Sean's Virtual Desktop

Liquidware Labs Profile Unity 6.5 Beta Heats Up Application Layering Landscape

New features help it compete more directly with Horizon View.

• By Sean Massey
• 05/13/2015

Last week, Liquidware Labs released the first beta of the next version of their ProfileUnity product. ProfileUnity is a user environment management tool that also includes application layering functionality through FlexApp.

The beta version includes a number of new features, including:

• An updated ProfileUnity client to run things at a system level
• Web management UI
• Improved isolation for Registry keys
• Profile directories to enhance portability
• The ability to capture additional user files and settings such as custom fonts, NUMLOCK status, and files not located on the C: drive. 

ProfileUnity 6.5 will also support high availability through MongoDB and RabbitMQ to enable multiple ProU servers to communicate with each other.

The biggest slate of improvements have come in FlexApp. ProfileUnity 6.5 will include FlexApp 2.0.  Liquidware has made significant improvements to FlexApp for this release. Some of the new features include VMDK support so FlexApp layers can be stored on VMFS volumes; a new profile disk that allows user profiles to be redirected to VMDKs or VHD files; and a new Horizon View plugin to provide better integration with Horizon View desktop environments.

Overall, I think the upcoming version of ProfileUnity will be great for customers. Liquidware has added a number of features that enable them to compete directly with VMware’s AppVolumes and UEM products, and they offer a compelling alternative to the Horizon Application Management Bundle for customers running Citrix or Microsoft-based VDI environments. They have also enhanced their integration with Horizon View, and provide a good alternative to customers who choose to opt-out of the Horizon Suite Enterprise licensing bundle.