Blog

Citrix Synergy 2013 – this time in Anaheim, California, not as usual in San Francisco in walking distance from Stratodesk offices. For Stratodesk it was not just an opportunity to travel to Southern California, but also to reconnect with customers, friends, partners, and meet new people.

Undoubtedly, we do have the easiest and most cost-effective endpoint solution for any Citrix environment. So going to Synergy is out of question.

Having been an exhibitor at Synergy for three years in a row it was a shock to hear that Synergy in London would be canceled, however it came not so much as a surprise as single-vendor-plus-partner trade shows are indeed losing appeal globally. From a pure, a bit selfish Stratodesk perspective the event was great, though.

We also took part in the Citrix Ready Partner Day at Citrix Summit the days before to make sure we are in sync with Citrix updates, policies and internals. Regarding Citrix products: Of course NoTouch Desktop works with XenDesktop 7, as well as XenApp 6.5 FR2, VDI-in-a-Box 5.2, and also via Access Gateway. We already have all Citrix multimedia technologies included, such as Flash redirection, Lync optimization, etc.

When speaking about the Citrix vision of bringing life and work in harmony (by allowing to connect to enterprise at any time from anywhere), it was a thought a Citrix customer had: “ok that’s their story about end users but who thinks of me the sysadmin, I had to work long hours to make the VDI thing work”. Well, until he had found Stratodesk. We bring CIOs and Sysadmins back into harmony by taking nasty endpoint hassles away from them, stopping long hours, security risks and uncontrolled spending.

NoTouch Release 2.36 “Leavitt Peak” is out. First intended as a pure service release on top of awesome “Sonora”, there have been several highly interesting improvements. Along with the NoTouch OS update that comes an update to NoTouch Center (now at 4.1.25) and of course these improvements have been incorporated into our Stratodesk Virtual Appliance.

• Citrix endpoint: Citrix RealTime Media Engine, which is a key part of Microsoft Lync optimization, was incorporated in the official image.
• VMware Horizon View client 2.0 has been included in the official release, along with a rename of VMware View to VMware Horizon View.
• The NoTouch installer (aka GENESIS) now includes a secure disk wipe option that can use the ATA Secure Erase procedure next to a traditional disk overwriting.
• Firefox was updated to latest version 20 (at that time) and made to automatically include custom certificates.
• The user login dialog was much improved.
• Citrix configuration improvements allow for a much better default configuration and a new, more flexible INI file access mechanism was introduced.

Both the Citrix RealTime Media Engine and VMware Horizon View client 2.0 have already been included in earlier images, this time they are now officially part of a release. The actual changelog and list of improvements – as always – is too long to be shown here. We kindly suggest to read the release notes that are available for download together with the actual release binaries.

NoTouch 2.36 runs on PCs and Thin Clients with at least 256 MB RAM. The standard image requires 512 MB Flash or hard drive space, though smaller builds are available. NoTouch OS 2.36 works best with NoTouch Center 4.1.25 that has been released at the same time. A current Stratodesk Virtual Appliance image 20130513 was released as well. All builds together form “Release Leavitt Peak”, named after Leavitt Peak, a mountain in California’s Sierra Nevada. If you want to climb Leavitt Peak, you start at Sonora Pass, which happened to be code name of our last release 2.35/4.1.24.

Please log in to www.stratodesk.com/login to download. NoTouch 2.36 is available to subscribed customers free of charge.

We want to highlight that Stratodesk Knowledge Base has undergone a major update as well – check it out at http://www.stratodesk.com/kb.

If you have any problems or questions on how to update to this release please contact [email protected]

San Francisco, April 17, 2013. Stratodesk, the market-leading hardware-agnostic Virtual Desktop (VDI) PC Repurposing and Thin Client OS platform provider, announced a continuation of its stunning growth with a record-setting first quarter. The first quarter of 2013 represents the largest quarterly sales in Stratodesk history, quadrupled (4x) from the first quarter of 2012, and this comes even after an incredible 2012 performance that made Stratodesk North America software revenue more than triple. Driven by a series of major customer wins, including Fortune 500 & Global 2000 organizations, Stratodesk is pacing to grow another 400% to 500% in 2013.

“We see many reasons for this early success; we have a long list of solution partners and happy customers spreading our story on our behalf and a product that is simple to install and effortless to use,” said Stratodesk Founder and CEO, Emanuel Pirker. “This combination has resulted in overwhelming interest from across the globe. It is exciting to solve a problem of so many CIOs worldwide.”

Strong outlook

With rapid adoption of the VDI computing paradigm, both by on-premise implementations and cloud-based DaaS (Desktops as a service) offerings, the market for Stratodesk solution is growing dramatically. Stratodesk’s solution is both PC repurposing toolkit to reuse existing PCs in a VDI environment and a Thin Client operating and management platform, on x86 and ARM architectures, making it the only vendor- and hardware agnostic endpoint platform in the marketplace.

“The aggressive growth strategy in North America is received well and comes just in time as so many CIOs are struggling with their budgets while demand increases. Stratodesk helps people to implement VDI and BYOD – bring your own device, and allows them to buy hardware only when they want and what they want, without typical vendor-lock-in”, explains CEO Emanuel Pirker. But it is not just about America: Harald Wittek, VP of Sales, says “I am pleased to see that our organic growth also happens in Europe and Asia. We have had a 30% growth in Central Europe where we are already strong (!) plus we have established partnerships in various European countries in 2012 and expect strong sales in 2013 there”.

About Stratodesk

Stratodesk provides a one-for-all endpoint operating and management solution for Virtualized Desktop Infrastructures (VDI). Organizations from small businesses to large enterprises and governments can achieve double-digit cost reduction and dramatically improved security, while retaining existing hardware and being able to chose endpoint devices independently of VDI providers.

Stratodesk users include banks, governments, armed forces, hospitals, small and medium businesses and large enterprises in America and across the globe. Stratodesk is headquartered in San Francisco, California with offices in Vienna, Austria and Klagenfurt, Austria. For more information, please visit www.stratodesk.com.

Stratodesk is a privately held company and not actively soliciting investments. We do want to point out though that this article contains forward-looking statements: these forward-looking statements are based on management’s current expectations and assumptions regarding current business and performance, the economy and other future conditions and forecasts of future events, circumstances and results. As with any projection or forecast, forward-looking statements are inherently susceptible to uncertainty and changes in circumstances. Actual results may vary materially from those expressed or implied in its forward-looking statements. Trademarks, even when not attributed as such, are the property of their owner. Copyright © Stratodesk Corp., all rights reserved.

Doomsday is April 8, 2014, less than a year from now: The day Microsoft will stop supplying security patches and providing support for Windows XP.

Chances are good that there are still Windows XP PCs in your organization. About one third of all PCs in the world are said to run Windows XP, a platform essentially a decade old. No responsible CIO can seriously consider running unsupported systems nor buy extended Microsoft support (rumored to be about two hundred dollars per year per desktop!)

“The biggest danger stems from machines that have been ‘repurposed’ keeping Windows”, says Emanuel Pirker, Founder&CEO of Stratodesk. By repurposed he means Windows PCs that are used as VDI terminals to Citrix XenApp and XenDesktop, VMware Horizon View, vWorkspace, DaaS services etc. “Typically system administrators tend to forget about them. Can you be sure these machines are compliant with your update policies. Are they still protected against virus attacks and malware?”

Stratodesk has devised a repurposing software that allows and even encourages people to forget the endpoints while being safe: Stratodesk NoTouch Desktop provides an immediate software-only solution. NoTouch Desktop replaces Windows XP on PCs, and Windows XP Embedded on Thin Clients, with a secure and easy-to-handle OS based on a specialized Linux variant with central management, yielding some immediate benefits:

• No need to buy new hardware or upgrade the hardware – and if you do later, you chose the brand you’d like without vendor-lock-in
• State-of-the-art VDI connectivity with latest Citrix, VMware Horizon View, Quest, Microsoft RDP clients, web browser, DaaS, BYOD and much more
• One single management framework for different devices
• One single consistent end user experience
• Commercially supported, enterprise-grade product

San Francisco, California, based Stratodesk allows people to try NoTouch Desktop – for free: NoTouch FreeTrial.

NoTouch is not just a kit to replace Windows XP – it is a sophisticated endpoint solution for any VDI/Virtual-Desktop- and BYOD-type (bring your own device) scenario. It runs on existing PCs, new PCs and Thin Clients of various brands, providing one solution for all endpoint devices with a unified management platform.

Our longtime-partner Quest, now part of Dell, has just released vWorkspace 8.0. Thus, from now on we refer to it as Dell vWorkspace v8.0. Stratodesk is fully committed to support this platform now and in the future.

For those who are updating, no changes in NoTouch Desktop need to be done. Dell has not released a new client software package – the one that is integrated in the OS part of NoTouch. That means that NoTouch still includes the newest vWorkspace client. The moment a new client will be available, we’ll have a new NoTouch version with this new version.

In case you have questions please contact us via the usual channels – we are very happy to answer your questions.

NoTouch 2.35.41 was released today, March 16, and it includes VMware Horizon View client 2.0 (formerly called VMware View client) not even a full day after VMware has released the client binaries. NoTouch Desktop allows people to repurpose PCs as Thin Clients or diskless workstations for VMware View, Citrix XenApp/XenDesktop, Microsoft Remote Desktop Services and other terminal services/desktop virtualization products, avoiding all the trouble of old Windows installations with or without lock-down tools and it saves people from buying new hardware just for the purpose of getting “thin” endpoints.

NoTouch OS, a core component of NoTouch Desktop is based on Linux and already includes the VMware Horizon View client and supports PCoIP as well as RDP to connect to Horizon View servers; this client was updated to 2.0 from 1.7 in this new NoTouch 2.35.41 release.

NoTouch running VMware Horizon View client 2.0

NoTouch OS 2.35.41 is an OS update only and works well within the Stratodesk NoTouch “Sonora” product generation. Registered customers can download from our download area.

In our NoTouch 2.35 release we have greatly enhanced the Mozilla Firefox browser experience. However, we can also show Google’s Chrome browser running natively in NoTouch:

NoTouch running Chrome

Due to both package size and licensing restrictions/redistribution policy of Chrome we do not intend to make Chrome a standard part of our solution. Customers wishing to run Chrome instead of Firefox will be able to have Chrome integrated on a per-customer-basis, please contact us for more information.

CeBIT – the world’s largest IT trade show – takes place now in Hannover, Germany. If you are in the area, we would be happy to meet you in hall 7, at booth A04.

Stratodesk CeBIT 2013

The first day was already very productive with both pre-arranged appointments and new people taking interest in what Stratodesk is doing. Our refreshing way in the VDI/SBC scene is well-liked by IT consultants, dealers and end users. Looking forward to a great CeBIT week!

Once again we’d like to invite you to our booth – meet the people, check out the tech stuff, discover the solution. We’re happy to meet you at CeBIT 2013.

NoTouch Release 2.35 “Sonora” is out. An incredible number of improvements make this an awesome OS for any type of endpoint. Several of the updates already have been released as 2.34-addons, such as new VMware and Quest clients.

• Updated components such as VMware View 1.7 client, Quest vWorkspace, Firefox 18, …
• New “Network Manager”, a GUI application for end users to chose wireless networks with authentication
• Well integrated with the new Stratodesk Virtual Appliance
• Security: HTTPS is now used by default whereever HTTP was used before
• Much improved multimonitor and dualscreen capabilities
• Much improved hardware support
• PXE-boot and configuration preloading improvements
• Ease of management improvements
• Internationalization improvements for Asia and Latin America

The actual changelog and list of improvements is too long to be shown here. We kindly suggest to read the release notes that are available for download together with the actual release binaries.

NoTouch 2.35 runs on PCs and Thin Clients with at least 256 MB RAM. The standard image requires 512 MB Flash or hard drive space, though smaller builds are available. NoTouch OS 2.35 works with NoTouch Center 4.1.24 that has been released at the same time. A current Stratodesk Virtual Appliance image 20130218 was released as well. All builds together form “Release Sonora”, named after Sonora Pass, a Sierra Nevada mountain pass connecting California’s Mono and Tuolumne counties.

Please log in to www.stratodesk.com/login to download. NoTouch 2.35 is available to subscribed customers free of charge.

If you have any problems or questions on how to update to this release please contact [email protected]

NoTouch Center 4.1.24, a new version of the management platform for NoTouch Desktop is available.

• Well integrated with the new Stratodesk Virtual Appliance
• Configuration options for NoTouch Desktop 2.35
• Windows installer now includes MySQL 5.5 instead of an older version and configures Windows Firewall
• Backup and migration export features
• Support for internal and external IP addresses in a NAT scenario
• Ease of management improvements
• Improve client-sent status values

The actual changelog and list of improvements is too long to be shown here. We kindly suggest to read the release notes that are available for download together with the actual release binaries.

NoTouch Center manages NoTouch Desktop 2.35 that has been released at the same time, plus all older versions. A current Stratodesk Virtual Appliance image 20130218 was released as well. All builds together form “Release Sonora”, named after Sonora Pass, a Sierra Nevada mountain pass connecting California’s Mono and Tuolumne counties.

Please log in to www.stratodesk.com/login to download or use the auto-update. NoTouch Center 4.1.24 is available to subscribed customers free of charge.

If you have any problems or questions on how to update to this release please contact [email protected]