• Creates an end-to-end solution to WorkSpaces with IGEL covering the last-mile to the end-user and their device
• Reduces the attack surface of a user’s device with a read-only, minimal Linux solution: IGEL OS
• Ensures the Amazon WorkSpaces experience is the focus inside IGEL OS, purpose-built for WorkSpaces

This milestone also will help prospective Amazon WorkSpaces and IGEL customers by ensuring a free trial of IGEL OS and WorkSpaces for 30-days. Don’t wait, try  WorkSpaces on IGEL today!

So why WorkSpaces on IGEL? Let’s look at a few points.

2020: The Year that Changed Everything

The year that was 2020 changed everything for work. Remote work, or ‘work-from-anywhere’ became mainstream and enterprises have rushed to pivot. This isn’t news. 2021 and beyond will now push enterprises to define their remote work policies. Some of these key challenges include:

• Increase security
• Reduce technical overhead
• Create a better user experience

The question remains: How are you solving remote work for your users?

Enabling an end-to-end solution with Amazon WorkSpaces

The answer to remote work is not a single silver bullet, but a posture of enterprise-ready technologies built on solid partnerships. IGEL officially partnered with AWS earlier this year when Amazon WorkSpaces launched on IGEL OS. This created an end-to-end solution that secured the last mile of a user’s Amazon WorkSpaces experience.

IGEL OS 11.06 will take its integration with Amazon WorkSpaces to the next level with being the first mainstream IGEL OS release to incorporate this functionality. Senior Product Manager for Amazon WorkSpaces. Lihao Wang said:

“I am pleased to announce that the IGEL and (the Amazon) WorkSpaces teams have successfully validated and signed off on the technical readiness of the first major update to our joint solution, which includes the latest Amazon WorkSpaces Linux client 3.1.9 integrated into IGEL OS 11.06”

He continues:

 “This major update brings many (Amazon) WorkSpaces audio and pixel streaming enhancements to our rapidly growing mutual customer base, further driving market penetration with the joint offering.”

The Future of Remote Work is Hybrid

As we all adjust to this new landscape, Gartner is also helping companies focus on these new work trends. Titled “9 Future of Work Trends Post-COVID-19” Gartner shares some of the following highlights related to how IGEL and AWS are driving end-user hybrid work:

• 48% of employees will work remotely at least part time
• Employers are looking to expand their responsibilities on financial, physical, and mental well-being (building a better experience)
• Encouraging critical skills to be developed internally
• Designing organizations for resilience over efficiency

Just as Gartner sees the future of work changing, IGEL and AWS are creating secure solutions to align to this new reality. In short, it’s simple: Ensure an end-to-end secure work-from-anywhere solution that enables users to access their data and applications on their terms.

Come and try the future of work with IGEL and Amazon WorkSpaces!

The post IGEL OS 11.06 Enables Amazon WorkSpaces Customers to Do More appeared first on IGEL.

Microsoft has now become one of the first major players, and first public cloud, to ‘shift’ their strategy officially towards hybrid work. Our own Simon Townsend put together this excellent blog covering this, and with this blog I’d like to dig a little deeper.

Unafraid to buck any former statements on Windows 10 being the “Last version of Windows” (Jerry Nixon, anyone?), Microsoft deserves credit on their scientific approach towards adapting to a changing market. Jerry, or anyone else, never saw COVID-19 coming in 2015. The future has been defined by those who pivot, not those who idly stand by, and Microsoft is forging ahead with that in mind.

As Windows Virtual Desktop (now Azure Virtual Desktop) ushered in new life to Windows in the public cloud, Microsoft’s Windows 365 Cloud PC is the embodiment of a new workforce enablement solution driven by a pandemic.  Even now, thousands of people in highly technical, secure jobs are resigning for one simple reason: Time is now a quantifiable asset. As Tsedal Neeley stated in the linked article above from Harvard Business Review:

“We have changed. Work has changed. The way we think about time and space has changed…[and] workers now crave the flexibility given to them in the pandemic — which had previously been unattainable”

IGEL is also giving back to users by helping them focus on work, when needed, then play, when wanted, all on the same device.

IGEL has Launch-Day Support for Windows 365 Cloud PC

We are happy to announce launch-day support to Windows 365 Cloud PC using IGEL OS on August 2^nd, 2021, along with other IGEL Ready partners like Nerdio. IGEL’s edge OS solution, combined with IGEL’s universal management suite, ensure just-in-time secure access to Windows 365 without the management and security overhead of running Windows twice (on your local device and in the Cloud), by using a small, simple, and secure OS on a USB key (UD Pocket).

IGEL OS (built on Linux and optimized for Azure Virtual Desktops, AVD) gives you the choice on how to connect to Windows 365 Cloud PC using:

• a web browser, or
• a configurable client which is able to scale to 10’s of thousands of devices.

An IGEL Technology Evangelist and Microsoft MVP, Fredrik Brattstig, has provided a powerful video showing IGEL’s ability to leverage Windows 365 Cloud PC, today:

Plug in, get to work, unplug, then play, with one device on IGEL. Powerful.

So, what is Windows 365? What’s the difference between AVD and Cloud PC? What is Cloud PC vs Windows 365? What’s the meaning to life? (The answer is 42, but more on that in another blog).

Let’s find out!

Windows 365 Cloud PC: It Takes a Village

Remember the old idiom “It takes a village to raise a child?” Me too. This becomes even more applicable for technology. Windows 365 Cloud PC will be a great solution. No doubt. But is it wholistic enough to solve all your remote needs? Maybe! Or maybe not.

IGEL, Nerdio, and others help complete the last-mile of Windows 365 Cloud PC deployment and enablement with a focus on security, management, and ease-of-use. Let’s look at how.

First, let’s get you caught up on the vernacular of the Windows cloud ecosystem as it stands today:

Now, let’s dive deeper from an end-user’s perspective.

PHYSICAL DEVICE + MANAGEMENT (PC, TABLET, ETC.)	CLOUD MANAGEMENT (NERDIO)	MICROSOFT AZURE EUC (WINDOWS 365 CLOUD PC; AVD)
Includes: A computer Peripherals (webcams, headsets, printers, scanners, etc.) Self-Service (restart, etc)	Includes: Cloud Management Cloud Deployments Pricing Optimizations Packaging	Includes: Windows 365 Cloud PC AVD User Profiles Resources (CPU, Storage, etc.)

These options really can be boiled down to a business focus into two buckets with IGEL focusing on enterprise:

• SMB/MSP (small business, mid-market, managed service provider): Windows 365 Cloud PC focus
• Enterprise: Azure Virtual Desktop focus

Meet the Village

PHYSICAL DEVICE + MANAGEMENT

Windows 365 Cloud PC allows you to grab virtually any device with a web browser and connect to your Cloud PC instance in Microsoft Azure. Have an old laptop? It may work! (More on this later)

Let’s scale this idea to the enterprise and see how things change.

Imagine having 100, or 10,000 users all with their own device connecting to their Cloud PC. It’s possible. But is it practical? When you begin to think about the context of enabling security, support, and management across these devices, while supporting applications and data, things begin to skew.

Ask yourself some of these questions to see how your business could align today, and tomorrow:

• Is there a mandate for a security posture on your edge devices?
• What’s your plan if there is a ransomware event?
• Do your applications all live in the cloud, or do you have some still in datacenters? Or on devices?
• Are you governing your data to ensure your compliant to government/industry standards?
• Do you have full visibility into all your data? (Metadata, or data about data)
• What peripherals are required for you different departments and teams?
• How are you remotely collaborating today?

Scale matters; data and applications matter; business continuity matters.

IGEL is built to help keep your devices agnostic while being super secure with a great user experience:

CLOUD MANAGEMENT

As we learned with devices, cloud management is also critical to consider for an SMB, MSP, or enterprise offering.

Our friends at Nerdio, who deploy, manage, and optimize virtual desktops in Microsoft Azure, have Day 1 support for Windows 365 Cloud PC and created an enhanced infosheet and blog post to explain its impact and differences versus AVD. As with any enterprise offering, more choice is available with an enterprise focus:

(Credit to Brady Rudolph at Microsoft for initially driving this: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/brady-randolph-b22b303_avd-w365-activity-6821437687141068800-ldQo )

As with any enterprise offering, more options are available with an enterprise focus

Nerdio also dives deep into the architectural differences between Windows 365 Cloud PC and AVD.

MICROSOFT AZURE EUC

What hasn’t been said about Microsoft Windows 365 Cloud PC or AVD (Azure Virtual Desktop/WVD)? Let’s quickly breakdown some key differences on market focus, licensing, and alignment:

Windows 11 is the Las….No it’s Not, and that’s OK, with IGEL

Microsoft’s Windows 365 Cloud PC (geez, I’ve typed that a lot) is an offering for a new age; a time where work or play, is blurred:

“My conclusion is that the decision for a business to define themselves as enterprise or small business is as critical as it is irrelevant… It is not enough to define yourself based on the number of employees you have. A focus must be placed on apps, data, workforce distribution, and business continuity, among others. And that’s OK!”

Hybrid work now becomes more granular. Today, many teams in the enterprise share responsibilities without sharing ownership. Contractors and full-time employees can be working towards the same goal, collaborating on the same platforms, but deployed, managed, governed, and even licensed completely differently.

The extension of solutions like Windows 365 Cloud PC from AVD shows this shift. IGEL, Nerdio and others are now more important than ever to help extend strategy now and in the future without ripping and replacing.

Try IGEL, and find out how the next-generation edge OS for cloud workspaces can leverage Windows 365 Cloud PC on August 2^nd, and whatever comes next!

The post Windows 365 Heralds the Arrival of Hybrid Work!…Now What? appeared first on IGEL.

On February 25^th, 2021, at IGEL DISRUPT Unite, IGEL announced and released a private build (fully supported) of IGEL OS containing an integration of Amazon WorkSpaces Linux client conveying to the world that all major VDI/DaaS platforms were now available.

As significant, or as insignificant, as this may seem to Citrix, Microsoft, or VMware customers, the impact is undeniable:

The next-gen edge OS for cloud workspaces now fully supports ALL public, hybrid, and private cloud mainstream virtual desktop platforms.

So, what does this mean to you, the current IGEL user, or even you, the prospective IGEL user? Let’s take a look:

Linux at the Edge is the Future of the Cloud

Just like virtualization changed the landscape of IT, and the public cloud shifted digital transformation into a key focus for leadership, the pandemic is bringing work-life balance and user experience to the forefront of a post-pandemic world.

Windows as an operating system is shifting to the datacenter. While AWS has provided Windows desktops and applications as a service for years (Amazon WorkSpaces, AppStream), Microsoft’s release of Windows Virtual Desktop solidified Windows’ future. The value Windows brings to any user, both as a consumer or a business, is critical and undeniable. Embracing Windows’ value in the new world of permanent remote users is foundational as a key business initiative. MacOS as well has started its journey into a datacenter OS with the announcement of MacOS in AWS EC2 during AWS re:Invent 2020.

Linux is now becoming the OS of choice because of its ability to run efficiently, securely, and across multiple platforms and devices. IGEL has embraced Linux since 1994 and continues to innovate with a Linux OS focused on securely connecting users to their IT resources. The IGEL approach is simple:

Provide just enough operating system to allow users to connect to their datacenter-based desktops apps, data, securely, managed anywhere the user is.

With smartphones, tablets, and even very small compute platforms like the Raspberry Pi also joining key user compute devices running Windows or Mac, IoT is now everywhere and it runs on Linux connected to your cloud (private, hybrid, or public).

IGEL Transports You From the Edge to the Cloud

Quick IGEL crash course: IGEL is a purpose-built physical device platform (OS + Management) to replace your current operating system to enable a secure and smart method to enable your user devices to:

• Run a secure environment completely within control of IT for users from anywhere
• Ensure the manageability of a user’s device from anywhere with an internet connection
• Connect to one or multiple desktop environments in parallel (more on this later)
• Repurpose your current device hardware, old, new, or even not-company owned
• Install (replace the current OS on the hard drive) or run the IGEL OS (as a USB-key keeping the current OS in place)

In a nutshell, IGEL becomes the transport for connecting your users to their desktops, data, and applications. Think a hotel courtesy van:

You and your friends are going to see your favorite band (post COVID! ). You’ve flown in, booked a hotel, and are looking forward to the concert. You’re all ready to go, and you jump in the hotel courtesy van which will take you to the venue. It’s clean, fast and ensures none of you have to find their own way there (except for your buddy Philip, he’s always late!).

The van takes you there, without hassle, and you all enjoy the concert.

In this example do you care or think about the van manufacturer? Did you get a full rundown of every feature of the van before getting on? No. You see the van as a service you can use to ensure you can get from the hotel to your event. You tell them where you want to go and then enjoy the scenery out the window, with essentially very limited criteria: that you’ll get where you want to go, safely and in a timely manner. IGEL is that fast, reliable, and secure platform for your end users to get to their digital workspace.

Tomorrow’s User Experience, Today

Post-pandemic, the technical landscape of remote work and user experience will accelerate and change drastically. User-focused technology will become as critical as the network or application environments. In parallel, organizations will certainly lift and shift more workloads to public clouds like AWS. This is where user expectation will meet tomorrow’s technologies.

IGEL’s model of being an endpoint OS and management solution for devices to transport a user to their apps, data and workspaces defines what it means to be a next-gen OS for cloud workspaces. Amazon WorkSpaces is the premier DaaS solution for running Windows-as-a-service for end users connecting them to their apps and data. When combined IGEL + Amazon WorkSpaces, provides and end-to-end customer experience that is streamlined for the user, but secured and managed for IT.

Visit igel.com/aws for more information on how to get started with IGEL + Amazon WorkSpaces.

The post Amazon WorkSpaces: Now Available on IGEL OS appeared first on IGEL.

The key takeaway across the entire event was that compute is fundamentally changing. With the onset of the first pandemic of the technology age, we’ve seen a rapid acceleration in cloud adoption, and this means for businesses to remain competitive they must also reinvent themselves. They need to dive deep to reconsider how to move faster in this time of tectonic change.

The event keynote underscored how everyone needs to take a moment for internal reflection – to ask deeply about you and your company’s, commitment to innovation. And AWS is showing it’s there to help with a number of new technology and customer support enhancement announcements. Each show their innovation promise.

Key Announcements

Amazon made impressive announcements across many of their AWS technology pillars during the event. Consider the following:

• MacOS on AWS – For the first time ever, Amazon is bringing macOS to AWS cloud. They announced availability of new Mac mini powered instances on Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) allowing developers to create apps for iPhones, iPads, Macs and more on AWS.
• Amazon WSP Protocol now generally available – The cloud-native streaming protocol enables consistent user experience when accessing your WorkSpaces across global distances and unreliable networks.
• Six New Container Technologies:

1. 1. Amazon EKS Anywhere (coming in 2021): Create and operate Kubernetes clusters on your own infrastructure with EKS Anywhere.
   2. Amazon ECS Anywhere (coming in 2021): Deploy native Amazon ECS tasks in the traditional AWS managed infrastructure, and now on your infrastructure as well. Learn more about Amazon ECS Anywhere here.
   3. Introducing Amazon EKS Distro: Amazon EKS Distro is an open-source Kubernetes distribution used by Amazon EKS to help create reliable and secure clusters.
   4. AWS Proton: Automate container and serverless application development and deployment with AWS Proton.
   5. Amazon Elastic Container Registry (ECR): Provides developers an easy and highly available way to share and deploy container software publicly. You can learn more about Amazon ECR here.
   6. AWS Lambda Container Support: AWS Lambda customers can now provision Lambda functions with a maximum of 10,240 MB (10 GB) of memory, which is a more than 3x increase compared to the previous limit of 3,008 MB. Learn more about Lambda Container Support here.

• Five New Amazon Connect Products:

1. 1. Amazon Connect Wisdom – this agent assistance capability gives agents the information they need to solve issues in real time.
   2. Amazon Connect Customer Profiles – this customer profile capability ensures agents have a more unified profile of each customer so they can provide more personalized service during a call.
   3. Real-Time Contact Lens for Amazon Connect – this provides real-time analytics to further impact customer interactions during a call.
   4. Amazon Connect Tasks – this task automation and management capability automates, tracks and manages tasks for contact center agents, improving agent productivity by up to 30%.
   5. Amazon Connect Voice ID – a caller authentication capability this provides real-time caller authentication using machine learning-powered voice analysis.

• AWS ISV Partner Path (available in 2021): New partner experience designed to accelerate the engagement that independent software vendors (ISVs) have with AWS, through prescriptive guidance, curated programs, funding benefits, and co-selling support.

Yes that’s a lot of news, capabilities and technology. You can get more great content from the event on demand here.

 What’s It All Mean for IGEL?

How does this benefit IGEL and IGEL customers? As compute changes, IGEL is changing too. We are laser focused on accelerating the closeness of users to their data and applications. As COVID-19 and the pandemic have changed the face of our world, remote work has also been hyper-accelerated to ensure a safe work-life-balance with more businesses adopting working from anywhere. IGEL ensures a safe, secure, and productive means of doing this on virtually any device.

You’ll also find that IGEL is committed to the public cloud with new and supported methods to build your IGEL ecosystem within AWS, like supported Amazon Linux, and prioritizing key partnerships to strengthen your public cloud deployments.

You likely already know that IGEL continues to innovate around making IGEL OS the leader in a purpose-built operating system for cloud workspaces, but IGEL is also wholly committed to the AWS platform and will continue to innovate and grow. Look for announcements from IGEL in the coming weeks around new ways to connect using IGEL OS and AWS.

The post AWS re:Invent Takeaways – Compute is Changing, IGEL Helps Move It Faster appeared first on IGEL.

Cloud-first, cloud native, cloudy-cloud-cloud-cloud! The generalizing of the term ‘Cloud’ can be exhausting to most techies’ ears; what should really matter is what one DOES to create a scalable, sustainable, and purpose-built solution for users to consume from anywhere. Especially in the post-COVID-19 world, ‘anywhere + speed’ is a phrase as extremely critical for productivity and user acceptance as cloud services.

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is a proven leader in public cloud delivering everything from anywhere: From prototyping a big idea for a new startup, to devops, to devops, or to a massive, global multi-region highly available content delivery business like Netflix, AWS has built quite an impressive list of customers and services.

But what does this have to do with IGEL? Let’s take a quick look:

IGEL’s tag line is often marketed as the ‘next-gen edge-os for cloud workspaces’ because of how IGEL provides multiple ways to connect to your apps, data, and workspaces on virtually any device. Here’s what this looks like in AWS:

As you can see, the IGEL UMS and ICG help manage, control, and enable the IGEL OS. While all well and fine, IGEL’s platform leaves much of the setup, testing, and modification to you and the specific needs of your organization.

This open approach allows for maximum flexibility but has potential for critical gaps with time-to-value, roll-out schedules, and user acceptance testing, which can take months in a best case scenario…but must it? The power and speed of AWS can and should be leveraged to enable this, but how? Enter Hypersive.

Hyper + Immersive = Hypersive

Like most that know him, I remember in perfect clarity the first time I met Steve Mueller and heard him pitch an idea that became known as “Extreme AppStream”; it was a demo idea for AWS re:Invent 2019 to build a real time gaming scenario/LAN party hosted in EC2 and leveraging technologies from many leading technology companies. Steve, a former WorkSpaces End-User-Computing Solutions principal member and EUC expert, was convinced this would showcase the power of the cloud working together with these adjacent technologies.

I was sold on the idea and together (8+ hours a day for over a month), we created a gaming demo using AWS, Google Stadia, Xbox, Twitch and IGEL running on LG thin clients that blew the socks off of anyone who saw it. That’s Steve – He makes the impossible not only possible, but tangible. If you haven’t seen Steve Mueller present, here’s a re:Invent 2015 YouTube session with him entitled ‘How Amazon.com is Moving to Amazon WorkSpaces’.

This is what Steve’s creating with Hypersive, a leading AWS partner to IGEL focused on accelerating user adoption. Hypersive’s user-centric approach towards adoption of new technologies has already disrupted other industries like physical security at Milestone, where Hypersive helped lead Milestone through their transition to cloud on AWS.

Hypersive is helping IGEL customers accelerate and adopt their strategies for public cloud on AWS, and within days, will present a conceptual keynote this. But you could be asking yourself, ‘why do I need to fast-track user adoption with AWS and IGEL?’ Look no further than the current pandemic.

Disrupt the Norm: Time Waits for No One

Remember this adage about time? COVID-19 has only magnified this 100x. Enterprises are hungry for ways to:

• Save on capital expenditures (cash flow)
• Double-down on just-in-time services for secure delivery of apps, data, and workspaces
• Increase productivity for a distributed workforce
• Ensure user-acceptance from anywhere

IGEL’s Digital Disrupt, happening on June 25th, 2020, is a cloud-forum (there we go with another cloud moniker) for enterprises and users to come together and learn about solving problems in situations like what COVID-19 has presented.

How AWS, IGEL, and Hypersive come together to solve this will be on full display during Hypersive’s session from 2:20pm-2:45pm PST entitled:

‘Running the Entire IGEL Stack in AWS, Including Endpoints, to Accelerate Adoption Across the Board’.

Rather than try and restate its purpose, I’ll use the description itself:

“Yes, you can put the ICG and UMS in AWS – we’ll show you how – but did you know that you can and should also put your actual endpoints in AWS as part of your deployment and acceptance testing plans? In this session, we’ll show you how to run cloud-first everything with IGEL, provision the Deployment Appliance and your actual OS endpoints in EC2, and why it’s so critical for eliminating the ultimate EUC killer – end-user acceptance friction – while shaving months from your deployment schedule.”

Part of IGEL’s DNA is disruption, and next week this will be on full display with Hypersive presenting as a premier partner for accelerating adoption of IGEL on AWS. Cloud-first for IGEL is here.

Disruptive, right

Join Us

By next week, Below are the details to register for IGEL Digital Disrupt. And while there’s a lot of amazing content, come and interact with us about how Amazon, IGEL, and Hypersive can help you accelerate and truly adopt a next-gen edge OS for cloud workspaces.

Register today! https://disrupteuc.vfairs.com/

2:20pm – 2:45pm PST,

Session 402: Running the Entire IGEL Stack in AWS, Including Endpoints, to Accelerate Adoption Across the Board

The post Hyper-Accelerate IGEL Adoption on AWS with Hypersive appeared first on IGEL.