VMworld 2020 goes digital.  Will you be in attendance?  One of the vendors I normally look forward to seeing in person is Tricerat.

With the current pandemic, we're seeing a lot of changes taking place in our normal, everyday lives -- both professionally and personally.  One of those changes is the end of physical trade show events as we move to socially distance ourselves from one another.  While some trade shows simply cancelled or postponed until 2021, others have made the switch to a 100% digital format.  VMworld, the world's largest virtualization and cloud computing event hosted every year by VMware, is one of those shows -- enter for the first time ever, VMworld 2020 Digital. 

While a physical VMworld event would normally have north of 150+ sponsors, a digital VMworld event won't be able to effectively support that number of sponsors.

One of the companies you would have been able to visit in person at VMworld 2020 is Tricerat, a company that provides world class printing and scanning software for even the most complex IT environments.  The company’s software, ScrewDrivers, enables end users to print from any device, in any location, to any printer.

What about you?  Are you gearing up for VMworld 2020 digital?  Get started now and read this exclusive pre-show interview with Hannah Byrne, chief operating officer at Tricerat.

VMblog:  With COVID-19, we've seen a lot of changes in the tech world.  One big change has been the disruption of physical trade shows.  Many, like VMworld, have become digital in 2020.  What are your thoughts on digital events compared to traditional physical events?

Hannah Byrne:  While Tricerat greatly misses seeing our customers, partners, meeting new faces, and sponsoring VMworld with the greatest minds of technology, we have found that digital events provide us a unique space to connect with our marketplace and peers.

Digital events empower us to network, share ideas, learn, and connect - all with very low barriers. While the human element isn't the same, Tricerat is proud to host and take part in virtual events that bring cutting edge solutions to the world.

VMblog:  With this new digital format, what are you most interested in seeing or learning at VMworld 2020 digital?

Byrne:  We are excited to have so many sessions at our fingertips this year - the digital workspace track has more flexibility than ever because the event has gone digital. With 8 sessions just in VDiscover alone, there's going to be a lot of great knowledge share about VMware Horizon. The Delivering Employee Experience sessions stand out in a time where business as usual isn't the case anymore.

VMblog:  Another change has been a shift to working from home.  What are your thoughts on this, how has it changed things for your company both internal and external?

Byrne:  Tricerat has always led with flexible workspace solutions, so the shift was less frictionless. Our staff had experience working remotely prior to the pandemic. That being said, we've never gone this long without seeing our teams in person. It's critical that we use video conferencing and chat to remain connected.

Externally, we've seen a large increase in our virtual event presence with partners. Additionally, we appreciate the vast increase of video conferencing usage during quarantine - in a sense, this has given us more personal connection to our customers than ever.

VMblog:  Talking about your product solutions, can you give readers a few examples of how your offerings are unique?  What are your differentiators?

Byrne:  Tricerat's ScrewDrivers is delivered in three tiers - Essential, Pro, and Enterprise. ScrewDrivers is an expert solution for eliminating printing and scanning issues in Citrix, VMware, Microsoft WVD and RDS, workstation and server-free printing environments. Our solutions ensure consistency in the end user experience without crashes, lost and/or slow print jobs, all while delivering an easy to use, drag and drop console to manage all enterprise printing and scanning. Not only do we eliminate these common issues altogether, but we also empower IT teams with features like cloud printing, mobile printing, and more. It's the core of our modern print and scan management solution.

VMblog:  For people attending the VMworld 2020 digital event, why would they be interested in your company and solutions?

Byrne:  Tricerat's best in class printing and scanning solutions were the first of their kind - and we continue to leverage our over 24 years of printing and scanning knowledge to innovate end user computing. In Version 7, our latest release of ScrewDrivers, we've simplified the printing and scanning experience by consolidating our solutions into three simple tiers -- ultimately providing our customers and marketplace with a unique set of solutions to meet their environment needs. As our customers environments grow, we scale with them.

Our support and development teams are just as reliable as our tech stack - with an average NPS of 73, we pride ourselves on not just delivery software, but being a trusted partner to our customers.

VMblog:  What does your company offer a VMware shop or implementation?

Byrne:  VMware is focused on brining a toolset to the administrator to deliver a top-notch service to their users. In the same way, Tricerat fills in a missing piece with the same goal in mind, providing "don't think about it" printing service to the users with administrator efficiency in mind. For Horizon administrators, Tricerat provides the only printing solution for RDP and PCoIP for client printers, print server printers, network printers without a print server, and more.

VMblog:  Normally, VMworld is the time of year that people in this industry announce a new product or product update.  Do you have anything new that you've recently announced or plan to announce?  Can you give us the details?

Byrne:  Tricerat released ScrewDrivers v7 in 2020 which took our innovative and simple solutions and created all new packages to ease administration of printing and scanning in virtual, physical, and remote environments. Over the years, many types of printing solutions have been added into the Tricerat portfolio, and ScrewDrivers v7 brings this robust feature set into a cohesive and distinct solution to seamlessly layer into any environment. We've also introduced support for Linux clients, including IGEL.

In addition to the outstanding improvements offered in version 7, we have many exciting features in our roadmap coming later this year. Printer profiles will empower admins to define printer settings that are pushed out to users, further enhancing the user experience and capability.  Pull printing options will offer security boosts for printers of all types, making sure the user gets their printouts to the right location at the right time. All the while, Tricerat continues to add resources for cloud and hybrid deployments, particularly with Azure and WVD, and giving new automation options for maximum efficiency. These, among other things, will continue to build value of the ScrewDrivers solution and deliver new levels of service for users.

VMblog:  How does your company work with VMware?  Where do you fit within the VMware ecosystem?

Byrne:  ScrewDrivers boosts the capabilities of VMware Horizon print management by enabling reliable printing across remote protocols and providing administrators with management tools to deliver print services to users. Adding ScrewDrivers to VMware Horizon achieves printing success, no matter the client type or mobile device your workforce is on -- allowing admins to focus on innovation, not printing problems.

VMblog:  VMware will be covering things in their keynote, but what big changes do you see taking shape in the industry?

Byrne:  In a way, the EUC community has been focused for years on solutions that are needed in 2020. Companies that have a virtual desktop strategy were able to shift with agility, whereas companies that didn't have the technologies in place were left to find solutions. Virtualization vendors will be looking to reinforce messaging around work-from-anywhere, collaboration, cloud technologies, and security. Cloud and hybrid scenarios will likely take center stage, being able to provision and move workloads and desktops to wherever they need to be. Not only are users scattered around, but IT admins face administration challenges while separated from others, and perhaps even remote from the datacenter. All of these forces will double-down on effective VDI and EUC practices to drive business success through these challenging times.

VMblog:  Finally, do you think physical trade shows will come back?  And if so, do they change?  Would you sponsor?

Byrne:  What a tough question to answer! We miss physical trade shows and do hope they return. With the capabilities and low barriers to entry for virtual shows, it is unlikely that traditional trade shows will stay the same. Hopefully the future holds a good mix of virtual and physical shows.

Tricerat would sponsor a physical trade show if it was deemed safe for all attendees.

##