*This post originally appeared on the AppSense blog prior to the rebrand in January 2017, when AppSense, LANDESK, Shavlik, Wavelink, and HEAT Software merged under the new name Ivanti.

For over a decade, AppSense has been solving centralized computing challenges with established use cases like VDI and published apps. However what's often overlooked, is the value AppSense brings to your physical desktop estate.

As a brief refresher, AppSense centrally stores the desktop and application settings on a per-user, per-app basis within a SQL database. Additionally, AppSense can automate user policy management on a contextual basis. Because of this centralized management (user, application, and data settings), there are inherent benefits when it comes to dealing with use cases for the physical desktop. Over the next three posts we're going to highlight the following use cases-

  • Migrations
  • Break/fix
  • Backup and Recovery

Migrations: This can be defined as an operating system (OS), hardware, or application event. As previously mentioned, AppSense centrally stores user and application settings, allowing IT to dynamically manage changes a user makes to a managed application or within their own user profile. So when it comes time to migrate the user to their new OS, hardware, or both, the migration process has already taken place (as a seamless background process); thus eliminating the concept of a migration in terms of the user and their settings.

The immediate benefit to IT is an agile process for migrations, which can be measured in hours, rather than weeks to complete. A once time consuming process that must be project planned, budgeted and executed; can now be completed simply by installing AppSense on the new desktop or laptop.

There’s an additional benefit I haven’t addressed (as this is focused around the physical desktop). If a decision is made to do a physical to virtual migration (P2V), then a major hurdle has already been addressed: migrating user and application settings (and all that personal data!), which are essential to the user experience and a key driver to a successful VDI migration.

Tune in next time and I’ll be talking about removing the pain from break/fix using AppSense!