Just to keep us all confused, AppSense Management Suite (the collective name for Environment Manager, Application Manager, Performance Manager and the Management Center) is now AppSense DesktopNow. I can see the reasoning behind this easily enough - it's aligning the brand with the two other major AppSense offerings, DataNow and MobileNow. It's just that the name DesktopNow doesn't sit that well with me - it's almost as if they've sold the product a bit short. The AppSense Management Suite wasn't just about delivering custom desktop settings, there are plenty of other things tucked away in it like application control, licensing control, user rights management, performance enhancements, etc. You could argue that all these things are aimed at improving the end-user's desktop experience - even if they are using AppSense for published applications rather than full desktops - but as I said, it just doesn't seem like the ideal selection at first glance. However, I can't really come up with any decent alternatives (suggestions are welcome!), so maybe this is just the best that their marketing guys could find.
The new product at least maintains the current version numbering, so we now have DesktopNow with Environment Manager 8 Feature Release 4, supporting MSP patching and layered configurations. I'm downloading it now so I can have a good play with the layered configurations, so watch this space for an article about it pretty soon.
Here's a quick look at the new AppSense branding for anyone interested, with new funky icons for the various parts of the Management Suite DesktopNow. I'll get used to it eventually, I promise!
Update - I took the liberty of making sure that the various parts of DesktopNow are all still available to license separately, which is correct. You can now also pay for a subscription license for DataNow on its own, and also, interestingly, the User Rights Management part of Application Manager is available as a license on its own too. See this article for details on the URM Edition