Global Insurance Company Replaces App-V with FlexApp
One of the world’s largest insurance companies, with some 170,000 employees and dozens of affiliates with their own IT facilities, has a rather complex IT landscape. This also applies to the workspace infrastructure. To improve efficiency, the organization set up a virtual desktop environment for its internal employees and affiliate companies. However, application management remained complex because several applications could not be virtualized, and additional images were needed to deliver these applications. Reducing the number of golden images, ensuring security and future-proofing application management, were the main reasons to start working with Liquidware FlexAppTM Application Portability.
The company started looking at alternatives to App-V and tested several solutions extensively. In the end but kept running into the same two limitations: either the product was very complex, or the compatibility was insufficient. Because the company had two fairly large packaging teams, they wanted a solution that was easy to deploy and use without specialized knowledge. They found these advantages in Liquidware FlexApp. Workers used very complex applications, including risk analysis, which fell outside of App-V’s capabilities and therefore had to be installed manually – a time consuming process.
These applications have now been successfully converted to ‘FlexApps’ and can be delivered and updated quickly and efficiently. Applications now work independently of the backend so no complex infrastructure is needed that would require maintenance. IT staff can also use the same solution and packages for both virtual and physical mobile workspaces, both online and offline.”
The insurance company has chosen to onboard all applications to FlexApp step by step. Every time an “old” application needs to be updated; they immediately turn it into a FlexApp application. One issue that they are encountering is that the App-V packages are manually scripted, so they need to be converted to prep them for FlexApp. The goal is to eventually onboard as many applications as possible and reduce the number of images by 75%. The company plans to use the automation module in FlexApp in future to speed up the transition.
