News and PR

Virtualization Technology Leader to Discuss Approaches for Simplifying and Accelerating Virtual Desktop Implementations

San Jose, CA, Nov. 17, 2008 – AppSense, the leading provider of user environment management solutions for the enterprise, will be a featured speaker at the 2008 Sys-Con Fourth International Virtualization Conference and Expo (www.virtualizationconference.com) being held at the Fairmont Hotel in the heart of Silicon Valley, California, November 19 – 21, 2008.   AppSense grew 50 percent in the U.S. and 30 percent in its worldwide revenue during its last fiscal year ended June 30, 2008, continuing its trend of 30 percent growth each year since 2005.

AppSense will discuss "User environment management – the third layer of the desktop" on Thursday, November 20, 2008, at 1:45 pm.  The Sys-Con conference attracts thousands of attendees who sell, support and purchase virtualized solutions for their businesses or who closely track the virtualization industry.  Desktop virtualization is a technology approach many analysts predict will be the pervasive form of computing in 2010 due to its cost savings and increased flexibility. 

"Successful virtual desktop rollouts can only be realized if user acceptance is equivalent to that of a local PC," said Jon Wallace, Senior Technical Consultant for AppSense US, who is speaking at the Sys-Con event.  "The key to enabling this is ensuring that standardized virtual desktops are 'personalized' on demand so that virtual desktops as can rolled out quickly and transparently, and managed easily."

AppSense's user environment management solution enables users to have the same look and feel, shortcuts and other settings on a virtual desktop that they had on their physical PC, while ensuring they adhere to company policies, such as accessing pre-determined printers, applications, networks, drivers and folders.  This allows companies to gain the benefits of desktop standardization and automation, including savings in hardware, storage and management oversight, with no impact on a user's experience.

"Events such as Sys-Con's International Virtualization Conference provide an essential means for communicating the enabling role of personalization in desktop virtualization," commented Pete Rawlinson, VP Marketing for AppSense.  "As a gold sponsor at this event, we represent the critical 'human element' of the emerging virtual desktop model."

AppSense recently released a major new version of its user environment management solution and this will be showcased at the Sys-Con event in AppSense's booth # 13.  For more information about user environment management, visit www.appsense.com and for more information about Sys-Con's International Virtualization Conference, visit http://www.virtualizationconference.com/. 

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Leading User Environment Management Solution Leverages Microsoft Internet Information Server and SQL Server, Supporting Hyper-V and System Center

Melville, NY – November 10, 2008 – AppSense, the leading provider of user environment management solutions for large-scale environments, today announced that its newly released Environment Manager 8.0 leverages Microsoft server technologies, providing a readily scalable and highly efficient way to personalize both virtual and physical desktops across the enterprise.

"Microsoft is committed to making it easier for customers to manage their IT infrastructure," said Neil Sanderson, head of virtualisation at Microsoft UK. "With partners like AppSense onboard, Microsoft virtualisation technologies are giving customers a cost effective solution which can help them get the most out of their existing IT systems."

"We built Environment Manager 8.0 on key Microsoft technologies, including Internet Information Server and SQL Server on the backend, to ensure a reliable, best-in-class personalization management solution for large infrastructures," said Peter Rawlinson, VP Marketing forAppSense.  "Environment Manager can help IT departments quickly build out fully personalized Microsoft desktops and migrate user data from legacy desktop operating systems to Vista—as well as move users from physical to virtual Hyper-V based desktops—all while reducing the cost and complexity of managing those environments."

The only enterprise solution that enables standardized virtual desktop environments to be fully – and automatically – personalized, AppSense Environment Manager 8.0 accelerates virtual desktop adoption by rapidly configuring desktops and applications with a user's personal and policy settings without administrator intervention.  By decoupling both policy and personalization data from the desktop, managing them independently and applying them on-demand, AppSense's user environment management solution lets IT use a combination of desktop and application delivery methods—such as desktop virtualization, presentation virtualization, streamed applications and local and provisioned desktops—and easily and transparently migrate large groups of users from physical to virtual desktops.

About AppSense
AppSense provides technology solutions that personalize and optimize virtual and physical user environments. User environment management provides users with a consistent, contextual and secure working environment regardless of the way the environment is delivered to them.  Applications delivered via virtual desktop, streaming, publishing and provisioning, as well as physical desktops, are delivered in a predictable and stable working environment to all users all the time. AppSense solutions have been designed for desktops and servers which are based upon the Microsoft Windows platform. AppSense operates through a worldwide channel of certified partners with offices in the US, UK, Germany, Netherlands and Australia. www.appsense.com

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Delivers Complete Solution for User Environment Management in the Enterprise

Melville, NY, Nov. 3, 2008 – AppSense, the leading provider of user environment management solutions for the enterprise, announced today the immediate availability of AppSense Management Suite Version 8.0.  This major release includes the recently announced Environment Manager 8.0, as well as upgrades to Application Manager and Performance Manager.  It represents a significant step forward in delivering a complete solution to managing all aspects of the user experience regardless of desktop and application delivery mechanism.  AppSense technology enables corporate policy and personalization data, known as the "user personality" to be abstracted from the desktop and managed independently.  This personality can then be dynamically applied "on-demand" to any user environment.  Whether applications and desktops are delivered locally, published, streamed or virtualized – or combinations thereof – user environment management ensures that all user settings are correctly applied and persisted across desktop sessions. 

"We see the virtualized corporate desktop as consisting of three layers." comments Pete Rawlinson, VP Marketing for AppSense.  "The first layer is the operating system, the second is the application set and the third layer is user settings.  By decoupling all aspects of the user from the desktop and applying these settings back into the desktop on-demand, corporate desktops can be standardized and their delivery automated, leading to significant cost savings in terms of management, infrastructure and storage."  Rawlinson continues, "The independent management and on-demand delivery of this "user personality" is called user environment management.  This major release from AppSense enables us to maintain our leadership position in this exciting and rapidly growing space."
AppSense Management Suite Version 8.0 consists of three products (Environment Manager, Application Manager and Performance Manager) that provide policy and personalization management, application entitlement and resource control to create a predictable, compliant and responsive environment for users.  Enterprise scalability and intuitive management controls provide a high degree of automation for IT, enabling cost savings through optimal use of resources as well as high levels of service quality.
With over 3500 customers worldwide and partnerships with Microsoft, Citrix, VMware, CSC, EDS, HP, IBM and Dell among others, AppSense technology has proved invaluable in the adoption of virtualization technologies in the enterprise.  As Trevor Allen, Supervisor of Infrastructure Services at Conexus Credit Union, Canada, comments, "AppSense demonstrated to us that we could centralize the management of user profile data, reducing user logon times from minutes to seconds.  It was so astounding that we stopped our pilot immediately and rolled it out across the board."

Highlights of AppSense Management Suite 8.0
Building on over 10 years experience in Terminal Server and desktop environments, AppSense Management Suite is the only enterprise-class solution for managing the user experience in virtual client computing.  Some highlights from this new release include:
User Profile Migration:

• Quickly migrate user settings from physical to virtual environments or across operating system platforms
• Apply on demand into any application delivery mechanism to ensure personalization persistence

Application Level Personalization Streaming:

• Eliminate large, unnecessary data from being loaded at logon
• Stream in user personalization settings as they interact with applications

Personalization Rollback:

• Roll user settings back to last known good, preventing the need to reset user profiles
• Reduce support costs and time to repair damaged profiles

Disk I/O Control:

• Prevent disk access queues from impacting mission critical applications
• Prioritize access to the disk on a per application basis

Network Access Control:

• Control all outbound connections from devices and applications
• Tailor network access based on user, device and location.

AppSense Configuration Templates

• Take advantage of pre-built policy best practices
• A selection of Policy Templates are available from www.MyAppSense.com

AppSense Management Suite Version 8.0 is available today through AppSense"s world-wide channel of certified solution partners.   

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Sept. 29 – MELVILE, NY – AppSense Ltd., the leading provider of user environment management solutions for the enterprise, announced today that it has teamed with CSC to provide the AppSense Management Suite as the user environment management solution for the CSC Dynamic Desktop.

The CSC Dynamic Desktop is a virtual desktop solution that uses a combination of virtualization, thin client and secure access technologies to deliver a highly flexible personal desktop environment that is accessible from anywhere.  With CSC Dynamic Desktop, applications and user data are stored on servers located behind firewalls. This enables employees to access their "desktop" remotely and securely, regardless of location, and it allows the IT department to rapidly deploy systems to new users or refresh desktops without having to touch them individually.

AppSense user environment management technology enables CSC Dynamic Desktop users to experience a fully personalized desktop while enabling the business to more effectively implement corporate policy.  "With AppSense, all user ‘personality' information, such as desktop look and feel and profile data, as well as the organization's management policy, are managed separately from the virtual desktop and applied on demand.  This not only enables the user's personality to be portable, but also simplifies delivery and maintenance of virtual desktops by removing the need to treat each virtual desktop as a unique entity," explains Tony Bolland, VP Alliances for AppSense.  "By abstracting the user personality from the virtual desktop and managing this separately, true ‘pooling' of desktop images becomes a reality, and with that, significant storage, management and cost savings are enabled."

"We are extremely pleased to have teamed with AppSense to develop the personalization component of CSC Dynamic Desktop solution," said Stephen Jeffers, Solution Director for CSC Dynamic Desktop. "Effective management of user and policy information enables a more dynamic and flexible response to changing business needs, tailored desktop environments for business partners and improved security through application of corporate policy at the user level.  These capabilities are core to our Dynamic Desktop offering."

In addition to the personalization of dynamic desktops, AppSense technology has been designed to work across multiple application delivery mechanisms.  By combining virtual, streamed, provisioned and published applications, organizations are able to use the right mechanism for the right users at the right time.  With AppSense, the user's working environment is not dependent on the delivery mechanism, providing the user with a consistent, predictable and personalized working experience.

For more information about CSC Dynamic Desktops, please visit www.csc.com/cscdynamics

To learn more about AppSense policy and personalization solutions, please see www.appsense.com

About CSC
Computer Sciences Corporation is a leading global IT services company. CSC's mission is to provide customers in industry and government with solutions crafted to meet their specific challenges and enable them to profit from the advanced use of technology.

With approximately 91,000 employees, CSC provides innovative solutions for customers around the world by applying leading technologies and CSC's own advanced capabilities. These include systems design and integration; IT and business process outsourcing; applications software development; Web and application hosting; and management consulting. CSC reported revenue of $16.1 billion for the 12 months ended Dec. 28, 2007.

For more information, visit the company's Web site at www.csc.com.

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Introduces Only Solution that Automates Enterprise Policy and Personalization Management, Accelerating VDI Adoption

Las Vegas, NV, Sept. 15, 2008 – AppSense Ltd., the leading provider of user environment management solutions for the enterprise, announced today at VMworld its new, 8.0 version of AppSense Environment Manager. The only enterprise solution that enables standardized virtual desktop environments to be fully – and automatically – personalized, AppSense Environment Manager 8.0 accelerates virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) adoption by rapidly configuring desktops and applications with a user's personal and policy settings without administrator intervention and independent of virtualization technology.

By allowing companies to apply both personal and policy attributes without complex profile management or labor intensive scripting, AppSense Environment Manager enables IT staff to provide users with personalized desktop environments quickly and painlessly. For instance, with Environment Manager 8.0, IT can seamlessly move users from physical to virtual desktops or from one operating system to another, while ensuring that each user's personal settings, shortcuts, toolbars, and user-specific corporate policies are automatically migrated to the new environment.

To manage user environments in the past, many companies have used a combination of cumbersome, multi-vendor profile and scripting products. This is not only incredibly time-consuming, it also drives up IT costs and is nearly impossible to manage on a large scale.

"If IT can't efficiently personalize desktops for all users, then the promise of enterprise-wide VDI implementation will never be fulfilled," said Charles Sharland, CEO of AppSense. "With Environment Manager 8.0, we make it easy for IT to manage all aspects of the user independently of the desktop and application delivery mechanism, thus enabling true standardization of the corporate desktop and all the cost and management saving that provides. Not only does this solution solidify AppSense's leadership in the user environment management space, it also meets a critical VDI need by giving IT the simplicity they require to manage vast configurations, while providing users the personalization they must have in order for large-scale VDI to succeed."

"Once virtualization touches the end user, it's critical to gain acceptance, to make the end-user experience a positive one," said Michael Rose, Research Analyst at IDC. "AppSense offers a unique solution that makes that happen – one that easily scales to thousands of users in large enterprise-wide environments while also working with multiple VDI technologies.

About AppSense Environment Manager 8.0
AppSense Environment Manager 8.0 is a highly scalable solution that decouples both corporate policy and personalization data from the desktop—automatically capturing all relevant personalization data, stores and manages this data centrally, and applies it to the user's desktop and applications on-demand. It enables users to have the same look and feel, shortcuts and other settings (i.e., desktop wallpaper, Excel add-ins, email signature block, application