Application streaming

May 16, 2008, 10:43am PDT | Length: 00:03:12

Sponsored: Updating applications can be time-consuming for both users and administrators. Christian Black, an IT systems engineer at Intel, explains why application streaming is a better way to deliver software.

The content for this video was sponsored and provided by Intel.

Transcript

Application streaming

Christian Black: Hi. I'm Christian Black with Intel IT. And I've been working with virtualization over the course of the last few years, and today I'd like to talk to you about a form of virtualization we call Application Streaming.

Typically, we install applications on a user's PC using either a CD ROM or a shared drive, and we install them directly into the user's PC in their hard drive.

This takes a lot of time, not only for the administrator and interrupted work for the user, but it also requires that you patch each machine and keep each machine updated.

There's a better way to do this, a better delivery system for your applications. And that better way we call Application Streaming.

So what is Application Streaming? So, App Streaming is where we take an application and we wrap it up in a nice deep little package. And then we place that package out on a portal on the web. Now, this portal can be either on the Internet or Intranet, depending on what the company wants.

So when a user needs an application, Office, Adobe, or some other product, they head to their portal and they start downloading their app after clicking on it. So the app starts to download in the background.

And the great part about this is that once enough bits have gotten down to the client for that application to function, they can start working, and they can work with the rest of the application downloading in the background.

By the time they finish with that first Word document or PDF, the application's completely installed and they only had to wait one or two minutes for the whole thing to appear.

So App Streaming is efficient, it's a good way to deliver apps, but it has a number of other benefits. These benefits include centralized versioning, centralized updates, authorization tracking so you know who's downloading the apps and when, centralized license tracking, so that you can keep track of how many licenses you need and how many licenses your users will need in the future.

In addition to those benefits, users can either work connected or disconnected, depending upon the type of machine they have.

And for you administrators out there, instant uninstalls with no residue on the PC left over. No stray dll s, and no stray program files.

That's Application Streaming in a nutshell. A better way to deliver software to your end users.

For more information about Application Streaming, please visit the Intel Premiere IT Professional website, and check out the white papers.