Application Virtualization - The Future of The University Desktop

Deploying and distributing software to students is challenging for universities and colleges. How do you get the right apps to the right users at the right time? Step in application virtualization technology, the future of the university desktop.

Application Virtualization; The Future of The University Desktop - Video Transcription

Software application deployment is challenging for higher education institutions. How do you get the right software applications to the right users at the right time? In the corporate world, it’s pretty straightforward. Users typically access the same handful of applications on the same machine, day in and day out. But in the academic world, IT professionals are tasked with delivering sometimes hundreds of applications to potentially thousands of machines to tens of thousands of users. And on top of that the user base changes every year, if not every term.

Many institutions struggle with supporting a mobile user base who needs access to software applications in labs, classrooms, libraries, dorms, etc. Traditional methods of deploying applications are time-consuming and resource intensive. Supporting the desktop environment can be very intensive. In a lot of institutions, we found students are limited to using certain dedicated machines for specific applications since these machines are the only ones with the software that the students need, delivering a poor student IT experience.

Some institutions try to solve these issues by installing every application a student would need on every machine. Building, deploying, and maintaining these huge desktop images is time-consuming, inefficient, and lack the flexibility the IT departments really need. Others use legacy application tools like ThinApp and App-V, which attempt to deliver applications to users, but that struggle with or flat out cannot deliver. Over 40% of applications and it’s usually he applications that are most arduous to deliver that these tools fail to deliver with, like SolidWorks, SPSS, and MATLAB.

Other universities have turned to virtual desktop technology to deliver their software applications. What many of these organizations are now realizing is that VDI technology is a very expensive solution for what should be a simple problem. Besides the significant investment and infrastructure in licensing costs, most VDI technology still cannot easily deliver high performance applications like Autocat and multimedia.

What universities need is a way to deliver all of their software applications to users on demand when and where the applications are needed, but without the need to install them locally and without expensive infrastructure and licensing required for VDI technology. To solve the problems faced by university, AppsAnywhere uses a range of solutions that improve the student experience by providing a university appstore for quick and easy access to software, providing a range of management dashboards to reduce license expenditure by on average 25%, by reducing packing time and image size by over 75%, delivering any Windows application to any device, anywhere, anytime, improving the application performance for students and staff, as the software acts as if it’s installed locally. No installation required, no performance issues, no bandwidth issues, just superior user experience.

To learn more about this exciting technology and how it’s helping institutions deliver software applications on demand efficiently and cost-effectively, contact AppsAnywhere.