Thin clients have been around for some time, conceptually great – a lightweight, secure, low maintenance and relatively cheap way to provide an endpoint which will connect to your virtual infrastructure, presenting a desktop or applications to users.
IGEL Technology has been a hardware thin client provider for many years (born out of Germany in 2001), selling some of the best thin clients on the market as well as a simple management platform which is e. Over the years, as trends changed in the hardware and software space and more and more clients moved to software defined platforms, IGEL came to realise the value in their software was significantly more than the traditional thin client upon which, their business was built. This change in paradigm allows for many new opportunities for customers, vendors and partners.
Enter the Edge OS. A next-generation, low-cost, secure, Linux-based operating system and management platform which runs on any x86 hardware and connects to your existing virtual infrastructure providing you flexibility in how you deal with endpoints – click here for a useful overview video.
IGEL & Insentra
Heard of IGEL before, but not seeing much in the way of activity in the local ANZ market or any presence from the vendor? Well, this is about to change in a big way, mostly, because of our unique business model, which allows Insentra, in partnership with distributor Exclusive Networks to represent IGEL and deliver IGEL solutions and services in the ANZ market.
Why IGEL?
Take a look at IGEL’s website here, for more detail!
Simple – Take only minutes to deploy and manage all your endpoints and reduce support tickets by up to 95%
Smart – Onboard new technologies in days, not months and extend equipment life and shift budget to growth by up to 60%.
Secure –Secure your endpoints in minutes, reduce risk with IGEL OS and experience constant security without constant updates.
Defining the IGEL Use cases
Rather than start by defining problems let us instead explore some of the top use cases for IGEL
Use Case #1 Hardware refresh
Historically, hardware refreshes (thin or thick clients) have been expensive and onerous, regardless of promises made by vendors or perfectly planned deployment projects. Hardware becomes obsolete, and sometimes faster than anticipated. IGEL can be used on ANY x86 hardware (with 2GB ram!) which means you can refresh an old desktop fleet just as easily, including any out of support thin clients (some clients have hundreds of these). The requirements are low enough for any computer sold in the last 7 years to be running IGEL OS.
Use Case #2 Feature compatibility
Connecting to virtual infrastructure is one thing, but doing it seamlessly is another. After many years consulting in the virtual desktop, applications, and infrastructure space, Insentra have experienced a significant amount of thin client roll out scenarios with every one having some kind of compatibility issue. Commonly the problems we see are related to printer drivers, unified comms and native, powerful analytics.
Because IGEL has a rich and ever-growing ecosystem of partners, these problems no longer exist. You will see from the summary below, there is significant coverage of ecosystem partners:
Use Case #3 Regular updates
Citrix, Microsoft, VMware, AWS (and most others) are frequently updating their protocols, compatibility and other interesting tidbits for connectivity to their platforms, including security, performance enhancements, compatibility and interoperability with new and emerging technologies.
To keep as far ahead of these updates as possible, IGEL has packaged updates into a quarterly schedule, which includes the latest releases, security fixes and updates from all the vendors. This approach to updates provides choice and allows you to be innovative on what you adopt and use.
While we’re on this topic, you may have seen Microsoft recently announced their partnership with IGEL as the preferred edge OS for WVD, read more here.
Or you can read about the Insentra approach to “Modern Virtual” here.
Use Case #4 Simplicity of management
With IGEL OS you are now converting Windows PC’s, Linux PC’s, old Mac’s, thin clients, POS Terminals and roaming computers on hospital trollies into powerful devices, or you could just boot from a UD Pocket (a USB stick with the IGEL OS on it!). So, the next question becomes, how do you manage all these endpoints?
Enter the IGEL Unified Management Service (UMS). The UMS locates’ IGEL endpoints, deploys policies and profiles, monitors, and manages licensing whilst ensuring endpoints are secure.
Use case #5 Disaster Recovery
Disaster recovery (DR) scenarios are costly, hard to plan and difficult to test. IGEL gives you consistency in your DR environment through provisioning of a bootable thumb drive (called a UD Pocket) as required and connecting to a DR copy of your WVD or another virtual environment. Using a Modern Virtual environment means you can spin up your DR infrastructure using automation and reduce costs whilst not in use.
So, what’s the cost?
IGEL is extremely good value for what it provides. A secure, lightweight, compatible OS which will run on your current fleet and extend its life by many years for a low one-off cost and extremely reasonable yearly maintenance. This license is yours to keep AND, wait for it, moves from hardware to hardware.
This includes the Unified Management Suite (UMS) as part of the license. There is an enterprise management SKU with additional options as well and you can mix and match them depending on your requirements (such as remote endpoints).
The Proof is in the GEL-LO (yes, a stretch)
This really must be seen to be believed, why? Because it is easy to visualise and realise the value. Setting up UMS can be done within an hour (networking not included!) which could include a few endpoints booting IGEL OS so you can see you own hardware working on this new edge OS.
Spinning up a Modern Virtual environment? Then why not spin up an IGEL trial at the same time. Alternatively, visit booth #515 at Microsoft Ignite, Sydney on 13th & 14th Feb and we’ll demo it for you!
Once you have your hands on it, you will want it.
