The EUC Bento Box is a monthly selection of relevant and interesting content, curated by yours truly, designed to be easily digestible as a way to stay up-to-date on the latest trends and developments in the EUC industry! Inside the bento box, you will find a variety of articles, blog posts, white papers, videos, best practice guides, and more. Each entry includes a short summary/description to help you maximize your learning with minimal reading! So, whether you're an EUC geek, a seasoned professional, or just starting out, we're sure the EUC Bento Box has something for everyone.
Let's dive in!
Industry News & Insights:
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Welcome to the new era of Microsoft Teams and Microsoft Teams: Advantages of the New Architecture
Microsoft Teams is undergoing significant updates, which will allow for a more seamless user experience across devices and platforms. Users can easily access and use apps, files, and meetings through a single interface - spanning multiple tenants and accounts. The new architecture also allows for faster and more reliable performance using Fluent, React, and WebView2, as well as improved security. The new architecture allows for easier development and deployment of new features and integrations. Additionally, new AI-powered features will be added to improve collaboration and communication and provide more personalized experiences.
Ruben's Thoughts:
Gone are the days of massive resource consumption when using Microsoft Teams in laptop, workstation, and Desktop as a Service (DaaS) deployments. Well, that is one of the multiple new architectural advantages when using Microsoft Teams. The architecture changes not only have significant advantages in resource consumption, and mechanisms making sure the latest versions of Teams are being used, they also will impact vendors such as Citrix, Microsoft, and VMware and the way they designed 'Teams optimizations' for their VDI/DaaS solutions. Frame, as the first and only DaaS solution to use WebRTC for our protocol's (FRP) transport layer, Frame offers a unique advantage. With this approach, customers can easily access webcam and videoconferencing features within their browser, without requiring any offloading to the client. There's no need to worry about application compatibility, endpoint client or plug-in requirements, or version issues.
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Alternatives to Citrix, Microsoft, and VMware for Remote Work
This article written by Gabe Knuth (Sr. Analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group) delves into alternative options to widespread virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) and Desktop as a Service (DaaS) solutions provided by Citrix, Microsoft, and VMware. While these solutions offer robust features and functionality, they can also be expensive and complex to manage and operate. The article proposes several alternatives, such as Amazon WorkSpaces, Dizzion, HP Anyware (Teradici CAS), Frame, Nerdio, Parallels, and more. Each option has its strengths and weaknesses, with some providing greater customization and control, while others focus on ease of use and scalability.
Ruben's Thoughts:
When talking to members of the community at this year's IGEL DISRUPT Munich/Nashville and EUC Masters Retreat, more and more customers and partners argue about the business, partner, and technology future of both Citrix and VMware. Very interesting times when you are: Born in the cloud, multi-cloud, easy to use from an admin and user perspective, API-driven, easy to embrace within DevOps and CI/CD pipelines, and a (managed) partner-friendly DaaS solution.
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John Savill is doing an excellent job explaining what machine learning is, what neural networks are, what GPT is, and how that all plays into ChatGPT! A great watch, certainly worth the time spent.
While on the topic of AI, this article from Bill Gates is a great read as well. The article emphasizes the importance of ensuring that AI is developed and used ethically, with a focus on transparency, accountability, and fairness. Finally, the article notes that AI has the potential to address some of the world's most pressing problems, such as climate change and disease, and that its development and use should be guided by a shared vision of creating a better world for all.
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Sustainable Computing: Reusing Existing Devices
E-waste is the fastest-growing waste stream in the world, according to the United Nations University Global E-waste Monitor. According to the Global E-waste Statistics, in 2019, the world generated 53.6 million metric tonnes (Mt) of electronic waste (e-waste). To put this into perspective, approximately 5,307 Eiffel Towers can fit in 53.6 million metric tonnes of weight.
IT has a significant environmental impact. The production and disposal of electronic devices and their associated infrastructure consume a significant amount of energy and resources. Therefore, sustainability in IT requires a focus on reducing energy consumption, extending the life of electronic devices (which is the focus of this article), and developing more sustainable production and disposal methods. Extending the physical device lifespan represents millions of euros of cost savings.
Ruben's Thoughts:
In this blog post, we delve into a customer use case that showcases the advantages of reusing legacy hardware alongside modern lightweight operating systems, such as IGEL OS, Stratodesk, Unicon, ZeeTim, 10Zig, and Google Chrome OS Flex. To deliver a cutting-edge virtual desktop experience to any device with just a browser, we leverage Nutanix Frame Desktop as a Service.
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Stanford University offers free online courses!
Here are 5 FREE courses you don't want to miss in 2023:
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Computer Science 101: CS101 is a self-paced course that teaches the essential ideas of Computer Science for a zero-prior-experience audience
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Supervised Machine Learning: Machine Learning is a highly demanded skill in the 21st Century. You will learn the most effective ML techniques and gain experience in their practical applications with precision
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Game Theory: This course will provide the basics: representing games and strategies. You'll learn a variety of examples including classic games and a few applications
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Designing Your Career: This online course uses a design thinking approach to help people of any age and academic background develop a constructive and effective approach to designing their vocation
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Artificial Intelligence for Robotics: Learn how to program all the major systems of a robotic car from the leader of Google and Stanford's autonomous driving teams. This class will teach you basic methods in Artificial Intelligence.
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For the Geeks:
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Deploy a Single Microsoft 365 Apps Package Everywhere All At Once - with Office viewer mode!
The Microsoft 365 Apps for enterprise now includes a viewer mode that allows users without a Microsoft 365 or Office 365 license to access read-only versions of the applications. This is particularly useful for frontline workers and presents an opportunity to simplify deployment and updates of the Microsoft 365 Apps. By deploying a single package that includes Microsoft Project and Visio, rather than separate packages, organizations can more easily manage these applications across physical and virtual desktops. Viewer mode enables unlicensed users to access the applications in read-only mode, while licensed users will have full access to the applications with all features and functionality enabled. This approach streamlines the deployment and management of Microsoft 365 Apps for enterprises.
Ruben's Thoughts:
Wow! This is a great article by Aaron Parker. While reading this article, I'm happy to say I learned something new. I normally use FSLogix Application masking to hide certain applications such as Visio and Project making sure only the right (licensed) people can use these applications while the applications are installed on the master images. With Microsoft 365 Apps / Office 365 viewer mode, another tool in the toolbox is available to provide (read-only) access to applications.
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Geek Out with Frame: A Step-by-Step Guide to Setting Up Frame and Nutanix Community Edition
Ruben's Thoughts:
Who doesn't like to geek out and get their hands dirty in a HomeLab? This article is a step-by-step guide and describes how to set up and configure Nutanix Community Edition (CE) 2.0 and Frame. The article does include a detailed set of videos to assist with the installation and configuration process. Also, when you are active in the community as e.g. Nutanix Technology Champion (NTC), Microsoft MVP, Citrix CTA/CTP, or VMware vExpert, and want to be part of the Frame Community Program, this article is a great read.
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CloudFlare Speed Test (including jitter/packet loss)
Everyone has their own tools in the toolbox, including internet speed tests. CloudFlare Speed Test is such a handy tool since it displays the download and upload speed, as well as latency and jitter - all in one simple interface without ads!
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New and cool car visualizer (demo app)
(PW =
clk-demo)Talking about tools in the toolbox, there are a few superb applications which can be used to demonstrate the User Experience, GPU, and Remoting Protocol capabilities of DaaS solutions. One of these newer tools is a great car visualizer from brigade.tv!
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Introducing Frame Single Sign-On
The article "Introducing Frame Single Sign-On" introduces Nutanix Frame's new Single Sign-On (SSO) feature, which is designed to simplify and enhance the user experience for desktop-as-a-service platform users. The article explains how Frame SSO is different than Citrix FAS and VMware SSO Architecture, how Frame SSO works within the Frame platform, and how it benefits both IT administrators and end-users.
For IT administrators, SSO helps to improve security and manageability, while for end-users, it provides greater convenience and ease of use. The article includes a step-by-step guide for IT administrators to set up SSO with various identity providers. If you're a Nutanix Frame user or an IT administrator who wants to learn more about SSO and how it can benefit your organization, this article is definitely worth checking out!
Ruben's Thoughts:
The beauty of the Frame SSO design is that it requires no additional components or administrative configurations beyond enabling the Frame SSO toggle within the dashboard of the Frame accounts. This means that administrators can easily onboard and off-board users from Frame without worrying about additional setup.
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EUC Score Test Results - DaaS Analysis (RDP, FRP) and Thin Clients
This article and a large selection of 'End User Experience' scoring videos do present an analysis of the performance of Desktop as a Service (DaaS) on three major cloud platforms - Azure, Amazon Web Services (AWS), and Google Cloud Platform (GCP), with and without GPU. The remoting protocols used for the analysis were Frame Remoting Protocol (FRP) and Microsoft Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP).
Also, Benny Tritsch used thin client devices with IGEL OS and in some cases compared the results with the reference Windows client NUC2. The test results presented here are a subset of the complete datasets collected during multiple thin client test sequences.
Ruben's Thoughts:
Many customers, partners, and vendors tend to rely solely on telemetry data to identify end-user experience in End User Computing scenarios. While telemetry data can be valuable, it's important to also capture the real user experience and combine it with telemetry data to get a more accurate and comprehensive understanding of the issues. By taking this approach, organizations can gain deeper insights into the root causes of performance issues and develop more effective solutions to address them.
EUC score is able to combine telemetry data and real user experience data and present this in an easy-to-use web player providing unique insights. LoveIT!
Thank you for reading my April 2023 EUC Industry Bento Box! If you have any interesting articles to share, please let me know. Your suggestions may be featured in next month's blog post!
About Frame
Whether you are a large enterprise, SMB, K-12/higher education institution, or service provider, we look forward to helping you and your organization be better prepared for tomorrow's challenges. Are you ready to boost your DaaS energy and better understand what Frame is all about? Check out this 4-minute demo!
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Thanks for reading if you have any questions feel free to contact me!
Ruben Spruijt
Sr. Technologist, Nutanix Frame
About the Author
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Ruben Spruijt© 2024 Dizzion, Inc. All rights reserved. Frame, the Frame logo and all Dizzio product, feature and service names mentioned herein are registered trademarks of Dizzion, Inc. in the United States and other countries. All other brand names mentioned herein are for identification purposes only and may be the trademarks of their respective holder(s). This post may contain links to external websites that are not part of Dizzion. Dizzion does not control these sites and disclaims all responsibility for the content or accuracy of any external site. Our decision to link to an external site should not be considered an endorsement of any content on such a site. Certain information contained in this post may relate to or be based on studies, publications, surveys and other data obtained from third-party sources and our own internal estimates and research. While we believe these third-party studies, publications, surveys and other data are reliable as of the date of this post, they have not independently verified, and we make no representation as to the adequacy, fairness, accuracy, or completeness of any information obtained from third-party sources.