Top provider of user virtualization technology, AppSense, has announced the latest release of the AppSense User Virtualization Platform (UVP), which features significant enhancements aimed at both improving performance and enabling the next generation of user virtualization capabilities.  UVP provides the first complete solution to unlock the user layer, and allow for IT to manage thousands of users as easily as managing a single user instance, while freeing users to work with the devices and applications that permit them to maximize productivity.

This latest development represents an important hike in the world of user-centric computing, and is embraced by leading AppSense partners.  In an era where the workplace is tirelessly being virtualized, consumers drive a great deal of power here, just as they do in social networks and smartphone adoption.  It’s an unstoppable phenomenon, plaguing IT with new devices to embrace, and dominate.  AppSense’s news comes on the same day as Microsoft’s launch of Intune, a remote management system for IT administrators.  Both announcements reveal the swelling push around IT tools, making it easier for them to strike a balance with end users.

In striking that balance, security becomes a major issue.  This is something AppSense also addresses, adding to innovative market solutions such as those offered by Zenprise and LongJump.  Security is a “big part of the product today,” explains Doug Lane, Director of Product Marketing at AppSense.  “Think about traditional PCs at the office.  There’s this age-old tension around to what degree do I have rights on this PC?  It’s either, the user has the keys to the kingdom, or none at all.”

“What we have is the ability to tightly lock down the environment and selectively elevate rights.  They can map printers, change time zone settings, download from trusted websites…with our product, IT can selectively elevate the rights for a user to be productive.”

Here are the new features you’ll find in the updated AppSense UVP:

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• Optimized and modular architecture to speedily add new features, leaving the core technology intact. This also reduces CPU and memory usage.
• New automated actions and conditions to manage triggers around specific files, folders, registry key/values, OS versions, environment variables, and date/time.
• More granular controls over digital certificates and desktop session information, and new management tools for exporting, importing and analysis.
• Improved end-user experience and making user virtualization activities more transparent to users.

This is the first major release since AppSense received a $70 million investment from Goldman Sachs earlier this year, allowing the company to focus on better implementation of its platform, now that it’s been established for a couple of years.  The move will help AppSense grow and expand its share of the cloud virtualization market, a hot topic today thanks to VMware’s vSphere 5 announcement and Citrix’s acquisition of Cloud.com.  Moreover, they created a framework by which new features can be developed, tested and implemented in plug-n-play fashion, enabling features to be released to market in an efficient and timely manner.

Kristen Nicole also contributed to this post.