The IGEL App Portal opens possibilities for third-party software vendors to package and make apps available for the IGEL OS. Technologies like ControlUP Edge DX and Remote DX, deviceTRUST, and Liquidware Stratusphere UX have been added as the IGEL App SDK has been made available for Application vendors. Many more to come!

IGEL released the IGEL Windows 365 App, enabling easy access to Microsoft Windows 365 resources, and continues to evolve Windows 365 access together with IGEL Azure Virtual Desktop App.

IGEL has built and released the new IGEL Imprivata Agent, which makes IGEL OS the only endpoint OS enabling Imprivata Tap-and-Go for Windows 365 and Azure Virtual Desktop.
The IGEL Imprivata app also Tap-in to VMWare Horizon, and full support for Citrix Cloud and on-prem is around the corner.

With the new structure of IGEL OS, more use-cases are fulfilled. IGEL OS is now the ideal operating system for cloud-delivered workspaces, on-premises delivered Desktops and Apps and extends with “browser only” and local apps workflows.

During 2023, what everyone in the past referred to as Citrix was joined and split up into separate business units under the name of Cloud Software Group, where Citrix is one business unit, NetScaler is one, XenServer is one, etc. IGEL has a strong business relationship with Citrix and sees that the tech release avalanche that Citrix released is mind-blowing. So many new innovations have been released over the past year and integrated into Citrix Workspace App for Linux and IGEL OS. Citrix has also switched the focus from “Cloud only” to Cloud and On-Prem = Equals, working on feature parity and giving the customer the choice of where to run the workloads. Hybrid approach! From what I see with Citrix, there is no “One fits all” anymore. Good evolution!

On that note, Broadcom has acquired VMWare, and there is a market vacuum about what will happen with VMWare EUC. Hopefully, the VMWare Horizon (EUC) value will be valued by another organization and continue its long-term success as a VDI platform.

What’s intriguing to think of when it comes to Cloud vs. On-Prem is that Citrix CVAD/Daas and VMWare Horizon/Horizon Cloud have been making efforts to give the customer the Hybrid choice, Microsoft also has an answer: Azure Stack HCI, and with the ongoing development on Azure Virtual Desktop on Azure Stack HCI Microsoft is also acknowledging the hybrid choice. You might ask yourself why does anyone need on-prem when you have the hyper-scalers to run your workloads? The simple answer is twofold – Latency and legal requirements of the organizations.
Let’s quickly break this down: Latency – Depending on the type of workload you are delivering, low latency is key for good End User Experience. It can be about accessing local peripherals but also about delivering Rich media session streams. Think about the complexity of delivering multi-screen 4K resolutions at 60 frames per second; latency will be devastating. The legal side of things? Can governments put workloads and data in a cloud originating from another country?

With all the changes in the market that have been going on during 2023, this has also affected #Community. Looking at IGEL Community, it’s a growing resort for people discussing ideas and challenges. It is such a valuable platform, as when digging deeper into IGEL, what you see on the surface when test-driving the OS and management, there is so much more on the capabilities. When you start looking at scripting and customization, the IGEL Community is a resource to count on! The IGEL community grew 10% YtD in 2023.
Some of the Citrix User Groups announced changes from the CUGC brand to more of an EUC forum. I’ve seen that in the Nordics and the UK, at least. Citrix also announced changes to CUGC.

On a personal level, when it comes to community activities, I have been recognized by Citrix to become a CTP (Citrix Technology Professional) for my work in sharing knowledge with the community. IGEL also recognized me for my contributions and awarded me to become an IGEL Community Insider. I added my renewal of Microsoft MVP (Most Valuable Professional) for my third year and my NVIDIA NGCA (NVIDIA vGPU Community Advisor) for my fifth year.

The #AI revolution has started! Microsoft made an enormous footprint in making AI available for anyone, anywhere. Just look at Bing Chat. It gives anyone access to AI datasets and the possibility to leverage the new technology. Then, Co-Pilot rolled out to virtually all apps in the Microsoft portfolio. You are right; Microsoft wasn’t the main driver in the early stages of AI, though, by tight collaboration with OpenAI, they rapidly extended the AI use cases. All were announced at Microsoft Ignite mid-November -23. I’d say it has started!

IGEL has been going through organizational changes over the last year, including adding Klaus Oesterman as CEO and making significant changes to the leadership team. Exciting to see the changes in market focus. Keep your eyes out for all the changes that are in the pipeline!

So, what about 2024? My view of what’s coming!

IGEL will undoubtedly continue expanding the IGEL APP Portal portfolio. More apps from 3^rd party software vendors will be made available. I’m thinking of Enterprise Browsers as they will play a more prominent role going forward. I know that we will see a remake of IGEL OS desktop GUI (Graphical User Interface) that takes the User Experience to a new level. We have already started to see usability improvements in IGEL OS supporting the mobile use case, and that journey will accelerate. Of course, IGEL will continue to update the Apps we package for OS 12.

I have seen numbers of 700 Million Windows 10 machines still alive. Those 700M (?) devices are facing the EOL of Windows 10 in 2025. It’s mind-blowing to think about the IT waste that will be created for all the machines that need to be replaced, as the hardware requirements for Windows 11 are different and more demanding. IGEL has the solution for you, together with Virtualization technologies and the delivery of virtual apps and desktops. What if you re-image your Windows 10 devices that will go out of support and instead put your Windows desktop in a data center, be it in the cloud or on-premises? You will be able to extend the lifetime of your existing machines and save lots of money, as you won’t need to buy new hardware. Your budget changes from CAPEX to OPEX and will be much more predictable. Did you know that somewhere around 85% of the carbon footprint results from the manufacturing and shipping of the unit? By not “rip and replace” your hardware, you will contribute to a greener world. Yes, some of the devices might need to be refreshed, and over time, devices need to be refreshed. That’s why IGEL is teaming up with manufacturers like Lenovo, LG, and HP. When the time comes, you will replace your hardware units with slimmer devices, again contributing to less emissions.
The race for Windows 11 upgrade will have to increase rapidly in 2024 for corporations to have a chance of avoiding running unsupported operating systems at mass in late 2025, which is a jeopardizing game. Hybrid work will continue to evolve, and I’m sure you want to ensure your users have a trouble-free endpoint in their hands. IGEL OS gives you good protection from Ransomware and other rouge code.

I believe we will see an extension of offloading technologies as optimizing the User Experience is still becoming more requested. New Microsoft Teams has just been released, indicating that new technology is coming to the virtualization EUC space.

The evolution of AI will probably introduce more players in the market on the GPU side. NVIDIA is leading this space, though I believe AMD and Intel can potentially deliver alternatives. At Microsoft Ignite, Satya Nadella announced Azure Maia AI chip. It will be interesting to follow this evolution!

IGEL will extend its MSP (Managed Service Provider) offering to expand its footprint in this segment. Broadening the usability and the licensing possibilities will be key to success.

I look forward to seeing more niche players in the IGEL App Portal as diversity adds value. I’m looking at Parallels RAS, HP Anywhere, Amazon Workspaces, and others. Would be really interesting to see more alternative VDI offerings. Citrix has a nice integration with Linux Desktops and Apps for VDI. ThinLinc is already part of the IGEL App Portal, which gives you Linux VDI. I’m also looking forward to seeing more local apps offered, where we today have Zoom, for instance. Why not give every customer the possibility to package their own apps?

With that said, I wish you happy holidays, a Merry Christmas, and a Happy New Year! See you in 2024!

/Fred

The post O’Boy, what a year! 2023 is almost in the books; let’s look in the rearview mirror. appeared first on IGEL.

Have you ever been in a situation where you have a user with brand new endpoints out in the field, at home, or elsewhere, and you need to guide them to be able to access your Citrix published Desktops and/or Apps environment? Has there at any time been any problems when onboarding users, making them install the right components and configure their machines in the correct way?

IGEL has been working hard to make onboarding IGEL OS users in the field very easy. With the release of the IGEL Cloud Gateway (ICG), this has already been a reality for many years. Let me explain to you what is needed to make a very smooth onboarding of remote users and actually get them productive within minutes from the first power on of their IGEL OS endpoint.

The goal is to have a brand new IGEL OS endpoint be onboarded by a non-technical user and have that user not have to understand the technology or install any software – just follow a simple guide, fill out the information that the user knows, and get going!

The minimum requirement will be to have the user select the language of the operating system, set what keyboard layout to use, then connect to a wireless network if that is needed, and finally use their email address to tie the IGEL OS endpoint to the secured IGEL OS management infrastructure. This is almost what is needed, but there is actually a technical thing necessary, that is to fulfill the security aspect, so you will need to have a deployment key distributed to the user, to ensure that only authorized users can enroll devices. The deployment key can be issued in either Single Use mode or Mass deployment
– Single Use = you will send a unique key to each user. When the key is used, it can’t be used again
– Mass Deployment = You will send a generic key to your users that can be used over and over again (until you disable that key)

Prerequisites

• IGEL Universal Management Suite – Installation instructions: UMS Installation and Update (igel.com)
• IGEL Cloud Gateway – Installation instrucktions: Installation and Setup (igel.com)
• Brand new IGEL OS endpoint, or an IGEL UD Pocket

As a baseline for this article, I’m currently using a IGEL UMS and IGEL ICG that’s running in my Azure Tenant at the Sweden Central location. I have my Citrix Cloud hosted in European Union (I assume that is located in the Azure WestEU datacenter), and I have my Citrix Desktop delivered from virtual machines in Sweden Central. My IGEL OS endpoint that you see in the video at the end of the article is in my home office on the west coast of Sweden.

Here Is How You Do It, Let’s Get Started!

I will assume that you already have an IGEL Universal Management Suite (UMS) installed together with an externally (from the internet) reachable ICG Cloud Gateway (ICG). The further below steps are what is needed to be done to get the simple onboarding to be a reality.

Add The DNS TXT Record

IGEL UMS and ICG leverage the DNS TXT records to find the correct ICG server to connect to, when you have set up the TXT record in your public DNS, the ICG agent on IGEL OS will be able to resolve the ICG address based on the email address that the user provides, which makes the onboarding. An example could be that the ICG is having a DNS name that is icg.azure.virtualbrat.com while the user email address will be user1@virtualbrat.com, the DNS TXT record resolves @virtualbrat.com part (domain name) of the email address to icg.azure.virtualbrat.com.

If you have a running UMS + ICG environment already, but don’t use the TXT record resolving yet, you simply need to login to your DNS provider and add the TXT record.
Set the TXT ‘Node Name’ to igel-cloud-gateway and value to https://your.icg.fqdn:yourport/usg/endpoint like in the below screenshot:

Set Up Your Default Directory Rules

The whole idea of Fast onboarding is to make the process super easy for a user in the field to gain access to the corporate desktop or published resources, so be it in the cloud or on-premises. The IGEL Universal Management Suite (UMS) has a nice feature called Default Directory rules, giving the opportunity to push distinguished configurations based on the container (or folder) that the IGEL OS endpoint belongs to. IGEL UMS can automatically place an IGEL OS endpoint in a specific container based on certain criteria. This complete ruleset can be extended in very advanced ways, it is all about thinking of what use case you want to fulfill, finding the correct criteria to apply the default directory rules to and the rest will be handled by the IGEL UMS! As a matter of fact, there is a default directory rule that I will use that is very simple –

1. Create a new Default Directory Rule
2. Select the “IGEL Cloud Gateway” criterion, click Next
3. Select “Last Boot via ICG”, click Next
4. Select “Choose target directory”, click Next
5. Select your appointed target directory in the tree view, and check “Overrides existing directory membership” plus “Apply when device boots”
6. Click “Finish”

You have now created a Default Directory Rule that will place ALL IGEL OS endpoints connecting from remote through the IGEL Cloud Gateway to be placed in the selected directory.

Automatic IGEL OS License Deployment Of Brand New IGEL OS Endpoints In The Field

The IGEL UMS can automatically assign licenses to the newly configured IGEL OS endpoint no matter if they are on-premises or out in the field. First off you will of course need to have new IGEL OS licenses available. When this prerequisite is met, you can assign a license deployment rule to the container of your field IGEL OS endpoints.

Create The Set Of Profiles And Assign Them To Your IGEL OS Remote Endpoints

I will do this very simple, and just create one IGEL UMS profile pointing the Citrix Workspace App to my Citrix Cloud Workspace connection address (This could be the Citrix ADC gateway address for on-premise scenarios) and some administrative settings, like setting an NTP time server sync, etc. Plus I will create an IGEL OS Firmware Customization to set a specific wallpaper and some other customizations to modify the user interface on IGEL OS. I will then assign the profile and firmware customization to my container of remote IGEL OS endpoints. The ultimate goal when I configure my IGEL UMS profiles in my scenario will be an auto-launching Citrix Workspace App connecting to my Citrix cloud environment and asking for user credentials, this will be the default behavior every time all my IGEL OS endpoints start’s up to provide a simple and consistent user experience.

That’s it! By following this guide from start to end you will enable simple enrollment of IGEL OS endpoints in the field, leaving your Users to have a very simple onboarding experience. What’s extra nice about this is that the time it took for you to read this article, actually in practice is only a few minutes of configuration to be done when you know what to configure, and how. In the video below you have the end result, showing the user experience of onboarding an IGEL OS 11 endpoint and enabling the user to be productive within minutes.

The post Fast Onboarding to Citrix Desktops with IGEL OS – Better together! appeared first on IGEL.

• New login mask modernizing the login experience
• Ezeep Cloud Printing by ThinPrint
• Zoom VDI plugin for WVD
• Fabulatech USB- Webcam- and Scanner-Redirection for WVD

Today we will go through the last two features, if you missed the part 1 you can find it by clicking here!
Now, lets have a look at todays topics

Zoom VDI plugin for WVD

Finally I can present to you the Zoom VDI plugin for WVD! And I can tell that it works well above expectations. Camera quality is sharp, framerate is very good as you can se in the below video recording and the audio quality is perfect. Keep in mind that the user experience is basically set depending on the camera and equipment the user has. Internet connectivity and latency also play a big role in the user experience, but hey, that’s the case with any video conferencing right?!. A cheap quality camera will give a cheap experience etc.
Fred and Jeff took the opportunity to record a multipart conferencing call where the main recorded screen that you see in the video below is using a IGEL UD3 endpoint utilizing the Zoom VDI offloading in Windows Virtual Desktop.

FabulaTech USB for Remote Desktop, Webcam for Remote Desktop and Scanner-Redirection for WVD

IGEL OS now has full support for the FabulaTech Optimization type 1 scenarios, where you can map any USB device to your WVD session using ‘FabulaTech USB for Remote Desktop’, you can use the ‘FabulaTech Webcam for Remote Desktop’ to provide webcam access to any application within your WVD environment and If you need a scanner connected to your WVD session, the ‘FabulaTech Scanner for Remote Desktop’ is included. Those three components are now configurable in IGEL OS to be used in your Windows Virtual Desktop session. The below video shows when I’m using my Poly webcam in Microsoft Teams, in WVD connecting form an IGEL OS endpoint. It also covers FabulaTech USB for Remote Desktop, where I’m hooking up a Saitek x52 joystick to my WVD session. Awesome if you want to run that flight simulator in the cloud!
I’m restricted to test the FabulaTech Scanner for Remote Desktop simple because i do not posses a scanner :(:(:(

That’s it for today!
Stay Well!

/Fred

The post IGEL Releases 11.05.100 – check out the new features here! #WVD part 2 – Covering Zoom VDI offloading with Jeff Kalberg and much more! appeared first on IGEL.

• New login mask modernizing the login experience
• Ezeep Cloud Printing by ThinPrint
• Zoom VDI plugin for WVD
• Fabulatech USB- Webcam- Scanner-redirection for WVDThis blog will cover the first two pieces, stay tuned for ‘IGEL Releases 11.05.100 – check out the new features here! #WVD part 2’ soon to follow!

New login mask modernizing the login experience

The customization of the WVD login mask allows you to provide a optimal user experience making your users more comfortable with the login process, and simplifies the login process. In the video above I showed some examples of prespecifying the login domain, replacing the WVD background image and removing the IGEL logo from the login mask. Lets have a look at what options you have and how to find the settings as most of them are hidden in the IGEL Setup registry potion currently:

• Prespecify login domain
  Sessions->WVD->WVD Sessions->’your WVD session’->Logon and in the “Username@domain or @domain” field you simply specify your domain (eg. @virtualbrat.com)
• WVD client background wallpaper customization
  Registry->Sessions->wvdx->options->background-image here you can specify the background image you want to use or you can chose a static color in the #rrggbb format (eg /wfs/cloud.jpg or #345590 (the /wfs/ storage location is a quick and dirty example, make sure that you do not fill up the /wfs partition, use a proper image distribution like custom wallpaper server setup ref: Custom Wallpaper Server (igel.com))
• WVD client company logo
  Registry->Sessions->wvdx->options->logo-image
  here you specify your logo image to be shown in the login mask.
• WVD client ‘no-background’ and ‘no-logo’
  Registry->Sessions->wvdx->options->no-background and no-logo
  Simply removes the background image and/or logo image from the login mask, making it less user friendly

Ezeep Cloud Printing by ThinPrint

IGEL OS has now a integrated solution for WVD sessions to support BYOP (Bring Your Own Printer) which solves the problem of enabling printing for your WFH/WFA (Work From Home/Work From Anywhere) use case scenarios etc. Until now printing has been functional using on-site/on-prem <-> Azure VPN, but that is not really suitable for WFH because it requires, yea, you got it, a VPN connection.
With the Ezeep Cloud Print integration this is now a easy solution. Fist of all you will need to have a Ezzep Blue subscription, which you can setup using the Azure Marketplace. And you need the ‘Ezeep Print App’ installed on your WVD hosts. For more information on the Ezeep Cloud Print, here are the Ezeep_for_WVD_-_quick_start_guide! and even more info to be found here: Easy Printing Anytime, Anywhere – ezeep

On the IGEL OS device, you will need to enable the “Ezeep by Thinprint” for your WVD session, which is easily done on all your WFH endpoints using the IGEL UMS and ICG. Configuration is found at Sessions->WVD-WVD Sessions->’your session’->Printing->ezeep by ThinPrint and you simply check the “Printing with ezeep” checkbox.
And of course the user needs to have their printers set up as a regular CUPS printer. Here are the reference to achieve this: https://kb.igel.com/igelos-11.05/en/cups-42011385.html
On that note, my colleague @Ron Neher created a few cool scripts to auto detect and add CUPS printers which can be of good use, more info here:
IGEL-Custom-Partitions/CP_Source/Tools_Drivers at master · IGEL-Community/IGEL-Custom-Partitions · GitHub

Enjoy your easy Ezeep printing and your options to customize your WVD login experience! See you in part 2 of this blog shortly!

The post IGEL Releases 11.05.100 – check out the new features here! #WVD part 1 appeared first on IGEL.