Leveraging the Stratusphere data set as ground truth, we provide user experience metrics and consumption information that is profoundly beneficial to help customers make business decisions. That includes both application versioning and business things like productivity or the happiness of users. A channel partner adapts this data outside of Stratusphere and marries it with other business level information, and with machine learning and AI creates greater levels of usability for the customer.”
Liquidware introduced a new Process Optimization capability in Version 6.1, and enhances it in this version to make it more flexible.
“The Process Optimization feature has really taken off for us,” Cooke stated. “It lets you improve the user experience by managing process level and resource optimization in real time, to ensure that specific applications get priority for resources. It looks at processes that consume resources and are most frequently used, and makes sure they have the resources for optimal experience for every device.”
This release also now supports integration and licensing through Amazon Marketplace, in addition to the pre-existing bring-your-own-license capability available on the Amazon Cloud.
