Virtualfuture.info

I stumbled on a nice post on TechStrategyPartners from George Gilbert and Juergen Urbanski. It gives a clear view on which areas VMware will be putting their money on and why. It’s a pretty large piece of reading material and I had a couple of “duh” moments but the core of what they’re telling comes down to this:

We’ve all seen the light concerning server consolidation, it’s (becoming) commodity. So what, at this moment, are the areas where the money is ? According to the authors (VMware stakeholders), VMware has defined 3 waves they are setting out to ride the next period : Read the rest of this entry »

Last week InstallFree released a new version of their application virtualization product called: Installfree Bridge. This version (1.5) fixes some bugs and has also some new features. The bridge is now fully supported on Vista for example. Here is the complete list of new features: Read the rest of this entry »

I visited the Installfree booth at VMWorld today and they seemed very excited to meet me. Apparently, Installfree got some very positive feedback from people who read the application virtualization comparison chart I created with Matthijs Haverink. Now it looks like we have to update the chart with some new features that are not in the list write now and that competitors don’t have. Read the rest of this entry »

After reviewing VMware’s ThinApp I thought to myself:
How about the other application virtualization solution’s features? I know a couple of application virtualization products, but I don’t know exactly what the differences are.

OK, let’s google for an Application virtualization comparison chart… mmm, not there. Why not make one?
So we did. My colleague Matthijs Haverink and I have written a comparison chart with the following products:

• Microsoft Softgrid *
• VMware ThinApp
• Installfree Bridge
• Citrix Application streaming
• Symantec Appstream
• Xenocode Virtual Application Studio

* This is Softgrid 4.2. From version 4.5 it’s called App-V. When App-V is released, this chart will be updated.

This comparison chart will be expanded with other solutions in the near future, but this is a good start.
Over the next few weeks, we will publish a review of all products in the chart, starting with Installfree by Matthijs.

Feel free to comment on this chart and when neccesary, we will correct the chart.

Download the Application virtualization comparison chart. (pdf)

Update September 9th 2008: Download the updated chart.

After having seen the Installfree demo last week, I decided to take a look at VMware’s Thinapp Release Candidate, a.k.a Project Northstar. Features in the latest release are:

• Application Link: allows administrators to dynamically link ThinApp packages to one another, making it possible to create separate packages for interdependent components (such as Java or .NET) and use them across multiple ThinApp packages.
• Application Sync: allows customers to execute updates to virtual applications through a secure Internet connection, increasing application portability while reducing security and patch risks to offline and out-of-network machines.

Release notes
Manual

After registering for the release candidate, Read the rest of this entry »

Today I spoke to someone of InstallFree (who, in my eyes, use revolutionary application virtualization techniques) about their Bridge and Desktop products.

The release date of their first product, the InstallFree Bridge was the 7th of April this year. More information about the InstallFree Bridge, like DataSheets, WhitePapers and Business Cases can be found here.

But today I heared that the release date of their second (full blown) Application Virtualization product, known as the InstallFree Desktop, is set to September this year.

This afternoon I visited the 5th Technical Update Event organized by CDG, a dutch distributor and training company of VMware, Citrix, RES and more. At these events, there are allways 3 products presented or technically explained. This time the following products were presented:

• InstallFree
• Vizioncore vEssentials
• VMware Site Recovery Manager

Read the rest of this entry »