It’s about a month ago that we released Immidio Flex Profiles Advanced Edition. The number of downloads and the positive feedback from our customers is way beyond our expectations. It looks like our profile management solutions is something many IT professionals are looking for. But why is that so?

User demands are sky-rocketing when it comes to modern IT infrastructures – leading to elevated expectations regarding computer usability, application performance and workspace control. In other words, today’s users want to be the center of the IT universe. They want to be in full control of their workspace and application settings, and they expect IT to work smoothly no matter if they are online or offline. This common vision of a user-centric application infrastructure encourages organizations to introduce desktop and application virtualization technologies on a large scale.

Windows user profiles play an important role in a modern desktop and application infrastructure as they preserve the individual settings between interactive logins. The profile management functionality built into Microsoft Windows is challenged by today’s requirements including multiple desktops per users, various application publishing methods and a range of virtualization technologies. As a consequence, profile management gets more and more attention as a profile is like a user’s digital personality, represented by the individual workspace and application settings. Today’s users expect that their personal settings are following them, independent of their physical location, Windows version, desktop engine and application delivery method.

Immidio Flex Profiles Advanced Edition optimizes the management of user profiles for Windows desktops and applications provided through local workstations, terminal servers, Citrix Presentation Server / XenApp or Virtual Desktop Infrastructures (both 32-bit and 64-bit). This includes the application-specific handling of both registry settings and configuration files during user logon, user logoff, application launch, or application termination events.  Individual configuration files for different applications and workspace settings allow modifying the behavior of the Immidio Flex Profiles logic. Immidio Flex Profiles can be used in conjunction with local profiles, roaming profiles or mandatory profiles.

The advantage of Immidio Flex Profiles is that you get the performance and stability of mandatory or local profiles while still having the ability to retain customized user settings from their sessions. Simple INI configuration files determine which registry settings, files or folders should be retained within the profile. When configured properly, Immidio Flex Profiles Advanced Edition provides extremely fast user logons and logoffs when compared to standard roaming profiles. This method also allows the simultaneous usage of Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows XP, and Windows Server 2003/2008 Terminal Services remote desktops in one environment; user-specific settings work cross-platform if Immidio Flex Profiles is used.

If compared to competitors, Immidio Flex Profiles has several advantages or unique selling points:

1. Low complexity with respect to the base concept of running FlexEngine as a command-line program and avoiding massive backend infrastructure. (no database server or web server required)
2. Superior granularity when handling application-specific segments of the user profile, easily configurable through individual INI files. (profile segmentation)
3. Low footprint of user profile data when looking at required disk space capacity and network bandwidth.
4. Intuitive graphical management console and application setting import wizard based on Microsoft Sysinternals ProcMon log files, reducing the effort to create Flex Profiles INI files significantly.
5. Enterprise-ready centralized management through Active Directory Group Policies.

Immidio Flex Profiles’ method of dividing user profiles into multiple segments decouples different personal configuration sets, with some of these configuration sets related to applications and others to individual groups of workspace settings.  As an example, Immidio Flex Profiles can make individual settings of Microsoft Word completely independent of a user’s preferred mouse settings – an obvious user requirement that is not available out of the box. 

In addition to that, profile segmentation allows for smooth migration and cross-platform scenarios where only selected application settings roam with a user while general workspace settings may be platform-specific.  Selected workspace settings, such as keyboard, mouse, Internet Explorer, certificates, screensavers and Windows Explorer, can be managed through dedicated product functionalities.  Combined with its minimal installation and backend footprint, Immidio Flex Profiles is ideal for today’s user requirements in modern virtualized Windows environments.

Today, we released Immidio Flex Profiles Advanced Edition to the public. We added so many cool new features and enhanced both usability and performance that this edition of Flex Profiles really marks a major milestone. And the best thing is that Immidio Flex Profiles Advanced Edition supports Windows 7 (!!!), Windows Server 2008, Windows Vista, Windows Server 2003 and Windows XP. We made sure that user profiles can be used across several Windows versions now. And the other best thing is the brand new graphical management console for configuration files (INI files). And there are so many more best things. We are so excited…

Go and get your trial version of Immidio Flex Profiles Advanced Edition now!

Immidio Flex Profiles Express Edition (version 6.0.x) and its predecessor Login Consultants Flex Profile Kit are well established user profile management solutions. Thousands of corporate customers around the world implemented one of these Flex Profiles freeware editions in their Windows environments. The reason for this is very simple: Flex Profiles is based on a proven methodology, it is lightning fast, it does not require extra backend servers and it only leaves a small footprint in memory and network – advantages appreciated by many IT professionals and system administrators.

Now, given the facts that Immidio Flex Profiles Express Edition is so good and available for free, why would anybody want to go for a retail edition of Immidio Flex Profiles? People started asking me this question since we announced a retail edition of Immidio Flex Profiles. In the following, I give you 11 good reasons making Immidio Flex Profiles Advanced Edition an attractive option.

1. Support: Immidio Flex Profiles Advanced Edition is an officially supported product, automatically taking advantage of the Immidio Response support offerings.
2. Additional operating system platforms: Immidio Flex Profiles Advanced Edition was not only tested on Windows Server 2003 Terminal Services and Citrix XenApp 4.5/5.0, but is also supported on Windows Server 2008 Terminal Services, Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7, extending the scope of Flex Profiles to the current server and workstation platforms. The upcoming Immidio Flex Profiles Version 7.0 will also support Windows Server 2008 R2 Remote Desktop Services.
3. 64 Bit: Immidio Flex Profiles Advanced Edition is shipped with both 32-bit and 64-bit runtime components (FlexEngine), with the 64-bit FlexEngine allowing full access to the registry and the file system on 64-bit editions of Microsoft Windows.
4. Automated generation of application configuration files: Immidio Flex Profiles Advanced Edition introduces a mechanism that automates the administrator’s work during the process of generating application-specific Flex Profiles configuration files (.ini files). As a result, Flex Profiles application configuration files can be produced easily by less experienced IT professionals and system administrators. This feature is also beneficial for more experienced IT professionals as it removes the need to manually go through some boring and repetitive activities when creating application configuration files.
5. Graphical management console: Immidio Flex Profiles Advanced Edition includes a graphical workbench, providing an easy-to-use management environment for application configuration files (.ini files) and other important Flex Profiles settings.
6. Windows Group Policy integration: Immidio Flex Profiles Advanced Edition hooks into Microsoft Active Directory, allowing central configuration of the Flex Profiles runtime component through Group Policy Objects in addition to the established command-line parameters.
7. Profile archive compression and streaming: Immidio Flex Profiles Advanced Edition has built-in compression and streaming algorithms creating profile files optimized for networks with limited bandwidth.
8. Simple framework configuration: The free editions of Flex Profiles include so-called framework scripts for adaptation to individual customer requirements. All of the logic included in the framework scripts was moved into the runtime component of Immidio Flex Profiles Advanced Edition, simplifying the configuration effort significantly.
9. On-demand elevated user privileges: Immidio Flex Profiles Advanced Edition introduces an optional service that gives users access to predefined areas of the registry with elevated user rights. This allows the modification of a user’s individual password and certificate settings from a non-privileged context.
10. Application streaming support: Immidio Flex Profiles Advanced Edition is compatible to application streaming and isolation technologies, such as Microsoft App-V.
11. Common settings: Immidio Flex Profiles Advanced Edition supports a number of common Windows-related settings without the need for specific .ini files.

In summary, Immidio Flex Profiles Advanced Edition was optimized to fulfill common requirements of corporate environments in terms of management, compliance and supportability. If you want to learn more about Immidio Flex Profiles Advanced Edition, contact us through info@immidio.com.