Centrix Software, for several years now, has been building analytics solutions that capture and evaluate the usage patterns of users on apps and devices in the enterprise environment with the  view of providing clearer guidance on desktop transformation and asset rationalization.  Prior to this time Centrix was a consultancy organization and reseller partner with Citrix for many years with deep knowledge of deploying Citrix solutions.

What is really exciting is that Centrix Software has now brought together its expertise of user behaviours analytics and its knowledge of Citrix infrastructure to create “Centrix Workspace Designer for Citrix”.  This innovative solution is designed to accelerate the process of enterprise planning and deployment of Citrix solutions in Desktop transformation projects.  I believe this will has a significant impact on the  virtualization space in several ways:

• It gives enterprise a clear simple path to follow to design the infrastructure without them having the need for deep knowledge of Citrix technologies or the behavior and usage patterns of their users
• It increases the likely success of the transformation projects by ensuring that the right apps and desktops are delivered to the right users to meet their needs.
• It optimizes use of Citrix technologies to apply the right solution to the right users and leverages the licensing flexibility of Citrix in doing so.
• It accelerates the planning and deployment process of Citrix solutions offering increased service opportunities for Citrix/Centrix software partners.
• It provides accurate assessments of concurrent usage and resource consumption by the users to ensure that the correct amount of infrastructure capacity is implemented and optimal cost is incurred.

I am really looking forward to showing WorkSpace Designer for Citrix off to attendees at Synergy 2012 net week in San Francisco.  Drop by our booth in the expo hall and I would be delighted to show you!

Some were just starting to look at VDI and others were just starting to look at virtualizing their servers (yes, you read that right). A couple of talking points came up time and again when talking about virtualizing desktops, the first topic was the fact that server virtualization and desktop virtualization share very little common ground. The second topic was the XP to Windows 7 migration that inherently seems to be part of a desktop transformation. The third topic was how on earth to decide what applications to put into the master image.

The conversations were very animated around our ability to identify how a user is behaving in relation to the applications. Identifying applications which are accessed off the network vs. on so that you can identify candidates better. Licensing remediation is part of this since you want to license the products that you are actually using vs. the ones that are installed. When thinking about what goes into your master image, we have this concept of a “tail” that will give you a good idea what applications are used by the majority of your users and how best to deploy those. This method can be applied to a pilot group to provide the greatest number of applications to the largest number of users with the smallest number of master images. We also talked about using application virtualization and other technologies to deploy those apps.

Many times the windows xp to windows 7 migration is overlooked as part of the project of deploying a VMware View environment. The Workspace iQ product can bring all of your applications into the database and show you which ones to focus on based on utilization. Once you have the targets, you can see whether the applications are compatible with Windows 7 32 bit, 64 bit or not at all. We do this in the product because we are one of only 3 Microsoft Jumpstart Partners which allows us to link to their database and cross reference apps in the report. If you’re going to keep the machines physical, this will also tell you whether the devices are compatible with Windows 7, for instance, a machine may only need a memory upgrade of 2gb in order to be compatible. This tool will allow you to identify the group and get an immediate report on the viability of running in Windows 7 so you know where to focus your time.

The VMWare attendees were great to talk to and challenged me as to how we can make our products even better. Signing off from Dallas, TX. Look for a report from San Francisco next week at the Synergy event. Please stop by and say Hi if you’re at the show.

Independence of technology applies to the service catalog as well. Being able to offer new services to end-users that they can subscribe to easily is a critical success factor for the new workspace. Being able to do so independently of the underlying technology so that again you have absolute choice is even more critical.

Universal was always designed to be available both as an on-premise or a hosted solution. Working with our customers, we have known for some time that on-premise (right now at least) is the preferred solution right now for most enterprises. Again it’s good to see VMware agreeing with this! However, we were interested to see the VMware approach to an on-premise solution through using a virtual appliance. We have learned that there are a lot of hidden complexities in this approach – appliances still need to meet enterprise build and security standards.

As we also look to announcements around Project Octopus, WorkSpace Universal already provides a Content Anywhere capability, providing secure access to existing Sharepoint document libraries and both personal and shared file stores. We also take this a stage further with our Launch Policy Control capability, enabling our customers to control document delivery based on policy. This was built into our Universal design right from the start too!

We totally agree with VMware embracing the workspace concept. Our product has been called that for years!

Back to the partner day itself and the other key thing that caught my attention was the high level of interest in understanding how to build the most compelling business case. This generated some great discussion! And the key point here is that the projects are out there – our partners are feeling even more confident now of being successful!

A few comments from the day included:

• ‘there was a lot of content – we needed more time!’
• ‘I was very pleased I attended today, there are definite take aways’
•  ‘excellent day, need to discuss partnering further and exploring Universal more’

A great day, excellent to see the partners together and just the first of many!!

The key word in that figure of 20%-35% of applications being incompatible is installed. You might already know how many applications are installed across your end-user estate, but do you know what applications are regularly used, sometimes used or never used?  This information will impact massively the steps you take in your application compatibility process.

At Centrix Software, we regularly find, across all of the customers that we work with, that 50% of all installed applications are simply not used. Yes – 50%! That has many different implications and we’ll cover those at a separate time J For now, let’s keep the focus on what that means for application compatibility. The worst case is that the number of applications needing remediation is halved. That’s worst case. The reality is that many of the unused applications are the older applications, and it’s the older applications that are more likely to have compatibility issues. Therefore, we see the remediation requirements drop dramatically when you fully understand application usage, by as much as 95% with some customers!

Instead of having to remediate 187 applications based on what was installed, a local UK government needed to remediate just 9 based on what was used. Even more startling, of 525 incompatible installed applications, a retailer needed to remediate just 14 based on what was actually used!

So to unlock your desktop migrations, unlock your application compatibility and know what’s used. You’ll be amazed at just what a difference that can make!

1. Mobility is the primary IT trend for 2012. At a high level, pretty much a ‘no-brainer’ – businesses obviously want to embrace mobility and enable their employees to work more effectively. But as with many things, the devil’s in the detail. The key is how will companies embrace mobility? At Centrix Software, we are seeing very different approaches to mobility within IT. Some IT departments are moving quickly to focusing on managing the users and applications, looking to embrace cloud-based service delivery and bring-your-own-device (BYOD) initiatives that empower users to work with whatever device they choose. But that is far from always being the case and many IT departments are still focused on managing the device rather than the user. Driven by business and user demands, that will gradually change through 2012. Mobility is the primary trend for 2012 and those companies that embrace it to its fullest extent will be those best-placed to be successful.
2. Departmental managers are now becoming bigger buyers of technology. This is a trend that I believe will continue. The accessibility of cloud-based services makes it far easier for a departmental manager to subscribe to a new service or application than it ever was in the past. Business leaders want quick decisions and business agility. IT can, and should, embrace this and should work more closely with departmental managers to ensure that data and corporate security as well as end-user efficiency and overall experience is not compromised as business leaders continue to make their own technology decisions.
3. CIO budgetary spend on innovation drops from 35% during times of economic growth to around 20% during economic downtimes. Is that really the case? There have never been more technology choices available than there are today and technology has become critical to the way businesses run. Even in an economic downturn, can companies really afford to invest lower percentages in innovation? Is this not absolutely the time for companies to look at running business-as-usual more efficiently and at lower cost in order to maintain the investment in innovation? This is the perfect time for IT to think differently and to evaluate all existing business-as-usual operations. Don’t lose the focus on innovation, it’s more critical than ever right now.

Taking these 3 points together, it seems obvious to me that the IT departments and companies that embrace change and innovation, while maintaining control, will be the ones best positioned for success. That is the real key trend for 2012.

While Centrix Software is certainly not unheard, we are smaller than the likes of Citrix and VMware.  And so I found it rather ironic to read recently about Citrix CloudGateway being “the industry’s first unified service broker that aggregates, controls and delivers Windows, web, SaaS and mobile apps to any device, anywhere.” Citrix has long banged the “any, any, any” drum, but frankly they are not the first to deliver to market a solution as describe above – Centrix Software is.

It is also ironic that the terminology that we have been using for years – unified, universal, aggregation, service broker – is now commonplace in both Citrix and VMware’s vocabulary.

Is there a conflict in the Immutable Laws of marketing?  The Law of Leadership is sometimes placed in the shadows by the 4^th law, The Law of Perception, where perception is reality.  If you are first, but another company says they are, is Law 1 or Law 4 correct?

Reader, I will leave you to figure that one out, but in the meantime, let me just remind you that we, Centrix Software, were the first to deliver a unified service delivery platform that aggregates content, information and applications no matter where they are provisioned from; physical, virtual, web, cloud or hosted. It is called WorkSpace Universal and is already being used by thousands of users across the globe.

So to protect ourselves from the imitators out there, we are invoking Law 2: The Law of the Category.  We have established a category that not only are we first in but also the best in.  That category?  It is Workspace Computing.  Workspace computing is the ‘bridge’ between what we call the desktop dilemma and the cloud.  Many are talking about the ‘post-PC era’.  Well that will not happen for many years to come in our opinion.  It is like saying the post-mainframe era, when there are many mainframes still in operation today.  We call it the new-PC era, an era that continues to deploy PCs but also many other devices and one that will embrace the cloud, whether personal, hybrid, private or public.

As I said in my 2012 predictions on VMblog.com 2012 will be all about the user, and that is what workspace computing enables.

1.       Windows 7™ Migration

Of course the most obvious happening in EUC for 2012 is the wider scale migration of corporate desktops to Windows 7™. This is where the most focus, effort and investment will be during 2012.

But… the economic challenges for the western world will show their hand and migrations cannot be undertaken as they have in the past, with IT choosing the most standard COE (Common Operating Environment) they can and business units funding the vast amounts of money for migration of applications, data and user personalization onto a new desktop device.

This traditional buy-and-install world of corporate desktop is shifting to a more consumer style model with multiple application and content delivery options to a myriad of devices and owners. This trend will continue and increase throughout 2012.

The successful leaders of desktop transformation programs in 2012 will be the ones that coordinate the business units who have the money, the consumers who demand flexibility to match   their work styles, the systems integrators and outsourcers who will deliver the services, those responsible for the regulatory compliance and security of applications & data and the new technology options that additional devices, cloud and virtualization bring.

It quite simply is un-escapable, that adoption of a standard, locked down corporate desktop will continue to be eroded as organizations switch more to on-demand granular delivery of resources.

2.       The continued failure of traditional desktop migration methods to deliver the virtual transformation

If IT departments continue to adopt the current migration method, I predict that even more desktop transformation projects which actually successfully include significant adoption of some form of virtualization will simply stall through lack of funds and appetite by economically challenged businesses.

Why?

Today, the corporate desktop migration process is typically a 26 week process (yes, that’s right – half a year) where piecemeal front end planning is undertaken using separate data available from multiple point tools that somewhat fit the current method approach:

• Hardware audit (price per device)
• Software audit (price per device)
• Desktop management (price per device)
• Packaged application compatibility (price per app)
• VDI sampling based assessment (price per device)

From a software perspective, audits are based purely on what is installed, not what is actually being used, creating immediate inefficiencies in the traditional approach. With the above data,  a desktop COE is derived…and… a long list of applications needing remediation is produced… thus… necessitating an urgent need for an ‘app factory’ charging per app for remediation. Many organizations do not realize that this process could be streamlined significantly with an understanding of what is actually used and we predict more combined onshore/nearshore/offshore app factory models here as providers compete increasingly on cost rather than on usage insight which significantly reduces the remediation efforts needed.

The target COE and standard builds and platform are now readied, designed and built according to the sampling thresholds and derived requirements.

Detailed business unit and consumer specific use cases and needs are subsequently uncovered by a questionnaire and clipboard process at around week 20 by ‘floorwalkers’ (cost ~$1000 per man day) long after the standard COE has been built.

Floorwalking – It is now that the real application and information workflows, dependencies, sequences and personalization are discovered… and oh yes, this means business unit specific builds and more images. Additional applications are now discovered along with the re-sequencing, packaging and testing of applications, the cost of which is passed on to each business unit and department as the very first desktops are deployed… half a year later…

In reality, standard VDI builds often give way to a build per individual user leading to virtual sprawl and the accompanying increase in central infrastructure.

Business Units lose appetite, money becomes tighter, the business case is lost, lift and drop becomes a valid option and the transformation is deemed simply too hard and too expensive. This will continue unless organizations understand the value of deep usage insight right at the beginning of transformation processes and understand the value of service based delivery on demand to meet user needs.

3.       The 2012 Analytics Advantage – automated floorwalking for true desktop transformations

The good news is that in 2012 technology advances mean that detailed analytics is a reality for end user computing too. Comprehensive and real data analytics rather than simple, erroneous sampling approaches means that a shift in the transformation method is possible for 2012. Smart integrators are already adopting this method.

Analytics software for End User Computing (such as Centrix WorkSpace iQ) will be increasingly used to undertake totally automated ‘floorwalking’ right up front in the planning cycle.

Adoption of Centrix WorkSpace iQ already more than doubles every month as companies and systems integrators use this more successful and affordable method. Expect to see the major vendors and outsourcers adopt this approach in order to accelerate the success of the transformation for their customers. Microsoft has already done so by including Centrix WorkSpace iQ™ as part of its Windows 7™ Jumpstart method.

Exact Business Unit, Departmental, User work style, applications, web sites and content access needs are automatically captured right up front alongside audit and management data. The applications that businesses really use and need can be tested for compatibility and prioritized for cloud, virtualization and remediation according to actual demand.

Application and content workflows are thoroughly understood so business unit offerings can be sequenced and created as part of the common operating environment (COE) – serviced by the providers, virtualized and cloud enabled where beneficial, secured and monitored where needed with flexible, low cost options provided where not.

Transformation costs are reduced by more than 40%, user acceptance increases, applications not used do not need to be remediated or tested for compatibility (remediation needs are reduced by up to 80%) and most importantly the time to transform reduces by more than half!

Fast, affordable Windows 7™ and virtual transformations will be a reality during 2012 with this approach!

4.       Increasing use of shared WorkSpaces

• The growing comfort of companies to source SaaS, private and public cloud applications along with increasing use of browser based enterprise applications to supplement their continued use of desktop installed applications means that a mix of access methods is necessary
• Business units and end users are gaining even more control of the IT budget and it is becoming ever more distributed externally
• In addition, consumerization is driving increasing demand for messaging, collaboration, enterprise social networking, document and information sharing – now often sourced from the cloud. These have already become daily utilities alongside traditional Windows™ and personal productivity applications

2012 will see increased adoption of shared workspaces such as Centrix WorkSpace Universal™ by companies and providers alike.

These seamlessly aggregate the secure access to this diverse set of applications and content automate the provisioning and delivery of services and provide deep underpinning analytics.

They should include the ability to subscribe to services through an integrated storefront that provides a complete services portfolio by federating resources from multiple, diverse providers both inside and outside the company, not just SaaS but also physical Windows™, virtual, mobile, private and public clouds. Inherent in this is the change from “centrally pushed local applications” to “user driven install on demand applications”

A complete chargeback view is provided as use is metered and monitored with full underpinning analytics. This provides the transparency of consumption needed by the business units, the insight required for IT and the information necessary to meet the visibility needs of regulatory compliance.

End users and devices can be registered and ‘whitelisted’ through the WorkSpace with services provided instantly according to policy based trust levels and access rules that leverage the growing security standards such as SAML and OpenID.

Personalization and the simple ability for end users to plug their own cloud resources into a private workspace brings the personal cloud into the fold.

The adoption of the shared workspace not just a cool consumerization and access solution for end users, it is also an invaluable sourcing tool that delivers commercial advantage for the company as it protects against lock-in by any one vendor or platform provider.

5.       Increasing consumerization of IT

We hear a lot about the ‘consumerization of IT’ but what does it mean and is it real? Consumerization of IT refers to increasing use of personal devices for business purposes. Is it happening? Absolutely. We see increasing numbers of users accessing IT resources from their personal devices and this trend is only going to increase.

The days where what IT says goes are long gone. Many IT departments may not have accepted this yet, but it is a fact. Business users today are more technically savvy than they have ever been in the past and if they don’t like the answer they get from IT, they will find different ways to get the services they need. If that means bypassing and circumventing IT, then so be it.

The ease with which users can sign up to SaaS and web-based services makes the increase of this trend inevitable through 2012 and beyond.

Years ago, organizations used to provide company cars for some of their employees, before ultimately deciding that it was far easier to give individuals a car allowance and let them manage the vehicle they wanted, its maintenance and servicing. I predict that IT will move in the same direction in regard to device management and we will arrive at a point where IT no longer provisions devices but simply enables users to bring their own device and securely access the services and content they need. That will not happen for several years yet, but we are on that journey.

As a result, what IT departments need to do in response is to change mindset – start managing the service delivery to the user rather than the infrastructure and the devices. With this change in ethos, IT can be well positioned to accept and embrace the consumerization of IT.

Eventually computers became ‘affordable’ enough for corporations to buy more than one. But with so-called ‘turnkey’ systems costing hundreds of thousands of dollars, IT decisions were made by boardrooms, not individual departments. IT management was centralized, for no other reason than the fact that IT systems were as well.

When the price of personal computers dropped an order of magnitude, they fell within the realms of departmental budgets and it was the beginning of the end for traditional models of centralized IT. Then parts of the organization that were frustrated with waiting for IT systems to be delivered started to buy their own – for example, the term “Blackberry Effect” was coined to capture how sales departments were procuring their own servers and issuing devices to their staff.

As personal computing costs moved to the hundreds, it became possible for managers to authorize purchases. In parallel, more computer-savvy individuals were becoming frustrated that corporate-issued  equipment was less capable than their own kit. The trickle became a flood as prices dropped still further and as mobile phone contracts offered top-of-the-range devices on a monthly fee. And so, we started talking about consumerization.

But still prices fell, not just for hardware but for software. Application prices, that had previously been prohibitively high, plummeted with the arrival of app stores for smart phones, then desktop computers. At the same time, software-as-a-service models enabled individuals to buy enterprise-class functionality on a credit card. Pay-per-use models saw prices drop from dollars, to cents.

While we can all debate about the exact timeline, the point is that cost erosion has taken us from a place where IT decision making was purely corporate, to where decisions are being made by individuals. Yet, against this background, IT management still functions according to older models, as though tens of thousands are being spent. In many organisations, IT management is broken.

Increased control is not the answer – while it may be tempting to simply tell people that they can’t install new applications, use their own devices or access web-based software packages, the chances are that people will do it anyway. Often senior executives can be the worst culprits, but they’re in the business of doing business, not fitting with rigid and out dated IT policies.

Rather, IT management has to transform, moving its focus from telling people what they can and can’t use, and towards understanding what is being used. To do so requires a different mindset, built around vigilance and awareness of risk. For example, if a package is being tested by one person and it has no direct relation to customers, it is low risk. If an unauthorized service is being accessed by many people to manage customer data, that’s a different story.

Trouble is, the skill sets aren’t always there. IT managers may be technically savvy but they don’t necessarily have a background knowledge in risk assessment and they aren’t always fully au fait with the businesses they support. Savvy IT executives know that to do a good job, they need to engage more closely with the business. Equally however, they need to embrace diversity while retaining control.

Things are not going to get any easier: in the future, IT will become more fragmented, as the cost of entry lowers and it therefore appears simpler to replace. Experience in building a picture of what applications and services are the greatest value to the business, and those which could cause problems should something go wrong, may well prove the most valued skills for senior IT management in the future.