Virtualization and Cloud executives share their predictions for 2016. Read them in this 8th Annual VMblog.com series exclusive.
Contributed by Jason E. Smith, Product Director, Liquidware Labs
Windows is Alive and Kicking, Real Stick PCs are Coming, App Layering Gains Momentum
2016 stands to be an exciting year for desktop computing. Windows 10 adoption is set to take off in the enterprise and end user computing technologies are maturing.
After a pretty big misstep with Windows 8/8.1, which I personally believe is almost exclusively due to removing the Start Menu, Microsoft has gotten it right with Windows 10. Windows 10 may be the first Microsoft OS ever released that actually runs more efficiently on older hardware than its recent predecessors (Windows Vista/7/8). If you have not updated your home PCs I recommend it. It is fast, easy, and intuitive – three key things missing from Windows 8/8.1. For this reason I predict the home market will continue to rapidly adopt Windows 10 and businesses will quickly follow in 2016.
New life is being breathed back into the physical PC market by the way, and I predict that later in 2016 you’ll start to see new HDMI “Stick PC” products introduced that are enterprise ready and will give traditional desktop/tower and thin clients a run for their money. Early introductions of Stick PCs have had limitations – they generally don’t ship with enough horsepower or the Pro version of Windows to easily join a domain. That will change soon enough with more powerful versions that will appear on the market. There will be security concerns because they are so small and they can easily walk right out of a building with your company’s valuable data along with it. These concerns can be easily overcome by using a User Environment Management Solution like ProfileUnity to lock down the desktop, and implement a best practice storage regiment for user profiles, data, and even applications. Under proper end point management, these items would not be stored locally but instead in the secure datacenter or distant cloud, thus leaving the Stick PC effectively stateless.
Application Layering technologies have now matured to the point where enterprise adoption of this technology will be common in 2016. In the past year, there have been advancements in packaging, playing back applications, and ensuring high availability for corporate use.
For our part at Liquidware Labs, we’ve just introduced a few innovations to help industry adoption of Application Layering. These innovations include “Micro Isolation” to automatically avoid file and registry conflicts and a self-clustered highly available design that does not necessitate expensive and complex load balancer arrangements. Additional industry innovation is coming to application layering in 2016. All of these advancements will ensure that Application Layering is adopted for more widespread use beyond the early adopter use cases.
2016 is set to be a great year for end user computing. With new tech coming and products reaching a healthy maturity stage, it’s time to dive in and get your organization updated in the new year!
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About the Author
Jason E. Smith, Product Director Liquidware Labs has led speaking sessions on User Environment Management and Layering at Citrix Synergy and VMworld. He was previously an owner of Entrigue Systems which Liquidware Labs acquired in 2009. Prior to Liquidware Labs he led product management and marketing programs for Citrix, Red Hat and other well-known end user computing vendors.
