Why are Windows user profiles so critically important for corporate IT environments? User profiles are about individual workspaces, each one reflecting its owner’s personality. They may well include business critical information represented by unique, user-specific data and settings related to desktops and applications.  In the past, when users only needed to deal with one physical desktop and one profile, things were relatively simple.  But now they tend to have access to corporate and private applications through multiple physical desktops.  In addition to that, remote desktops and the advent of virtual desktop infrastructures are making things even more challenging.  Using a wider spectrum of applications running on multiple desktops, with each desktop optimized for dedicated tasks, is the way users will be working in the near future.

But how can you manage user profiles efficiently in multi-desktop environments with different Windows versions, such as Windows 7, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server 2008?  If you always wanted to have a profound answer to this question, this whitepaper is for you.  Be prepared to get some technical insights that go beyond what Microsoft calls User State Virtualization.  The successful management of user profiles turns out to be of growing relevance, both for physical and virtual Windows desktop infrastructures.  In this whitepaper you can read how it’s done.

To learn more and download the Immidio whitepaper, please visit: http://immidio.com/SupportFiles/Windows-Profile-Management-v2.pdf

Download the full “Profiling für Fortgeschrittene” article (PDF, in German).

Immidio Flex Profiles is today’s most popular profile management product implementing profile segmentation separating and decoupling sets of application and desktop settings. Segmented profiles work on all Windows versions that are officially supported by Microsoft, both 32 bit and 64 bit. The general idea behind this concept is using a pre-configured base profile (e.g. default, local or mandatory profile) for common base settings and store individual system or application settings in associated individual files or archives.

To learn more and to download the whitepaper, please visit: http://immidio.com/SupportFiles/Win7-Migration-with-Immidio-Flex-Profiles.pdf.

On the last day of CEBIT, I noticed a multimillion-dollar software vendor’s booth. One of the managers was giving a speech to more than 80 employees. He thanked them for their presence and dedication, and in an attempt to add some marketing to his speech, he asked these employees to state their own tagline. It was embarrassing to see that none of the employees could answer, not even by looking around, since the tagline was not prominent in the booth. Although I felt sorry for the manager, this incident provides a clear example of the software-vendor identity crisis.

If employees cannot state what their own company does, how can anyone expect customers to understand?

In today’s business climate, product suite suppliers face difficult times in a fast-paced market with continually changing demands. Old-fashioned product suite vendors find it hard to answer when asked to explain why customers need to wait for one-and-a-half years for the next version of the software before feature requests are implemented, or why customers have to pay for functionality they will never use.

In this time of economic crisis, professionals responsible for IT operations and budgets are open to pragmatic approaches. They need IT vendors that put their money where their mouth is. Customers want point solutions that give them the functionality they need, at prices that deliver a return on investment, preferably within the first year. When customers have specific requirements, they need agile vendors who can provide immediate turnaround by turning their requests into functionality.

Traditional product suite suppliers are becoming outdated and struggle to survive. They have large development teams with lots of processes, meetings, procedures, templates and scripts just to ensure they are doing the right thing. It is in this over-organizing that they fail to understand their customers’ environments, since they are mostly busy looking inward. I have seen these kinds of software companies unable to finish the next product release due to all these well-intended hurdles. Do customers really need or want to pay for this overhead?

Compared to large vendors, agile software vendors have minimal hierarchy. Organized with responsiveness at the top of the agenda, they are in close contact with customers and partners, they provide a stimulating working environment, and they use the latest online media to communicate with their eco-system. There is no room for arrogance or politics. It is all about being proud of market knowledge and experience, being passionate about that expertise, and having a drive to share all this with the community.

Agile software companies have taken full advantage of the cloud by now. They are leading the pack by concentrating on what they do best and have implemented SaaS and cloud services for their business processes using other vendors’ best-of-breed point solutions. In addition to greater efficiency and scalability, adopting cloud services shows that these software vendors understand the latest technology and business models better. The ideal agile software vendor can use the old server room for another purpose because now there is only a router left, which connects the devices to the Internet. Interestingly enough, the use of cloud services enables all employees to access all business applications from any location.

Twenty-first century software development needs to be truly agile. Lightweight development methodologies such as XP or Scrum that heavily depend on intensive customer interaction should be used. Only when the customer experience is actively fed back into the development process will the result be fast and also very effective, thus truly agile. The twenty-first century is all about time-to-market and providing pragmatic and customer-oriented software products that solve real problems at commodity prices.

The large product suite vendors are stuck in a rat race. Investors expect quarter-by-quarter growth and therefore vendors tend to look for promising technologies to acquire. According to Heinrich Vaske, chief editor of the leading German IT magazine Computerwoche, these acquisitions are primarily driven by economic reasons but are not necessarily in the interest of customers. Once a big vendor acquires new technology, it often takes too long to integrate the new technology and often this integration is poor.

The British research firm Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) recently reported that 70% of respondents to one of their polls prefer best-of-breed solutions to create a customized IT environment in a flexible way. They willingly take the extra integration effort for granted. Customers know themselves and are smart enough to create IT environments using the point solutions that are best suited to meet their needs rather than waiting fatalistically for a product suite vendor to solve their challenges with relevant IT infrastructures.

Immidio’s strategy is to deliver these best-of-breed point solutions. We offer low-priced products that are simple to implement and provide a clear return on investment. We have no intention of combining our solutions into a product suite. We will add more point solutions over time and these will all continue to be separate products. We will keep our company lean and mean to prevent unnecessary overhead from slowing us down and to stay responsive to the real needs of IT environments. Today, our company is smaller than some of the management teams of the suite vendors with whom we compete!

In October 2008, Immidio was founded as part of the Login Consultants group of companies. The first year of our existence we mainly focused on the development of our two point solutions: Immidio Flex Profiles and Immidio AppScriber.

Immediately after the release of Immidio Flex Profiles last August, we started to roll-out an international channel sales program that resulted in signing up distributors and partners in many countries around the world. In Q4/2009 our sales already hit a record of well over 100.000 licenses sold. With our second product – Immidio AppScriber – released in January, we are on track for exceeding our Q1/2010 targets as well.

Over the past period we have seen that our strategy of delivering point solutions at commodity prices is widely appreciated. We will stay away from building expensive product suites where you are forced to purchase functionality you will never use. Immidio’s products provide solutions to specific problems, therefore offering clear returns on investment. Our best of breed solutions provide the flexibility that companies prefer while shaping their IT landscape.

Now that we have become a completely independent company with strong funding and a 21st century business model, expect to see more smart solutions coming to the market, more customers choosing our agile point solutions and to hear about us more frequently.

Immidio AppScriber significantly reduces the time consumed by user-initiated application requests, as these activities require no IT intervention, no call to the helpdesk and no support ticket opened.  This gives users a sense of independence when selecting the applications they need, while enabling your IT department to retain control.

Immidio AppScriber extends the most popular application deployment solutions, such as Microsoft Installer (MSI) with Group Policies, Microsoft App-V, Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager, Microsoft RemoteApp programs (as provided with Windows Server 2008 R2 RDS), Citrix XenApp application publishing, Citrix application streaming and Symantec Altiris Deployment Solution.

Immidio AppScriber 2.0 now differentiates between three application types: general applications, mandatory applications and managed applications.  General applications were introduced with Immidio AppScriber 1.0, where users can self-assign an application through the AppScriber web interface.  The new mandatory application type allows AppScriber administrators to show a list of applications deployed statically to groups of users.  This gives users an accurate overview of all applications they have access to.

The most relevant feature introduced with Immidio AppScriber 2.0 is the managed application type which kicks off an approval workflow as soon as the user requests such an application.  For this purpose, Immidio AppScriber 2.0 supports a new approver role – one or more approvers can be configured per managed application.  An approver is a non-technical manager that is able to accept or reject a user’s request.  The workflow process involved supports interactivity and message delivery both through the web frontend and through e-mail.

According to feedback we have received from our customer base, the workflow functionalities added to our product make Immidio AppScriber 2.0 a complete enterprise solution.  Now the three relevant roles for application deployment are reflected in the product – application users, non-technical application approvers and IT administrators.

Feel free to give Immidio AppScriber 2.0 a try. After registering on the Immidio website, you can download the fully functional Immidio AppScriber 2.0 installation package and get a free 30-day trial license.

What we’ve seen quite a lot in the past, when people were migrating to Windows XP, is that the migration of the users’ application settings was not considered. This resulted in several unpleasant experiences.

1. After migration the helpdesk gets overloaded with issues related to application settings. This also quite often created a bad image of the IT department.
2. After migration there is no way back and it restricts users to roam outside the locations that are migrated to the new OS (without a notebook). Because once you have logged onto the new OS, it’s better not to roam and log on to the old OS anymore.
3. Because of issue 2, many companies were forced to do a “big bang” migration, where all desktops were upgraded in a very short period of time, which resulted in even more focus on issue 1.

Many customers don’t want to go through this again and are looking for another way to get through this phase. With Immidio Flex Profiles Advanced we introduce a solution which helps you with a smoother transition to Windows 7 on the level of user experience and provide substantial benefit on managing Windows profiles after the migration as well.

Immidio Flex Profiles Advanced is a Windows Profile Management solution which solves a lot of issues and optimizes the overall user experience. This is achieved by decoupling and segmenting personal application settings from the underlying Windows OS and profile, making these settings available cross-Windows platform and creating a consistent user experience no matter what Windows OS the user is working on.

The approach for the Windows XP to Windows 7 migration is pretty straightforward and consists of the following steps.

Implement Immidio Flex Profiles Advanced in your current Windows XP environment.

1. Install the FlexEngine (tiny MSI) on each endpoint.
2. Configure the FlexEngine through Active Directory Group Policy with help of the provided ADM template.
3. Make sure the FlexEngine runs at Logon and Logoff for all users. (e.g. Logon and Logoff scripts).
4. Use the Flex Profiles Management Console to create application-specific configuration files for the application settings you want to “decouple” from the Windows Profile.

From this point on, the application settings you configured will be stored outside the Windows profile once a user logs off, on a location you configured (e.g. homedrive). Let users work in this situation for such a period of time that you are sure that all the configured application settings are “decoupled” for all users.

Implement Immidio Flex Profiles Advanced in your new Windows 7 environment.

What you need to do to implement Immidio Flex Profiles Advanced in the new environment is very dependent on the total migration scenario (like AD migration). But what we at least require is that you use the same location where you have stored the “decoupled” user settings. In each migration scenario, you at least need to install the FlexEngine on each Windows 7 device.

You can now deploy Windows 7 and applications using the deployment solution(s) you have in place at the pace you want to without migrating the “traditional” Windows profile. Once a user logs on to a Windows 7 desktop the FlexEngine will load all the personal application settings that were created by the FlexEngine in the Windows XP environment.

In the Windows 7 environment you could even decide to use a mandatory profile for all or specific users to get optimal logon and logoff times. Then you can decide which application settings users can modify and save by using the Flex Profiles Management Console.

The result

First, a smooth transition to Windows 7 while maintaining personal application settings. Second, take control of Windows profiles on Windows 7 from that point on. And third, you have just created a Windows XP and Windows 7 side-by-side desktop environment. Meaning users can now switch between these two OS’es with a consistent user experience, since the application settings that you decided on can now be roamed cross-platform.

This all results in much less overload on the helpdesk after migration, users can roam outside the locations that have been migrated and no (technical) pressure on a big bang migration!

Here is a short description on how to use Immidio Flex Profiles offline: The runtime component FlexEngine uses INI files to select the profile information to be stored when terminating individual applications or logging off from a user session. The profile information is written into ZIP files that are used to restore the profile information on application launch or at logon. In order to run Immidio Flex Profiles offline, you have to make sure that all required INI files and the user home folder – or any other location you want to store the profile archives at – are available offline.

This can be achieved by making sure that the INI files are accessible locally and that the user home directory is made available offline. The relevant settings are configured in User Configuration\Administrative Templates\Network\Offline Files and in Computer Configuration\Administrative Templates\Network\Offline Files in the Group Policy Object Editor snap-in. For details see Microsoft’s TechNet article “Configuring Group Policy for Offline Files”.

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.

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