In-Depth

Recap of EUC World Amplify 2025

• By Tom Fenton
• 09/04/2025

After having a great first couple of days at EUC World's annual conference, Amplify, I was excited for the final day, as it was scheduled to be an unconference. In fact, in my original post on Amplify, I mentioned that you would not want to miss this day.

Day Four (Conference Day Three): Unconference Dynamics and Global Horizons
The final day of Amplify adopted an unconference format, allowing participants to set the agenda in real time. This structure encouraged open dialogue, candid exchanges, and collaborative problem-solving that might not have surfaced in more formal settings.

On the third morning, a list of scheduled sessions was provided. The morning sessions included the App Layering Panel, Building Your Brand, and Image Build Best Practices. The mid-morning sessions: Where to Start Automation, Hypervisor Party, and VDI Protocol Battle. This is what I love about the unconference format: the topics were diverse--spanning technical deep dives, strategic planning, and community-driven initiatives--but what united them was the sense of shared ownership in shaping the EUC field's direction.

App Layering Panel
The morning session I attended was on application packaging, an area where my experience is limited; I felt this session would be a valuable learning opportunity. Rather than a traditional presentation from a single vendor or point of view, it took the form of a panel discussion featuring three industry experts who focused on modern strategies for application packaging, management, and delivery. The conversation centered on technologies such as App-V, MSIX, App Volumes, and FlexApp, each offering different approaches to enterprise-grade application deployment.

The panelists underscored how quickly the application packaging landscape is changing, particularly as Microsoft moves away from App-V in favor of MSIX and organizations grapple with legacy applications that are difficult to modernize. They stressed the growing importance of automation to accelerate packaging workflows, improve consistency, and boost compatibility across a broad range of applications. A key takeaway was the need for deployment flexibility, whether delivering apps to on-premises, cloud, or physical desktop environments. One recurring theme was the inherent difficulty in standardizing how applications behave, primarily due to developers adopting different methods for handling data. As a result, the panel agreed that no single packaging or delivery technology can meet 100% of enterprise application deployment scenarios.

Hypervisor Party
This was the most thought-provoking and impactful session I attended, as everyone in the room shared their experiences. It also reinforced the value of truly vendor-agnostic events where participants feel comfortable speaking honestly and openly about both the positives and pain points they're experiencing.

Much of the session centered on the disruption resulting from VMware's move away from traditional perpetual licensing toward bundled subscription models. Even though some attendees said their costs hadn't increased--or had even gone down--most voiced concern about pricing unpredictability and the lack of flexibility these changes impose. Interestingly, the technology itself hasn't changed that much, yet the updated business model is forcing organizations to re-evaluate their long-term strategies. As a result, many are actively considering exit options, looking at competing virtualization platforms, or accelerating cloud migrations. The consensus was that any such move would require comprehensive testing, careful planning, and a strong understanding of application compatibility. One critical aspect that emerged from the conversation--and one I hadn't fully appreciated until now--is the role of solid backup and disaster recovery integration when contemplating any major platform transformation.

The session also featured a lively debate around what "modernization" truly means in IT. Participants noted that many companies are drawn to container-centric, highly automated architectures inspired by hyperscalers like Google, but often underestimate the complexity involved in achieving this. This disconnect leads to frustration and disappointment when trying to move away from legacy systems or adopt open-source solutions. Another point that resonated with many in the room was the challenge of replacing aging but still-functional hardware. Whether due to high costs, system dependencies, or a "if it still works, don't touch it" mindset, organizations often continue running equipment that's decades old, even when it becomes a bottleneck for innovation. The conversation ended with a balanced look at the trade-offs between open-source solutions--such as KVM-based hypervisors and Linux distributions--and more traditional enterprise platforms, weighing the freedom and cost savings of open-source against the predictability and support of commercial offerings.

Hallway Discussions
Throughout the event, I had the opportunity to have many hallway discussions. They were all great and informative, but a few stood out to me.

While chatting with Michael Hopfinger, SVP, Global Sales of Parallels, he mentioned the growth that Parallels RAS (remote application server), a virtual application and desktop delivery solution, is seeing, especially in the health care sector.... Nerdio is one of the hottest technologies in the EUC space and just got round C funding. I had a chance to chat with Ben Murphy, Senior Director of Alliance Management at Nerdio, about Nerdio's success with helping their customers deploy and manage Microsoft Cloud technologies from a single, secure platform. One thing that he is excited about is AVD on Azure Local.

I am a huge fan of Dizzion's EUC Hexagrid, and I had the opportunity to talk to Ruben Sprujit more about it and Dizzion Core Max-GPU Cloud PC offering. This thing is a beast built for designers, engineers, AI/ML developers, content creators, and visualization pros. It has 16 vCPU, 64 GB RAM, and a Nvidia Tesla T4 with 16GB Dedicated GPU. I can imagine many workloads that it couldn't handle.

I recently wrote about ChromeOS Flex and was glad to see Google had a booth at Amplify, staffed by some of the people behind it. After a quick discussion of it, I chatted with Robb Henshaw, former Co-Founder & CMO at Cameyo. Cameyo is a very interesting application development mechanism that I want to spend more time looking into.

Among the various products and technologies presented at Amplify, IGEL's managed hypervisor stood out as being the most innovative and exciting. As I chatted with the IGEL folks and explored this technology further, my interest in its capabilities grew. I look forward to observing IGEL's future developments and its implementation of this solution.

I do need to mention what a small world the EUC community is. Just by happenstance, when I sat down at a random table, I started to ask, as I am apt to do, where everyone was from, I found out that everyone at the table were from my part of the country, the Pacific Northwest, and we had just met up a couple of months ago! So, I need to give a shout-out to the PNW Contingent who showed up at Amplify.

The Venue
I usually only mention the venue and location of a conference in passing, but I truly enjoyed my stay in Minneapolis. Yes, the flight to and from it was limited compared to Vegas or other larger cities. Still, once I arrived, I found I was able to hop on public transportation and arrive at the University of Minnesota in 35 minutes, for $2!

The campus was beautiful, and the center where Amplify was held was a two-minute walk from the hotel where we were staying.

One of the culinary delights that Minneapolis is known for is the "Jucy Lucy," a hamburger with cheese on the inside. There is some debate about where it was invented, but I went to Matt's Bar to enjoy mine.

My accommodations at the Graduate Hotel were equally distinctive. The hotel's design incorporated numerous campus-themed elements: guest room key cards replicated University of Minnesota alumni IDs (including those of Prince and Mary Tyler Moore), a lamp inspired by Little Red Corvette, and artwork celebrating local icons such as Loni Anderson.

Final Thoughts
EUC World Amplify 2025 was more than a series of presentations--it was a dynamic exchange of ideas, strategies, and experiences that reflected the evolving realities of the EUC industry. The event underscored the importance of platform flexibility and vendor neutrality in the face of continued market consolidation, the rapid progression of AI from concept to practical tool within VDI and workspace management, and the growing reliance on structured models like the EUC Hexagrid to help navigate an increasingly complex vendor landscape. Attendees shared real-world guidance on automation and operational best practices, engaged in candid, community-led conversations about vendor relationships and market changes. They emphasized that future EUC strategies must incorporate sustainability, zero-trust security, and predictable cost structures. There was also an evident appreciation for informal, collaborative formats--such as unconferences--which often proved more effective in generating insights than traditional conference sessions.

One particularly exciting development mentioned on the final day was the possible expansion of Amplify to Melbourne, Australia--an indication of both the event's growing global relevance and the demand for truly vendor-neutral forums in the EUC space.

I left the conference both intellectually stimulated and professionally energized, with a deeper understanding of the forces shaping EUC and a clearer sense of the opportunities that lie ahead. For those who couldn't attend, the conversations, connections, and forward-looking perspectives offered at EUC World Amplify 2025 are difficult to replicate--but their influence is sure to be felt across the industry in the months and years to come.