AppSense Strata will give users flexibility within managed environments

Stephen Withers
Thursday, 09 September 2010 16:24

Business IT - Technology

Struggling to balance the desire for a managed computing environment with users' need for flexibility and agility? AppSense thinks it may have the answer in the form of a forthcoming product called Strata.

AppSense Strata is designed to allow user-installed applications in an otherwise managed environment. Simon Rust, the company's CTO, explained that the AppSense has been working on the project for four and a half years.

The type of scenario it is designed to address is where an organisation has standardised on WebEx for web conferencing, but a member of staff has been invited to an event that will use Microsoft's Live Meeting. These days, users expect to be able to install software "like they can do at home" said Rust, but system administrators need to avoid completely open slather.

AppSense Strata detects when an installer is run, and redirects the resulting files and registry entries to a local cache and to a network share. As far as Windows is concerned, the software has installed normally, but no changes have actually been made to the system image associated with the user.

Next time the user signs in, the software is automatically inserted into their environment.

Strata is said to be compatible with Microsoft's System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM).

When will Strata be available? See page 2.