Endeavors Technologies Launches Application Jukebox

Endeavors Technologies recently released Application Jukebox, an interesting take on application virtualization and management of those virtualized applications. Application Jukebox is meant to address the growing need for people to be able to access just about any application, on just about any intelligent device, while still allowing the organization the ability to have fine-grain management control of the whole process. Here's what the company has to say about their new product:

Announcement Highlights

Endeavors Technologies Inc, the pioneer in application streaming and virtualization technology, today introduced Application Jukebox, its next-generation application streaming and virtualization family of products. The unique configurable virtualization feature in Application Jukebox allows streamed applications to run on the client in fully isolated (sandboxed) mode, fully integrated mode, or any combination between the two.

Application Jukebox is initially available in three versions to meet differing market needs. Application Jukebox Lite Edition is a free, fully functional version supporting one server that allows administrators and ISVs to evaluate the product and discover the ease of creating and managing streamable versions of existing applications. Application Jukebox SaaS Edition includes metering and a kiosk mode to support a pay-as-you-go, application rental model, its customizable portals create an easy-to-use environment for OEMs or ISVs to build a unique application access landing site. Application Jukebox Enterprise Edition adds Active Directory support, and includes user and group monitoring, plus extensive tracking and support to cost-effectively streamline license management.

Application Jukebox products contain three key components. Application Jukebox Player sits on the client to create the virtual application environment and provides user authentication and application license enforcement. Application Jukebox Server controls and delivers applications, provides usage monitoring and logging, plus group, user and application level administration. Application Jukebox Studio allows ISVs and IT administrators to create a streamable, virtualized “appset” from standard, Windows-based applications that is then published to the server.

Snapshot Analysis Increasingly people want and expect to be able to get to their applications and data from anywhere, using their favorite device. While this sounds like a simple requirement, trying to fullfill their wish leads the IT organization into a maze of challenges.

• Mobile devices often run a different operating system and is based upon a different microprocessor architecture than those found in most laptop and desktop computers. Moving applications from one environment to the other can seem to be an impossible task.
• Although a single person may be accessing the applications from his/her mobile device, laptop, desktop and even a kiosk at a hotel, suppliers expect the organization to pay a license fee for each and every instance of the application. In this scenario, the organization would be expected to pay 4 times for the same application.
• Most IT organizations are still grappling with managing all of these different environments. Rather than facing down mobile staff who need all of these different modes of computing, many IT organizations are simply ignoring the mobile environment.
• Security issues can be compounded by all of these different modes of access.

Some organizations attempted to address this issue by using an access virtualization solution, such as those offered by Citrix, Microsoft and several others. While this approach seemed a promising solution, it didn't deal with the fact that staff are often out of contact with a high speed network and must still be able to access their applications and data. This lead many organizations to simply provide laptops to everyone and deal with the large issues of management, license costs and security. Endeavors is bringing something to the market that could change these dynamics.

Endeavors' Application Jukebox can encapsulate applications and stream images to many different types of devices based upon a number of policy and security parameters. At this point, Microsoft Windows is the operating system being supported at each end of this communication like. If we add a touch of virtual machine software to the mix, I could envision Endeavors being able to extend this approach to include Windows Mobile, PalmOS, Symbian, MacOS and many other operating environments.

This is an interesting approach and worth a second look.