Forthright Simplifies Management of Apps with FlexApp for Enterprise.
With over 10,000 users across multiple locations, an enterprise aerospace customer wanted to reduce the need for refreshing global endpoints every 24 months. In addition, it wanted to reduce the significant investment of time and resources to manage an application portfolio with upwards of 2,000 apps. Finally, the customers needed to improve the security of their confidential documents. Ensuring a robust experience and optimum user experience is a tall order for a company with thousands of users leveraging sophisticated engineering and CAD applications with heavy data and graphics consumption.
With an existing Citrix infrastructure in place, the customer wanted to provide users easy access from any device to their portfolio of 2000+ applications, while enhancing the performance of several resource-heavy applications. They needed a way to consolidate the application portfolio in one place, regardless of how users access their apps. Some users used Citrix workspace while others used PCs. With over 2,000 apps, the company’s IT staff utilized a combination of tools including Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM) and Numecent to manage their application portfolio.
The company had already deployed ProfileUnity which integrates FlexApp. After a demonstration of FlexApp One, the customer quickly recognized the ability to deploy FlexApp One packages via other in-house distribution methods, such as SCCM. This opened the door to standardizing management and deployment of applications to all users and all endpoints, globally.
The customer engaged Forthright, a Liquidware Center of Excellence partner and an expert in all things related to end user computing (EUC). Forthright has a solid reputation as a ‘go-to’ partner for their enterprise clients, as well as deep experience with leading technology vendors like Liquidware. Forthright’s focus on providing excellent end user experiences aligns well with Liquidware’s FlexApp application delivery and management platform. Forthright focused on an initial use case of approximately 1,000 users and 60 apps as an ideal PoC environment in a short timeframe.
Forthright built out the FlexApp environment, including the automation packaging system, with custom PowerShell scripts to enable them to run the 2,000 apps through it and to determine which apps passed and which failed. The Forthright team then packaged dozens of applications to establish an effective process for this environment. This effort allowed them to create a 30-page Application Lifecycle and Management procedure document that included verification steps and change controls, providing a valuable blueprint for the customer.
