The E2EVC – Experts to Experts Virtualisation Congress (Epic edition) Amsterdam took place from Friday the 8th till Sunday the 10th. For those of you who are not familiar with the concept of E2EVC, go here– you’re missing out if you don’t. The following are a few notes from sessions I attended and people I spoke to. I’ve also included a few images here and there.
The event kicked off on Friday morning around 10 (ish). I wasn’t there myself as I still had some work-related things to take care of first. I arrived just before lunch and was able to catch a glimpse of the Parallels RAS session. Unfortunately, I missed about half – I’ll make sure to catch the recording once available.
VR, AI, and mixed reality
During the Lunch, Munch and Learn session Thomas Poppelgaard took the stage to educate us on all things VR, AI, and mixed reality. For someone who hasn’t done much in this space, I found it to be a very informative session. Thomas showed us the various types of VR and AI sets, new and existing ones, including some of their main pros and cons.
He walked us through some specific use-cases and challenges like security and mobility and shared a few demos of ‘desktop on glass’ where, as the title implies, you have a fully functional desktop on one of the glasses of your glasses, which you can operate while sitting, walking etc. Cool technology and looks awesome, but also very impractical, perhaps dangerous even, in some cases, if you ask me. At least in this form.
Near the end of his session he brought out the first-ever, AI-powered drone, which he used to make a group selfie, see image/tweet below. Good session, he knows his stuff. And I’m not sure if anyone noticed, but he does a great Arnold Schwarzenegger imitation, I LoL’d.
Liquidware
After lunch, it was time for Liquidware. Their session was supposed to take place on Saturday morning, but hey, it’s E2E – anything can happen! David Bieneman (CEO of Liquidware) flew in from the US to personally share with us some of the things they have been working on throughout the last couple of months, another industry first included. After sharing Liquidware’s vision and strategy, he went on to tell and show us some of the innovative steps they’ve taken around UEM and application layering.
Liquidware is able to directly store user persona data (profiles), policy data (Netlogon), and application layers (VHD’s) using their FlexApp technology, on any of the three major cloud storage platforms (Azure, AWS and Google), without the need for any SMB type file servers whatsoever – powered by ProfileUnity.
It offers full portability and compatibility between your on-premises infrastructure and any type of cloud environment you might have. They found clever ways to interact and community with the various, block-based, cloud storage platforms through API’s making all this possible. By the way, this also includes user data/cloud storage like Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive, Amazon Workdocs, etc. I spoke to David afterwards, and I can tell you, more is coming – soon!
To prove this isn’t fiction, he showed us a (recorded) demo of all this in action, see the movie clip below.
Automation
The session was named ‘Heavy Duty Automation’ and was presented by Chris and Rob. I’ve worked with Chris (Twiest) in the past and I know first-hand how passionate he can be when it comes to automation, scripting, and such. Even though it was Chris’s first ever presentation in front of an international audience, I don’t think anyone noticed. He was relaxed and played it cool. As did, Rob, of course. Most of us know Rob (de Korte) as one the E2E grandfathers – he’s been to 19 other E2EVC events – and has presented numerous sessions in the past.
They both walked us through a couple of specific customer use-cases (without naming customers, by the way) where automation, in multiple ways, was key. Chris also shared some of his ideas around vDisk creation/automation, as well as MCS in Azure. A fun session, there was some good synergy between them.
VMware State of the EUC Union
Presented by the VP/CTO of the VMware End-User Computing group, Shawn Bass. A sponsored session, though, it never felt that way. The day before, Shawn got stuck in London (his session was supposed to be a day earlier), because of a huge fire in his hotel – luckily everyone made it out safely. He briefly shared what happened and that the whole situation was handled very professionally – by rescue workers, police and fireman at the scene, including the hotel who took good care of their guests and luggage.
Foto credits to Orla Cooper
He went on with ‘why do you get up’ (in the morning) explaining how VMware technology supports various governmental organizations (no names mentioned) helping them to be more efficient in serving the public community in more ways than one – it truly makes a difference.
Most of us know Shawn as someone who talks fast and can easily get 90 minutes of content into a 45-minute session, today was no different. Seemingly effortless he brought us up to speed on everything VMware is, and has been doing throughout the last year and a half, or so, including vision, strategy, and personal thoughts. Informative, to say the least.
RES being acquired by Ivanti
They (Rob and Arjan) interactively discussed the RES acquisition by Ivanti, how this affects existing customers, some of the rumors going around, alternatives, and so on. Rob (self-employed) is historically known as an RES fanboy (and I don’t mean that in a negative way), though he always speaks his mind. Arjan (owner of R2DTOP) has over 30 years of experience in the field and has worked with all kinds and types of UEM products throughout his career.
The first 20 minutes were spent on why existing customers are slowly dropping out (not renewing), and if, given its current state it is wise to purchase Workspace Control (former RES), at all. The lack of vision, a roadmap, new features, the product being in maintenance mode, a potential forced, and far from ideal upgrade to UWM (AppSense) and an end of life data (supposably) on its way, combined with mixed messages from the companies itself – to customers and partners – have created a negative image/reputation.
There were plenty who had an opinion and weren’t shy to share. Finally, after discussing the potential end of life date coming up, they reviled that Ivanti will announce a so-called Long-Term Maintenance Release (LTMR) for the upcoming three years – see image below. To be honest, I can see how this may help existing customers getting some reassurance, so they might (re) consider renewing for another year, maybe two, however, as someone who is looking to invest in a future-ready (and steady) EUM platform, Workspace Control would probably not be high on my list.
Citrix App Layering
Presented by Jack Cobben, Technical Relationship Manager at Citrix. Even though I’ve seen Jack on multiple occasions in the past, afterward I learned that this was his first ever presentation at an E2EVC event, something I didn’t realize before – Job well done, Jack!
Jack walked us through the various steps needed to set up and configure App Layering directly from the Citrix Cloud, including a live demo where he also used his own XenServer home-lab. Citrix App Layering does not have the best reputation when it comes to speed, flexibility and making things ‘easy’ for its end-users, the administrators in this case. There were some tough questions/remarks from the audience, but Jack (with a little backup from his college in the audience – Martijn van Willigen) managed to stand his ground.
He finished up with a few tips and best practices on troubleshooting various App Layering scenarios, one of which is shown below.
Fslogix
I partly missed Christiaan’s session on Azure migrations.
What does that have anything to do with Fslogix, you ask? Well, by now you may have heard that Christiaan Brinkhoff has joined the team of Fslogix. Something he announced at the beginning of his session, as I found out later – congratulation, again! Shortly after, I joined Benny and Jim on their session about Cloud Cache, including a brief overview of the rest of their portfolio.
Cloud Cache builds upon profile and office 365 containers, two of their existing solutions. Data can be stored in multiple locations, including local device, traditional SMB shares on-premises and public cloud storage (no SMB infrastructure needed – smart interactions with cloud-based storage REST API’s make most of this magic happen). Currently, this technology is in tech preview and will go ‘GA’ in a couple of weeks’ time, according to the presenters.
Limited functionality (one storage location, combined with local cache) will be made available to existing customers (profile and office 365 containers), while multiple storage locations will become available at additional costs. Of course, this is all still subject to change. Also, Azure cloud-based block storage will be first on the list (once GA), with S3 (AWS) coming shortly after.
Benny and Jim always deliver a good show. Informative and enjoyable at the same time.
What else?
- In my opinion, the Volkshotel is one of the best venues (not hotel) we’ve had up till now, though I can only judge from my last 10 visits, of course. I really liked the atmosphere, the location, the spaces available, the bar, rooftop terrace, the bench outside, the ability to take drinks with you, etc. Perhaps the room (or dungeon) below floors wasn’t the best choice. Come to think of it, the room on the 7th floor was also kinda warm at times.
- The next E2EVC conference will be in Athens, Greece – November 2-4. Tickets are available now. Keep an eye on E2EVC on Twitter and e2evc.com for the latest information on tickets and the event agenda. I won’t be joining myself. My girlfriend is pregnant and will (hopefully) deliver our first child a couple of weeks later – I’m not taking any chances :)
- This was my 10thE2EVC in only four short years, wow!
- For me, next to the content delivered, talking to and learning from other/peers is the best thing about these events. This edition was no exception. Solid sessions and I had a great time seeing and talking to everyone.
- There were far more sessions I wanted to attend. In the end, it’s always hard to find a (healthy) balance. I mean, it can be pretty intense. The people, tons of information to digest, and the beers, oh my, the beers (Ronnie knows what I’m talking about here). Long days, and even longer nights (for some). Therefore, I will make sure to check out the E2EVC YouTube channel once all presentations have been uploaded.
- The canal cruise was fun. Even though I’m Dutch and live about 25 minutes by car from Amsterdam, I’ve never done one before.
Did you attend? How was your experience? Anything to add?
One response to “E2EVC (Epic edition) Amsterdam is a wrap – notes, announcements, video’s & photo’s”
[…] A bit more detailed encounter of sessions you can find in post by Bas van Kaan –> E2EVC (Epic edition) Amsterdam is a wrap – notes, announcements, video’s & photo’s […]