Brian Madden

Last week, I posted an article that breaks down my thoughts on OnLive Desktop, the desktop virtualization solution offered by cloud gaming provider OnLive. In the article and in the comments, we tried to figure out exactly how OnLive can deploy Windows 7 Enterprise desktops to users, and how that licensing is handled by Microsoft. Without rehashing the entire discussion, OnLive was mum on how they've managed to license both Windows and Office in a way that enables them to deliver them to users...

(this was originally posted in August, 2011)   Presented by: Thorsten Rood (Please visit the site to view this media) Type 1 hypervisors feel like the ultimate weapon and the long-awaited remaining piece in the puzzle of flexible application delivery concepts. However, Citrix is there, providing an enterprise-targeted mature release of such a technology. In this session, we’ll take a look at what’s in their product and drill down on which things you need to take care...

At their Build conference this past September, Microsoft spend a fair amount of time discussing and demoing their plans for RDP and RemoteFX in Windows 8. I finally took the time to watch the videos from the conference, and I gotta say: RemoteFX and RDP in Windows 8 look AWESOME! In fact my first reaction after watching these videos is "RemoteFX on Windows 8 is so cool! Citrix HDX and VMware PCoIP don't have a chance!!" But of course that's a topic that we've been discussing for almost ten...

(this was originally posted in August, 2011)   Presented by: Hal Lange (Please visit the site to view this media) After your application has been sequenced and works fine, there are still some little things that are nice to have: a default INI file, an individual license for users, or the same application with a slight configuration change for a different group. And wouldn’t it be nice to bring a new config on the fly without resequencing? Sure, you could use a new sequence...

Browsium has been around for almost two years now with their UniBrows product that runs an Internet Explorer 6 engine inside IE 8 and 9. In that time, they've found a number of ways to get on Microsoft's bad side. With Browsium's latest release--Ion--it appears they're friendly again. If you're not familiar with Browsium, Brian recorded a podcast with CEO Matt Heller back in November of 2011, so you should check that out. Tim Mangan also wrote a blog post about them, and Shawn Bass mentioned...

(this was originally posted in August, 2011)   Presented by: Brandon Shell (Please visit the site to view this media) In this sesson, Brandon will start by explaining why Powershell is important in the SBC world and then will dive directly into practical use of the technology. Brandon will cover the basics and provide all the information you would need to start using Powershell to make your life easier. As part of this session he will use SBC related scenarios that will provide...

Today's Brian & Gabe (& Jack) LIVE will be about client devices. Windows 8 tablets, thin client tablets, ARM versus x86, iOS versus Windows, zero versus thin. We'll be joined by HP's Tom Flynn. Tom is the CTO of their thin client group. He's not joining us to talk about HP, rather, he's joining us as a guy who spends a lot of time thinking about these questions. Join us live right here a few minutes before the show to hear the audio stream and to join us in the chat.

Gabe wrote about how HTML5 clients work almost a year ago , and he mentioned Ericom's HTML5 client in his review of his Chromebook . Put simply, Ericom AccessNow is an HTML5 client for using remote desktops through web browsers. The client is "installed" on a web server (which can be Windows or Linux), and then end users just visit a web page and BOOM--they're accessing a remote desktop or application via the web. It doesn't require anything on the client--no plug-in, no download, no...

(this was originally posted in August, 2011)   Presented by: Sam Jacobs (Please visit the site to view this media) This session will focus on complex Netscaler/AGEE integrations and customizations that the IPM TechDev team has deployed over the years. Attendees will learn from the successes and challenges of actual implementations of advanced customizations. Sam will detail how to make the Netscaler consistent with your corporate image and brand and how to integrate with mobile...

  Last year we had our first ever BriForum in London, and it was such a great experience that we're bringing it back for 2012 (23-24 May). Part of the BriForum experience is seeing sessions from your peers that cover real-world, technical issues going on today. At BriForum, there isn't any rah-rah marketing and showing off technology that's six months away. BriForum is about linking the community with the information and answers that they need right now. The reason BriForum is so amazing...

Last week during MacWorld Nivio launched their cloud desktop, storage, and app service. Naturally, we wanted to ask all the usual questions that come up with any cloud desktop provider—hosting, protocol, clients, Windows licensing. It turns out that it’s quite a bit different than many cloud desktop offerings—think terminal server, AppV, and file-syncing all rolled into one product Read More......(read more)

 (this was originally posted in August, 2011)   Presented by: Jim Moyle & Steve Greenberg (Please visit the site to view this media) With the convergence of devices and the availability of Citrix Receiver and other remote protocol clients, it is now possible to access all of your applications and desktops from a Smartphone. But, how does this work? How good is the experience? Is it worth doing? Who would use this? This session provides a deep dive into the technology...

Apple Profile Manager has limited features, manages only iOS 5 devices and requires an OS X Lion Server back end. If you can get past all that, it seems like a pretty decent option to control the iPad and iPhone in the enterprise . A standing-room only crowd of IT pros learned more about Apple Profile Manager during a session yesterday at the Macworld | iWorld conference here in San Francisco. Derick Read More......(read more)

 (this was originally posted in August, 2011)   Presented by: Gabe Knuth (Please visit the site to view this media) Microsoft designed Windows Thin PC (WinTPC) to be a lightweight operating system that can be used to repurpose older hardware as thin clients while still providing access to the latest Microsoft Remote Desktop Services solutions like RemoteFX. The problem is that, while the OS is actually pretty powerful, you're limited by the EULA as to what you can do with...

RES Software just announced an upcoming new product called RES " HyperDrive " which is an on-premise virtual appliance-based "follow me data" solution that's similar to DropBox, Box, Citrix ShareFile, or VMware Octopus. Like many companies, RES believes that the first step to consumerization and BYO is to make the users' data available to them wherever they are. And, like Read More......(read more)

 (this was originally posted in August, 2011) Presented by: Denis Gundarev (Please visit the site to view this media) Microsoft Windows Server is a feature-rich operating system, but some of the features are undeservedly forgotten by most of the customers. The goal of this session is to share some tricks that can help to build a scalable and easy to manage Citrix environment. Topics covered include: using Windows Server Resource Management for CPU fair-sharing, NTFS hard and soft...

We've been talking quite a bit about Windows apps delivered to tablets over the past few weeks. As you know by now, one of the new features of the upcoming Windows 8 is the support for "metro style" which are touch-based apps which will be available from a Microsoft app store. Metro style apps are interesting because regular (classic?) Windows apps are NOT touch-based at all, instead Read More......(read more)

I've been trying to get together with OnLive for well over a year now, ever since seeing their cloud-based gaming platform. I'm not much of a gamer, though. For me it was the protocol that they use that generated the most interest. For a while my requests fell on deaf ears, but when they announced their OnLive Desktop solution in early 2011, followed by a release during CES in 2012, they joined our desktop virtualization world.  Jack happened to make a contact at CES, and it wasn't more...

Last week, Brian wrote about why he considers his desktop (that runs local applications) to be a “cloud desktop .” ( That article in one sentence: it’s because even though his apps and data are local, they’re all downloaded from and synchronized by the cloud. ) A few weeks before that, I wrote about the importance of device native applications for tablets . ( And that article Read More......(read more)

Last week Gabe and I visited HP's main campus in Houston to meet with Tom Flynn, the CTO of their thin client group. We talked about a lot of cool things (tablets, Android, ARM, Windows Embedded, thin clients), and invited Tom to join us on our radio show next week. In the meantime, Tom let us record a video demo of an upcoming product they're working on--a $200(ish) zero client that can be reconfigured to use RDP, RemoteFX, HDX, or PCoIP. At BriForum last year, HP showed off this thing they...