Flexera Launches Virtual Desktop Migration Planning Tool -- ADTmag

Flexera Launches Virtual Desktop Migration Planning Tool

By John K. Waters
April 17, 2012

Flexera Software this week released a new migration planning tool designed to speed up migration to user-centric computing and virtual desktops. The new AdminStudio Virtual Desktop Assessment is a virtual appliance with vendor-agnostic planning automation capabilities.

The promise of Virtual Desktop Infrastructures (VDIs) is in their ability to save organizations money and improve IT resource utilization, explained Flexera's Vice President of Product Management Steve Schmidt. But many organizations don't have the visibility into how users and desktop apps consume resources.

AdminStudio is designed to monitor key system behaviors of computers, users nd applications, Schmidt said, collecting complete inventory and app information (CPU performance, online/offline access, input/output, memory utilization) to "reveal virtualization suitability and the complexity of virtualizing that application."

Among other things, this level of transparency helps enterprise architects make better-informed decisions about virtual desktops deployments. The appliance generates a user-friendly "suitability assessment," which ranks desktop machines and users into low-, medium- and high-complexity groups based on usage patterns and environmental conditions. The system then provides detailed and summary reports that can be filtered based on a range of attributes.

By defining virtualization suitability, Flexera is creating a new category of application compatibility, the company claims. "It's more than just determining whether an application will work in the virtualized environment," said Maureen Polte, Flexera's vice president of product management, in a statement. "You must have a high level of confidence that the user will have a good experience with their virtual desktop. If you're only looking at application compatibility, you're setting yourself up for potential failure and putting your desktop transformation projects at risk. User and device compatibility must be part of the analysis to ensure the assessment is comprehensive and you're making informed decisions."

More information about AdminStudio Virtual Desktop Assessment is available here.

About the Author

John K. Waters is the editor in chief of a number of Converge360.com sites, with a focus on high-end development, AI and future tech. He's been writing about cutting-edge technologies and culture of Silicon Valley for more than two decades, and he's written more than a dozen books. He also co-scripted the documentary film Silicon Valley: A 100 Year Renaissance, which aired on PBS. He can be reached at [email protected].