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Showing 1 - 16 of 19 white papers, page 1 of 2.
IGEL Powers Rich Multimedia Computing Experience for Fulton Financial Corporation
In an effort to optimize the productivity of its employees and enable them to have more time to focus on their customers, Fulton sought to upgrade the thin clients for its Citrix application virtualization infrastructure. With the help of its Citrix partner and IGEL Platinum Partner, Plan B Technologies, Fulton selected the IGEL Universal Desktop (UD6) thin clients featuring Intel Celeron J1900 Quad-Core processors and the IGEL Universal Management Suite (UMS).

Fulton Financial Corporation has a long and storied history that began in 1882 in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, where local merchants
and farmers organized Fulton National Bank. The bank’s name was chosen to honor Lancaster County native Robert Fulton, the inventor and artist best known for designing and building the Clermont, the first successful steamboat.

In an effort to optimize the productivity of its employees and enable them to have more time to focus on their customers, Fulton sought to upgrade the thin clients for its Citrix application virtualization infrastructure, with the help of its Citrix partner and IGEL Platinum Partner, Plan B Technologies.

In selecting a desktop computing solution to support its Citrix application virtualization infrastructure, Fulton had one unique business requirement, they were looking for a solution that would mirror the experience provided by a Windows PC, without actually being a Windows PC.

During the evaluation process, Fulton looked at thin clients from IGEL and another leading manufacturer, conducting a “bake-off” of several models including the IGEL Universal Desktop (UD6). Fulton like the fact that IGEL is forward- thinking in designing its desktop computing solutions, and began its IGEL roll-out by purchasing 2,300 IGEL UD6 thin clients in 2016 for its headquarters and branch offices, and plans to complete the roll out of IGEL thin clients to the remainder of its 3,700 employees in the coming months. The bank is also leveraging the IGEL Universal Management Suite (UMS) to manage its fleet of IGEL thin clients.

Solution Guide for Sennheiser Headsets, IGEL Endpoints and Skype for Business on Citrix VDI
Topics: IGEL, Citrix, skype, VDI
Enabling voice and video with a bundled solution in an existing Citrix environment delivers clearer and crisper voice and video than legacy phone systems. This solution guide describes how Sennheiser headsets combine with Citrix infrastructure and IGEL endpoints to provide a better, more secure user experience. It also describes how to deploy the bundled Citrix-Sennheiser-IGEL solution.

Virtualizing Windows applications and desktops in the data center or cloud has compelling security, mobility and management benefits, but delivering real-time voice and video in a virtual environment is a challenge. A poorly optimized implementation can increase costs and compromise user experience. Server scalability and bandwidth efficiency may be less than optimal, and audio-video quality may be degraded.

Enabling voice and video with a bundled solution in an existing Citrix environment delivers clearer and crisper voice and video than legacy phone systems. This solution guide describes how Sennheiser headsets combine with Citrix infrastructure and IGEL endpoints to provide a better, more secure user experience. It also describes how to deploy the bundled Citrix-Sennheiser-IGEL solution.

Salem State University Teams with IGEL, Citrix and Nutanix to Deliver Digital Workspaces
Limited IT resources drive need for the IGEL’s robust management features; maturity of Citrix virtual desktop infrastructure, and the simplicity and time-to-value for Nutanix’s hyperconverged infrastructure offering make the combined solution a no-brainer for the university.
When Jake Snyder joined Salem State University’s IT department, the public university located just outside of Boston, Mass. was only using traditional PCs. “95% of the PCs were still on Windows 7 and there was no clear migration path in sight to Windows 10,” recalls Snyder. “Additionally, all updates to these aging desktop computers were being done locally in the university’s computer labs. Management was difficult and time consuming.”

The university realized something had to change, and that was one of the reasons why they brought Snyder on board – to upgrade its end-user computing environment to VDI. Salem State was looking for the security and manageability that a VDI solution could provide. “One of the biggest challenges that the university had been experiencing was managing desktop imaging and applications,” said Snyder. “They wanted to be able to keep their student, faculty and staff end-points up to date and secure, while at the same time easing the troubleshooting process. They weren’t able to do any of this with their current set-up.”

Snyder first saw a demo of the IGEL solution at the final BriForum event in Boston in 2016. “It was great to see IGEL at that event as I had heard a lot of good buzz around their products and solutions, especially from other colleagues in the industry,” said Snyder. “After BriForum, I went back and ordered some evaluation units to test out within our EUC environment.”

What Snyder quickly discovered during the evaluation period was that the IGEL Universal Management Suite (UMS) was not just plug-and-play, like he had expected. “The IGEL UMS was a very customizable solution, and I liked the robust interface,” continued Snyder. “Despite competitive solutions, it was clear from the start that the IGEL devices were going to be easier to use and cheaper in the long run. IGEL really was a ‘no-brainer’ when you consider the management capabilities and five-year warranty they offer on their hardware.”

Salem State University currently has 400 IGEL Universal Desktop software-defined thin clients deployed on its campus including 360 UD3 thin clients, which are the workhorse of the IGEL portfolio, and 40 UD6 thin clients, which support high-end graphics capabilities for multimedia users. Salem State has also purchased IGEL UD Pocket micro thin clients which they are now testing.
IGEL Delivers Manageability, Scalability and Security for The Auto Club Group
The Auto Club Group realizes cost-savings; increased productivity; and improved time-to-value with IGEL’s software-defined endpoint management solutions.
In 2016, The Auto Club Group was starting to implement a virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) solution leveraging Citrix XenDesktop on both its static endpoints and laptop computers used in the field by its insurance agents, adjusters and other remote employees. “We were having a difficult time identifying a solution that would enable us to simplify the management of our laptop computers, in particular, while providing us with the flexibility, scalability and security we wanted from an endpoint management perspective,” said James McVicar, IT Architect, The Auto Club Group.

Some of the mobility management solutions The Auto Club has been evaluating relied on Windows CE, a solution that is nearing end-of-life. “We didn’t want to deal with the patches and other management headaches related to a Windows-based solutions, so this was not an attractive option,” said McVicar.

In the search for a mobile endpoint management solution, McVicar and his team came across IGEL and were quickly impressed. McVicar said, “What first drew our attention to IGEL was the ability to leverage the IGEL UDC to quickly and easily convert our existing laptop computers into an IGEL OS-powered desktop computing solution, that we could then manage via the IGEL UMS. Because IGEL is Linux-based, we found that it offered both the functionality and stability we needed within our enterprise.”

As The Auto Club Group continues to expand its operations, it will be rolling out additional IGEL OS-powered endpoints to its remote workers, and expects its deployment to exceed 400 endpoints once the project is complete.

The Auto Club Group is also looking at possibly leveraging the IGEL Cloud Gateway, which will help bring more performance and functionality to those working outside of the corporate WAN.
Understanding Windows Server Cluster Quorum Options
This white paper discusses the key concepts you need to configure a failover clustering environment to protect SQL Server in the cloud.
This white paper discusses the key concepts you need to configure a failover clustering environment to protect SQL Server in the cloud. Understand the options for configuring the cluster Quorum to meet your specific needs. Learn the benefits and key takeaways for providing high availability for SQL Server in a public cloud (AWS, Azure, Google) environment.
The Gorilla Guide to Moving Beyond Disaster Recovery to IT Resilience
Does your business require you to modernize IT while you’re struggling to manage the day to day? Sound familiar? Use this e-book to help move beyond the day to day challenges of protecting your business and start shifting to an IT resilience strategy. With IT resilience you can focus your efforts where they matter: on successfully completing those projects which mean the most to the progress of the business - the ones that help you increase market share, decrease costs and innovate faster than y
Does your business require you to modernize IT while you’re struggling to manage the day to day. Sound familiar?

Use this e-book to help move beyond the day to day challenges of protecting your business and start shifting to an IT resilience strategy. IT resilience is an emerging term that describes a stated goal for businesses to accelerate transformation and easily adapt to change while protecting the business from disruption.

With IT resilience you can focus your efforts where they matter: on successfully completing those projects which mean the most to the progress of the business – the ones that help you increase market share, decrease costs and innovate faster than your competitors.

With this guide you will learn…
  • How to prepare for both unplanned and planned disruptions to ensure continuous availability
  • Actionable steps to remove the complexity of moving and migrating workloads across disparate infrastructures
  • Guidance on hybrid and multi-cloud IT: gain the flexibility to move applications in and out of the cloud
Lift and Shift Backup and Disaster Recovery Scenario for Google Cloud: Step by Step Guide
There are many new challenges, and reasons, to migrate workloads to the cloud. Especially for public cloud, like Google Cloud Platform. Whether it is for backup, disaster recovery, or production in the cloud, you should be able to leverage the cloud platform to solve your technology challenges. In this step-by-step guide, we outline how GCP is positioned to be one of the easiest cloud platforms for app development. And, the critical role data protection as-as-service (DPaaS) can play.

There are many new challenges, and reasons, to migrate workloads to the cloud.

For example, here are four of the most popular:

  • Analytics and Machine learning (ML) are everywhere. Once you have your data in a cloud platform like Google Cloud Platform, you can leverage their APIs to run analytics and ML on everything.
  • Kubernetes is powerful and scalable, but transitioning legacy apps to Kubernetes can be daunting.
  • SAP HANA is a secret weapon. With high mem instances in the double digit TeraBytes migrating SAP to a cloud platform is easier than ever.
  • Serverless is the future for application development. With CloudSQL, Big Query, and all the other serverless solutions, cloud platforms like GCP are well positioned to be the easiest platform for app development.

Whether it is for backup, disaster recovery, or production in the cloud, you should be able to leverage the cloud platform to solve your technology challenges. In this step-by-step guide, we outline how GCP is positioned to be one of the easiest cloud platforms for app development. And, the critical role data protection as-as-service (DPaaS) can play.

How to Develop a Multi-cloud Management Strategy
Increasingly, organizations are looking to move workloads into the cloud. The goal may be to leverage cloud resources for Dev/Test, or they may want to “lift and shift” an application to the cloud and run it natively. In order to enable these various cloud options, it is critical that organizations develop a multi-cloud data management strategy.

The primary goal of a multi-cloud data management strategy is to supply data, either via copying or moving data to the various multi-cloud use cases. A key enabler of this movement is the data management software applications. In theory, data protection applications can perform both of the copy and move functions. A key consideration is how the multi-cloud data management experience is unified. In most cases, data protection applications ignore the user experience of each cloud and use their proprietary interface as the unifying entity, which increases complexity.

There are a variety of reasons organizations may want to leverage multiple clouds. The first use case is to use public cloud storage as a backup mirror to an on-premises data protection process. Using public cloud storage as a backup mirror enables the organization to automatically off-site data. It also sets up many of the more advanced use cases.

Another use case is using the cloud for disaster recovery.

Another use case is “Lift and Shift,” which means the organization wants to run the application in the cloud natively. Initial steps in the “lift and shift” use case are similar to Dev/Test, but now the workload is storing unique data in the cloud.

Multi-cloud is a reality now for most organizations and managing the movement of data between these clouds is critical.

Multi-cloud Data Protection-as-a-service: The HYCU Protégé Platform
Multi-cloud environments are here to stay and will keep on growing in diversity, use cases, and, of course, size. Data growth is not stopping anytime soon, only making the problem more acute. HYCU has taken a very different approach from many traditional vendors by selectively delivering deeply integrated solutions to the platforms they protect, and is now moving to the next challenge of unification and simplification with Protégé, calling it a data protection-as-a-service platform.

There are a number of limitations today keeping organizations from not only lifting and shifting from one cloud to another but also migrating across clouds. Organizations need the flexibility to leverage multiple clouds and move applications and workloads around freely, whether for data reuse or for disaster recovery. This is where the HYCU Protégé platform comes in. HYCU Protégé is positioned as a complete multi-cloud data protection and disaster recovery-as-a-service solution. It includes a number of capabilities that make it relevant and notable compared with other approaches in the market:

  • It was designed for multi-cloud environments, with a “built-for-purpose” approach to each workload and environment, leveraging APIs and platform expertise.
  • It is designed as a one-to-many cross-cloud disaster recovery topology rather than a one-to-one cloud or similarly limited topology.
  • It is designed for the IT generalist. It’s easy to use, it includes dynamic provisioning on-premises and in the cloud, and it can be deployed without impacting production systems. In other words, no need to manually install hypervisors or agents.
  • It is application-aware and will automatically discover and configure applications. Additionally, it supports distributed applications with shared storage. 
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The State of Multicloud: Virtual Desktop Deployments
Download this free 15-page report to understand the key differences and benefits to the many cloud deployment models and the factors that are driving tomorrow’s decisions.

The future of compute is in the cloud

Flexible, efficient, and economical, the cloud is no longer a question - it's the answer.

IT professionals that once considered if or when to migrate to the cloud are now talking about how. Earlier this year, we reached out to thousands of IT professionals to learn more about how.

Private Cloud, On-Prem, Public Cloud, Hybrid, Multicloud - each of these deployment models offers unique advantages and challenges. We asked IT decision-makers how they are currently leveraging the cloud and how they plan to grow.

Survey respondents overwhelmingly believed in the importance of a hybrid or multicloud strategy, regardless of whether they had actually implemented one themselves.

The top reasons for moving workloads between clouds

  • Cost Savings
  • Disaster Recovery
  • Data Center Location
  • Availability of Virtual Machines/GPUs
Process Optimization with Stratusphere UX
This whitepaper explores the developments of the past decade that have prompted the need for Stratusphere UX Process Optimization. We also cover how this feature works and the advantages it provides, including specific capital and operating cost benefits.

Managing the performance of Windows-based workloads can be a challenge. Whether physical PCs or virtual desktops, the effort required to maintain, tune and optimize workspaces is endless. Operating system and application revisions, user installed applications, security and bug patches, BIOS and driver updates, spyware, multi-user operating systems supply a continual flow of change that can disrupt expected performance. When you add in the complexities introduced by virtual desktops and cloud architectures, you have added another infinite source of performance instability. Keeping up with this churn, as well as meeting users’ zero tolerance for failures, are chief worries for administrators.

To help address the need for uniform performance and optimization in light of constant change, Liquidware introduced the Process Optimization feature in its Stratusphere UX solution. This feature can be set to automatically optimize CPU and Memory, even as system demands fluctuate. Process Optimization can keep “bad actor” applications or runaway processes from crippling the performance of users’ workspaces by prioritizing resources for those being actively used over not used or background processes. The Process Optimization feature requires no additional infrastructure. It is a simple, zero-impact feature that is included with Stratusphere UX. It can be turned on for single machines, or groups, or globally. Launched with the check of a box, you can select from pre-built profiles that operate automatically. Or administrators can manually specify the processes they need to raise, lower or terminate, if that task becomes required. This feature is a major benefit in hybrid multi-platform environments that include physical, pool or image-based virtual and cloud workspaces, which are much more complex than single-delivery systems. The Process Optimization feature was designed with security and reliability in mind. By default, this feature employs a “do no harm” provision affecting normal and lower process priorities, and a relaxed policy. No processes are forced by default when access is denied by the system, ensuring that the system remains stable and in line with requirements.

Introduction to Microsoft Windows Virtual Desktop
This whitepaper provides an overview of WVD and a historical perspective of the evolution of Windows desktops – especially multi-session Windows. This paper was authored by industry veterans with active involvement in multi-session Windows desktop computing since its inception in the early 1990s. Disclaimer: Professionals at Liquidware, a Microsoft WVD partner, authored this paper based on information available at the time of writing.
Microsoft announced the general availability of Windows Virtual Desktop (WVD) on September 30, 2019. The release came after an initial public-preview-evaluation program that lasted about six months. This whitepaper provides an overview of WVD and a historical perspective of the evolution of Windows desktops – especially multi-session Windows. This paper was authored by industry veterans with active involvement in multi-session Windows desktop computing since its inception in the early 1990s. Disclaimer: Professionals at Liquidware, a Microsoft WVD partner, authored this paper based on information available at the time of writing. Information regarding WVD is evolving quickly; consequently, readers should understand that this whitepaper (v2.0) presents the most up-to-date information available. Any inaccuracies in this paper are unintentional. Research and buying decisions are ultimately the readers’ responsibility.
Digital Workspace Disasters and How to Beat Them
This paper looks at risk management as it relates to the Windows desktops that are permanently connected to a campus, head office or branch network. In particular, we will look at how ‘digital workspace’ solutions designed to streamline desktop delivery and provide greater user flexibility can also be leveraged to enable a more effective and efficient approach to desktop disaster recovery (DR).
Desktop DR - the recovery of individual desktop systems from a disaster or system failure - has long been a challenge. Part of the problem is that there are so many desktops, storing so much valuable data and - unlike servers - with so many different end user configurations and too little central control. Imaging everyone would be a huge task, generating huge amounts of backup data. And even if those problems could be overcome with the use of software agents, plus de-deduplication to take common files such as the operating system out of the backup window, restoring damaged systems could still mean days of software reinstallation and reconfiguration. Yet at the same time, most organizations have a strategic need to deploy and provision new desktop systems, and to be able to migrate existing ones to new platforms. Again, these are tasks that benefit from reducing both duplication and the need to reconfigure the resulting installation. The parallels with desktop DR should be clear. We often write about the importance of an integrated approach to investing in backup and recovery. By bringing together business needs that have a shared technical foundation, we can, for example, gain incremental benefits from backup, such as improved data visibility and governance, or we can gain DR capabilities from an investment in systems and data management. So it is with desktop DR and user workspace management. Both of these are growing in importance as organizations’ desktop estates grow more complex. Not only are we adding more ways to work online, such as virtual PCs, more applications, and more layers of middleware, but the resulting systems face more risks and threats and are subject to higher regulatory and legal requirements. Increasingly then, both desktop DR and UWM will be not just valuable, but essential. Getting one as an incremental bonus from the other therefore not only strengthens the business case for that investment proposal, it is a win-win scenario in its own right.
Why User Experience is Key to Your Desktop Transformation
This whitepaper has been authored by experts at Liquidware and draws upon its experience with customers as well as the expertise of its Acceler8 channel partners in order to provide guidance to adopters of desktop virtualization technologies. In this paper, we explain the importance of thorough planning— factoring in user experience and resource allocation—in delivering a scalable next-generation workspace that will produce both near- and long-term value.

There’s little doubt we’re in the midst of a change in the way we operationalize and manage our end users’ workspaces. On the one hand, IT leaders are looking to gain the same efficiencies and benefits realized with cloud and next-generation virtual-server workloads. And on the other hand, users are driving the requirements for anytime, anywhere and any device access to the applications needed to do their jobs. To provide the next-generation workspaces that users require, enterprises are adopting a variety of technologies such as virtual-desktop infrastructure (VDI), published applications and layered applications. At the same time, those technologies are creating new and challenging problems for those looking to gain the full benefits of next-generation end-user workspaces. 

Before racing into any particular desktop transformation delivery approach it’s important to define appropriate goals and adopt a methodology for both near- and long-term success. One of the most common planning pitfalls we’ve seen in our history supporting the transformation of more than 6 million desktops is that organizations tend to put too much emphasis on the technical delivery and resource allocation aspects of the platform, and too little time considering the needs of users. How to meet user expectations and deliver a user experience that fosters success is often overlooked. 

To prevent that problem and achieve near-term success as well as sustainable long-term value from a next-generation desktop transformation approach, planning must also include defining a methodology that should include the following three things:

•    Develop a baseline of “normal” performance for current end user computing delivery
•    Set goals for functionality and defined measurements supporting user experience
•    Continually monitor the environment to ensure users are satisfied and the environment is operating efficiently

This white paper will show why the user experience is difficult to predict, why it’s essential to planning, and why factoring in the user experience—along with resource allocation—is key to creating and delivering the promise of a next-generation workspace that is scalable and will produce both near-and long-term value.

Optimising Performance for Office 365 and Large Profiles with ProfileUnity ProfileDisk
This whitepaper has been authored by experts at Liquidware Labs in order to provide guidance to adopters of desktop virtualization technologies. In this paper, two types of profile management with ProfileUnity are outlined: (1) ProfileDisk and (2) Profile Portability. This paper covers best practice recommendations for each technology and when they can be used together. ProfileUnity is the only full featured UEM solution on the market to feature an embedded ProfileDisk technology and the advanta

Managing Windows user profiles can be a complex and challenging process. Better profile management is usually sought by organizations looking to reduce Windows login times, accommodate applications that do not adhere to best practice application data storage, and to give users the flexibility to login to any Windows Operating System (OS) and have their profile follow them.

Note that additional profile challenges and solutions are covered in a related ProfileUnity whitepaper entitled “User Profile and Environment Management with ProfileUnity.” To efficiently manage the complex challenges of today’s diverse Windows profile environments, Liquidware ProfileUnity exclusively features two user profile technologies that can be used together or separately depending on the use case. These include:

1. ProfileDisk™, a virtual disk based profile that delivers the entire profile as a layer from an attached user VHD or VMDK, and

2. Profile Portability, a file and registry based profile solution that restores files at login, post login, or based on environment triggers.

IGEL and LG Team to Improve the Digital Experience for Kaleida Health
Bringing secure, easy to manage, and high-performance access to cloud workspaces for Kaleida Health’s clinical and back office support teams, IGEL OS and LG’s All-in- One Thin Clients standardize and simplify the on-site and remote desktop experience with Citrix VDI.

Kaleida Health was looking to modernize the digital experience for its clinicians and back office support staff. Aging and inconsistent desktop hardware and evolving Windows OS support requirements were taxing the organization’s internal IT resources. Further, the desire to standardize on Citrix VDI  for both on-site and remote workers meant the healthcare organization needed to identify a new software and hardware solution that would support simple and secure access to cloud workspaces.

The healthcare organization began the process by evaluating all of the major thin client OS vendors, and determined IGEL to be the leader for multiple reasons – it is hardware agnostic, stable and has a small footprint based on Linux OS, and it offers a great management platform, the IGEL UMS, for both on-site users and remote access.

Kaleida Health also selected LG thin client monitors early on because the All-in-One form factor supports both back office teams and more importantly, clinical areas including WoW carts, letting medical professionals securely log in and access information and resources from one, protected data center.