Two days ago, AppSense announced a new release of its AppSense User Virtualization Platform (UVP), which features significant enhancements aimed at both improving performance and enabling the next generation of user virtualization capabilities.    

To find out more, I spoke with Doug Lane, director of product marketing over at AppSense.  Here's our conversation.

VMblog.com:  In the company's latest announcement, AppSense mentioned that the User Virtualization Platform (UVP) will usher in a new era for IT.  Can you explain what you mean by this?

Doug Lane:  We've reached a moment of profound change in our relationship with technology. Instead of using a single, company-issued PC, many of us now also use personal PCs, smart phones, tablet devices, and other devices that blur the lines between our work and personal lives. While this is very liberating to us as users, it turns traditional IT management and security practices on their head. The old rules no longer apply.

The AppSense User Virtualization Platform shifts IT management and policy focus to the user. This lets users work with the devices and applications that will make them most productive while providing corporate IT teams with the assurance that they will be able to deliver a consistent experience to users, keep sensitive data secure, and prevent support costs from skyrocketing. 

VMblog.com:  How has the architecture of the UVP changed and why?

Lane:  As user virtualization takes on a more strategic role for our customers, it is essential for us to be nimble and responsive to customer feedback and new market opportunities. In this latest release, we have completely redesigned the underlying architecture to make it extremely modular and extensible.

With the updated architecture in place, will be able to add new capabilities to the product at an accelerated rate without compromising the scalability, reliability, and stability we are known for. This additional flexibility is also crucial for our R&D push into new areas such as cloud and mobile.

We also made significant enhancements to the user experience as part of the release. We’ve increased overall performance, reduced our resource footprint, and blended our functionality more closely into the Windows log-on and log-off experience.

VMblog.com:  What enhancements does the latest release of UVP include?

Lane:  In addition to the architectural advances I mentioned, we significantly expanded our policy and personalization capabilities, adding an array of new automated actions and conditions such as the ability to govern behavior based on existence of specific files, folders, registry key/values, OS versions, environment variables, and date/time.

We’ve also added a new set of powerful administrative tools that make user data import, export, and migration, as well as the detailed work of analyzing log and registry information, much easier.

VMblog.com:  How will this latest release extend the capabilities of desktop virtualization?

Lane:  Organizations deploying desktop virtualization are often faced with a difficult decision: assign each user their own personal virtual desktop and watch data center costs rise or use a non-persistent pool of virtual desktops and face user dissatisfaction. These opposing forces are why many desktop virtualization projects stall.

Using AppSense UVP, IT organizations can achieve the favorable economics of non-persistent virtual desktops while providing a personalized experience that users will embrace.

VMblog:  For companies that are still early in their desktop virtualization plans, when is the right time to be thinking about user virtualization?

Lane:  User virtualization is actually worth thinking about even before the move to desktop virtualization begins. While the benefits of user virtualization as part of a virtual desktop deployment are substantial, many of our customers deploy user virtualization to their native PCs. This provides immediate benefits such as ease of migration ­– either to new operating systems or new hardware – as well as tighter policy controls and user rights management. It will also greatly simplify the move to virtual desktops when time comes and allow users to roam easily between a native PC and a virtual desktop.

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Thanks again to Doug Lane for speaking with me and answering a few questions.