News
Symantec Releases Endpoint Virtualization Suite
Helps IT departments provision applications and workspace components to endpoints
Symantec Corp. has released Symantec Endpoint Virtualization Suite with features that improve end-user productivity and reduce endpoint device management costs. By offering portable, on-demand user workspace management, Symantec Endpoint Virtualization Suite creates and manages workspace components and environments in a variety of computing models: traditional, virtual, and mixed client.
The product customers to provision traditional endpoints as well as full virtual endpoint workspaces using “standards that are hypervisor-, operating system-, and hardware platform-agnostic,” according to Symantec. It supports a variety of end-user environments (such as server-based computing, virtual-hosted desktops, and client-side hypervisors) and integrates integrates with several endpoint virtualization technologies by incorporating technology from its acquisitions of AppStream and nSuite. By separating information from the underlying IT infrastructure, IT can more easily manage information and control it automatically.
“Endpoint virtualization allows us to put end-user productivity at the center of the IT process,” said Ken Berryman, senior vice president, strategy and emerging business, Symantec, in a statement. “By decoupling the user experience from the computing environment, we help make users immediately productive over the full range of endpoint technologies, thus allowing businesses to make the best use of their existing resources and reduce IT costs.”
The company says it is “changing the way software is managed, delivered, and consumed at the endpoint, enabling user-based workspace management by offering an endpoint virtualization solution that includes application virtualization, streaming, resource brokerage technologies and new workspace profile management.”
The company’s cross-platform approach provides integrated endpoint security, management, and virtualization using its Open Collaborative Architecture that uses open, standards-based set of technologies to work with Symantec and third-party products.
Among the components is Symantec Workspace Streaming for on-demand application streaming. It also optimizes software delivery and simplified license management. Symantec claims it is “the only product of its kind that allows customers to use their industry standard MSI (Windows Installer) packages without repackaging, maintaining the MSI logic through deployment.”
Another component, Symantec Workspace Virtualization (previously known as Altiris Software Virtualization Solution) improves application stability and interoperability wherever an application is delivered and eliminates eliminates application conflict, which will reduce time and resource costs when testing interoperability. It supports multiple concurrent users working with virtualized applications running on Terminal Server and Citrix, and virtualized applications can be customized easily for each user on the system.
The last two components, Symantec Workspace Corporate and Symantec Workspace Remote, provide portable user workspace management, “dynamically allocating traditional and virtual computing resources from one or many vendors to a user or endpoint, regardless of device.” These components “combine local and remote applications into a single workspace that maintains context as the user moves from machine to machine, or various workspace types, with local printing management and single sign-on.”
A component to be offered in April, Symantec Workspace Profiles, promises to provide mobile personality capabilities that will log configuration changes in a central repository, giving users a consistent experience no matter what environment they’re working with.
Symantec Endpoint Virtualization Suite is offered in several licensing and configuration configurations. More information is available at http://www.symantec.com/business/endpoint-virtualization-suite.