Wow....it's been two years now since I put my first post out. (I only remember because it's my dad's birthday on the same day, I don't sit around and wait for the anniversary!) Lots of things have happened in that time, but it's still a bit of a buzz to get people reading my articles (over 250,000 page hits and counting), commenting on them, and asking me for help and advice. Thanks all!
In the virtualization arena as a whole, lots of things seem to be happening. We have DaaS predicted to be rising soon, powered by VMware, Amazon, and maybe Microsoft and Citrix too. Windows XP support comes to a shuddering end in a couple of months' time (as I sit here writing on a Windows XP VDI session), and that will mean accelerated migration programs from a lot of people. XenApp has returned from its rebirth as XenDesktop App Edition back to the old name, and become the longest-lasting Citrix technology name in history. I'm trying to get to grips with the new features of App-V 5, whilst looking at the features of new technology from Atlantis, RES, and a host of other companies, finding ways to fit other useful bits of software into projects like Spoon - all in all there seems to be a lot of exciting stuff going on tech-wise.
I'm happy to say I'm still finding lots of use for AppSense's suites of products - although more and more I hear talk of people looking more closely at Citrix and Microsoft tech, in particular, to do similar sorts of things. This seems unusual when a lot of people had predicted a difficult year for Microsoft in particular, but in the enterprise their offerings seem strong, and familiar, to many techies. I think that maybe AppSense might need to consider offering either newer features, or maybe even some discount in cost (perhaps for foregoing the Personalization Server option?) in order to remain competitive with the broadening of offerings from the big players. However, I have heard some interesting things recently (which I'm not allowed to blog about yet, unfortunately) which may indicate there are some good developments from AppSense on the horizon. Suffice to say I will let you know as soon as I can.
I've been working on some interesting articles around AppSense which I hoped to put out today, but given that I am waiting for some feedback from some SQL developers regarding parts of them, I've had to leave them in draft format for the moment and put out this quick diatribe instead :-( However this may be a quick chance for some shameless self-promo. I'm currently doing a bit of journalistic work for The Virtualization Practice (http://thevirtualizationpractice.com), so if you fancy reading my non-AppSense ramblings somewhere, take a dodge over to the website and look up my contributions - http://www.virtualizationpractice.com/author/jrankin/. There are a lot of other excellent authors writing there too, so make sure to have a look about at all of the material, not just mine!
Anyway thanks for reading my blog again for another year, and for all the queries via the blog, email, Twitter, and Google+ - I do enjoy engaging with people all across the world and helping with their problems. Here's hoping I can actually broaden my scope of subjects this year, because I promised to do it last year, and failed rather miserably. :-)
Cheers,
JR