Unidesk (Discontinued)

Small Company and great support

The product is simple to use, extremely user friendly

Does what it says, truly a great tool for application virtualization.

Ability to launch an application with no underline OS (Just like XenApp)

Takes the complexity out of the virtual desktop development process.

Provides responsive, quality product technical support.

Stays current with competitors in terms of features and standards.

More hands-on support while bringing Unidesk into a new environment would be useful.

More formalized training for those new to the product (I actually believe Unidesk has already developed something to address this).

Creating application layers is easy to do. It's just a matter of installing the applications as you would normally do on a computer.

Unidesk's technology isn't sandbox like VMware's ThinApp technology so it works much better and is more compatible with other software.

The admin console and technology in general is easy to learn for the administrator while it's transparent to the end users.

Layering technologies still presents challenges in general. There are certain applications which are stubborn and do not work as intended so Unidesk keeps a library of "recipes" for many applications where it outlines specific ways or methods to install the applications so that it will work smoothly once it's assigned.

There are limits to the amount of layers that can assigned and the more layers you have, the more complex and more chances of the various layers stepping on each other toes. It may also slow the virtual machines but it's not that noticeable.

An application layer is tied to the OS that it's built from. So if you have two master OS images, you'll need to create separate app layers, one for each master OS, contrary to their claim.

Delivers the majority of applications without issue

Unified console for managing all aspects of Virtual Desktop management

User layer on a persistent desktop provide an easy profile solution

Layers provides the ability to reduce down to 1 Gold Image

No more interacting with Hyper-V, RDS or vCenter

Speeds up application turn around time

I would love if the User Layer persisted on non-persistent desktops

A better experience for the actual assigning of applications and desktops (improvements to the console)

Partner with a vendor that provides a legacy browser solution

I really liked how easy it made it to create application layers.

Unidesk also allow us to created various combinations of software to suit different types of classrooms.

It's software version control made it easy to diagnose compatibility issues.

I would have liked for it to make it easier to work on simultaneous adding software layers.

Support on license/software authentication handling could be nice.

I would have liked a sleeker user interface.

Increased efficiency of existing/new SAN infrastructure.

Prompt and responsive support.

Ease of deployment.

Efficiencies in workflow transparent to the end-user.

Disaster recovery options for the Unidesk solution are not easily accessible or require personalized attention from support.

Issues when creating software layers do not always have a obvious fix. Make sure to look for and follow Unidesk's published "recipes."

The software/OS layering introduced by Unidesk is not "sanctioned" behavior by Microsoft, and thus you're at the mercy of Unidesk's ability to keep up with widespread changes to operating systems.

The various layers of applications allows me to pick and choose who gets what easily. The best part is these layers can be updated and re-assigned across desktops upon reboot.

Occasionally if a desktop is left on for too long some weird things happens. For example, the desktop is no longer recognized in AD - it could be AD, removal, etc., but I have checked all these. Refreshing and restoring the VM seems to solve the problem. This happened more than once.

We have redundancy (two) connection brokers - Unidesk has trouble from time to time knowing which one to use it seems.

The rebuild takes too long when the VM is larger. Users would reboot their desktop as a normal routine and they call to reboot thinking their VD is down when it was just taking its time to rebuild the layers (anywhere from 5 to 15 mins. Mostly 15mins).