We would like to invite you to the upcoming live webinar “The 7 Secrets to Performance Management of Virtualized Environments (Desktop | Applications | Cloud)“ with virtualization expert Dave Bartoletti (Forrester Research) on May 29 @ 2:00 pm ET | 1:00 pm CT | 11 am PT (Register now).

Whether you virtualize desktops or critical business applications, the dynamics and complexities of virtualized environments can cause significant performance and user experience issues that can diminish the benefits of virtualization and risk interruption of critical business processes. The toughest performance problems are the ones where users call and complain that “my application is slow”. IT administrators often struggle to determine the root-cause of the problem and restore service levels: Is it the application server? The virtualization layer? Is it the network? Database? Storage …?

Join our live webinar with virtualization experts Dave Bartoletti (Forrester Research) and Srinivas Ramanathan (eG Innovations), and find out how to deliver:

• Reliable performance assurance and user satisfaction
• Complete performance visibility across your virtualized environment
• Automatic, rapid root cause diagnosis for even the most complex performance problems
• Pre-emptive problem detection and alerting before users call
• Rapid ROI through right-sizing and optimization

WEBINAR DETAILS

Webinar title: “The 7 Secrets to Performance Management of Virtualized Environments (Desktop | Applications | Cloud)”
Date & Time: May 29 @ 2:00 pm ET | 1:00 pm CT | 11 am PT | 7:00 pm UK
Presenters: Dave Bartoletti (Senior Analyst, Forrester Research) | Srinivas Ramanathan (CEO, eG Innovations)
Register now: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/972927160

We look forward to seeing you at the webinar!

Join us at Citrix Synergy in Anaheim and learn how to become a Citrix performance hero at the eG Innovations Booth # 417.

“Users don’t know or care about servers, applications or network devices, they just care about the speed of their desktop and they won’t tolerate a slow system,” said Srinivas Ramanathan, CEO , eG Innovations. “When a user calls and complains about service performance, it is often difficult and very time consuming to pinpoint the root cause of the problem. When an IT administrator solves the problem, he or she becomes a performance hero.”

At Citrix Synergy, eG Innovations will showcase its award-winning flagship product eG Enterprise, which provides unprecedented performance visibility, automated cross-silo correlation and diagnosis, pre-emptive problem alerting, and predictive analytics to accelerate performance diagnosis, reduce operational cost, deliver user satisfaction and unlock the potential of virtual, cloud and physical IT environments.

Join eG Innovations at Booth # 417 to learn how eG Enterprise can enable your IT team to become Citrix performance heroes.

Start with a free performance assessment (contact us at marketing@eginnovations.com for more details):

• Get complete 360 visibility across every layer, every tier of a business service
• Identify performance bottlenecks and enhance ROI
• Baseline density, demand, usage and infrastructure metrics
• Get detailed performance reports and uncover ways to bolster user satisfaction

We look forward to seeing you at Synergy!

We would like to invite you to the upcoming webinar “Achieving Virtual Desktop Success in Healthcare“.  Experts in healthcare IT will discuss the ways you can accelerate virtualized desktop adoption, speed clinician access to Electronic Health Records (EHR), and enhance desktop performance and user experience. Delivering compliant and high performing clinician workspaces depends on creating a consistent desktop experience and remediating bottlenecks that impact performance and user productivity.

This webinar will show you how to deliver “lean” clinician workspaces and assure high levels of user satisfaction:

• Best practices to leverage and pitfalls to avoid when deploying VDI in a hospital
• Architect a virtual workspace that meets your organization’s requirements
• Gain total performance visibility of all IT domains to improve user experience
• Preemptively detect and resolve issues before users are effected
• Optimize current infrastructure usage

WEBINAR DETAILS

Title: “Virtual Desktop Success in Healthcare: Achieve High Performing, Consistent and Compliant Clinician Desktops”

Presenters:
Brian Diamond, CEO, LANStatus
Sean Donahue, Sr. Director Alliances, RES Software
Krish Chandra, Director Solutions Engineering, eG Innovations

Date and Time:
Thursday, May 9, 2013: 11am US PDT | 1PM CDT | 2pm US EDT

Registration Details:
https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/414101408

We look forward to seeing you at the live webinar!

We would like to invite you to the webinar “Citrix XenServer Success – Assuring Peak Performance of Critical Business Applications Virtualized on Citrix XenServer” on May 2 @ 11 am ET / 4 pm UK. Join Citrix and eG Innovations and learn how achieve the highest levels of performance, user satisfaction, and hardware utilization for applications and desktops running in a XenServer environment. Register now: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/399137104

This webinar will show you how to virtualize applications on XenServer in complex IT environments and how to assure the environment performs flawlessly and in concert with the rest of the IT infrastructure.

• Pitfalls to avoid and best practices to leverage when virtualizing applications and desktops
• Achieve performance assurance on XenServer
• The value of end-to-end IT visibility and how to address how different hosts react
• How to preemptively pinpoint and resolve issues before users are effected
• Optimize current infrastructure utilization

WEBINAR DETAILS

Date: May 2, 2013
Time: 11:00 AM ET | 12:00 PM CT | 2:00 PM PT | 4:00 PM UK
Presenters: Mike Bursell, Senior Product Manager, Citrix XenServer  |  Bala Murugan Vaidhinathan, Chief Technology Officer, eG Innovations

Register Now: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/399137104

We look forward to seeing you at the webinar!

The leading Virtualization resource site, VirtualizationAdmin.com selected eG Innovations first runner-up in the Monitoring, Management and Performance category of the VirtualizationAdmin.com Readers’ Choice Awards.

“Our Readers’ Choice Awards give visitors to our site the opportunity to vote for the products they view as the very best in their respective category,” said Sean Buttigieg, VirtualizationAdmin.com manager. “VirtualizationAdmin.com users are specialists in their field who encounter various solutions for virtualization at the workplace. The award serves as a mark of excellence, providing the ultimate recognition from peers within the industry.”

VirtualizationAdmin.com conducts bi-monthly polls to discover which product is preferred by administrators in a particular category of third party solutions for virtualization environments. The awards draw a huge response per category and are based entirely on the visitors’ votes.

eG Innovations was named finalist in the Hot Company category by Network Products Guide. The industry and peer awards from Network Products Guide honor achievements and recognition in every facet of the IT industry.

eG Innovations is an award-winning provider of automated performance management solutions for virtual, cloud and physical IT infrastructures. As IT environments become more complex, and more difficult to manage and troubleshoot, eG Innovations enables customers to accelerate performance diagnosis, reduce operational cost, deliver user satisfaction and unlock the potential of virtual, cloud and physical IT environments.

A recent report by 451 Research acknowledged eG Innovations’ strong momentum in the IT performance management space noting the company’s flagship product, eG Enterprise, is being used by hundreds of large enterprise customers worldwide to provide unprecedented performance visibility, automated cross-silo performance correlation and diagnosis, pre-emptive problem alerting and predictive analytics.

The company was recently honored as a Top Data Center 100 company by CRN. Research firm EMA also awarded eG Innovations the Best Private Cloud Coverage and Value Leadership awards in the application performance management industry. eG Innovations has been recognized as a Gartner Cool Vendor, received VirtualizationAdmin Readers Choice Awards, and is a VMware Gold Award Winner in the category Best Application & Infrastructure Management. >> More

If the idea of extending the benefits of virtualization to business critical applications is intimidating and if the thought of poor user experience (UX) and cost overruns is overwhelming, you are not alone. IT environments are changing dramatically and becoming too complex and dynamic for traditional, manual and fragmented management approaches. Whether companies are extending the benefits of virtualization to the next level of business critical applications, virtualizing the desktop layer, adopting multiple virtualization platforms or extending their cloud exposure – no one has tolerance for poor user experience issues and cost overruns.

Some considerations:

1. Take the User Perspective – As more and mission-critical business applications such as SAP are virtualized, more complexity and dynamic dependencies are introduced in the infrastructure required to deliver the service to end users. With this rise in complexity, there are more opportunities for things to go wrong. This makes it even more important that IT administrators focus on understanding the user experience and monitor performance pre-emptively in order to maintain and improve the availability, reliability and performance of mission-critical application environments.
2. Assess Performance as Virtual Desktops Go Mainstream – VDI and virtual desktop adoption continues to accelerate and broaden from pilot to full scale deployments. This increases the likelihood that support teams are bombarded with users calling with “my desktop is slow” issues. Almost half of all VDI projects still fail due to end user experience issues or cost overruns. As projects go full scale, assessing virtual desktop performance in production deployments will become a key concern as companies seek to maintain high end-user satisfaction and high return on their IT investments. Look for performance management platforms that provide deep visibility into the entire VDI service infrastructure, from the desktop and user session to the application and virtualization layer, and across all infrastructure domains that impact user experience.
3. Proactively Manage Cross-domain Dependencies and Complexity – Companies are increasingly taking advantage of multiple virtualization platforms to match the right platform to the specific requirement. VMware vSphere, Microsoft Hyper V, Citrix XenServer, and Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization increase efficiency, enhance flexibility, and reduce hardware cost – but they also add cross-domain dependencies and complexity that needs to be pro-actively managed. This complexity requires a new set of technologies that go beyond traditional silo and vendor centric tools and provide deeper visibility into the virtualization layer, into VMs – from the user session and virtual application to the underlying hardware.
4. Plan the Management of Cloud-based Business Services – Cloud computing in different forms – public, private or hybrid – continues a fast-paced adoption rate as enterprises look to leverage it for improving the agility, scalability, redundancy and costs savings of their business operations. While cloud computing offers enterprises several benefits, it also throws up a number of new challenges when it comes to management of the performance of business services delivered from the cloud. For cloud computing to be successful, it is paramount that users of cloud-based services get the same experience as they would if these services were hosted in their corporate network. Poor user experience can threaten the success and ROI of cloud initiatives. Hence, it is essential that enterprises adopting cloud computing plan how they can manage the performance of cloud-based business services.

When performance issues occur with cloud or on-premise services, it’s often difficult to pinpoint the root cause with traditional tools. A new, holistic approach is needed to ensure uninterrupted visibility across every tier and every layer of the entire cloud ecosystem and to address the needs of different stakeholders – from cloud consumers to service providers of private, public and hybrid clouds.

Traditional performance management tools are not keeping pace with the rapid rate of change in virtualized IT environments – they are too silo driven, lack integration and do not quickly and precisely pinpoint the exact cause of performance challenges. IT managers need intelligent performance management solutions that deliver complete transparency and can troubleshoot the exact source of a problem in minutes rather than hours – ideally before the problem manifests itself to the user.

Article originally featured on WIRED: http://insights.wired.com/profiles/blogs/four-killer-techniques-to-ensure-great-user-experience-when#ixzz2PDWrEqJP

eG Innovations today announced that it has opened an office in The Hague, the Netherlands. This new location will allow eG Innovations to better meet the growing demand for performance management solutions in Europe.

In the Netherlands, eG Innovations will be led by its Regional Sales Manager Renne Bots, a 25-year veteran in developing new markets for software companies in Europe. Renne previously headed the North West European sales operations of Bottomline Technologies.

“Our expansion into the Netherlands is an important and strategic move for eG Innovations,” said Srinivas Ramanathan, CEO of eG Innovations. “Europe has been one of our fastest growing markets in the last year, and with the increasing adoption of Citrix and virtualization technologies in the Benelux, we see a significant growth opportunity. Our Netherlands location will allow us to work more closely with our existing local partners and better support our customers throughout continental Europe.”

“Today, eG Enterprise is being used by hundreds of enterprise customers to provide unprecedented performance visibility, automated cross-silo performance correlation and diagnosis, and pre-emptive problem detection,” said Renne Bots, Regional Sales Manager, eG Innovations Netherlands. “I look forward to working closely with our customers and partners in the Benelux.”

eG Enterprise is a highly cost effective solution with an easily measurable ROI that pays for itself in months. Customers typically experience a 30% reduction in the number of severe performance incidents, a 35% reduction in downtime, over 20% improvement in hardware utilization rates and 15% reduction in staffing levels required to support the IT environment. In addition, eG Enterprise delivers rapid ROI by providing the insights required for right-sizing and optimizing IT infrastructures to maximize resource utilization and reduce hardware/software cost.

Additionally, eG Enterprise provides unprecedented performance visibility, automated cross-silo correlation and diagnosis, pre-emptive problem alerting, and predictive analytics to accelerate performance diagnosis, reduce operational cost, deliver user satisfaction and unlock the potential of virtual, cloud and physical IT environments.

On March 31st, Citrix Presentation Server 4.5 and XenApp 5.0 will reach end of life status. This rapidly approaching deadline makes upgrading to Citrix XenApp 6.5, a high priority for Citrix organizations. This migration also is a catalyst for many companies to virtualize their XenApp environments as well.

This migration can cause a wholesale change in your IT environment because you may have to upgrade to XenApp6.5, 64 bit, Win2008 R2, and virtualization simultaneously. These changes are significant and disruptive but necessary to transform your XenApp environment to take advantages of various advantages the new versions offer. However, this transformation typically introduces a slew of management challenges during and after the migration. How can you transition to the newer platforms without impacting user productivity and business processes?

To manage the transformation effectively, it will be necessary to understand performance and gain visibility throughout all IT tiers including users, applications, OS, virtualization, data, network etc. You will need a solution that can correlate performance, availability, “fault” and capacity data and provide meaningful information that helps you make the right decisions. Having this clarity will help you to identify infrastructure weaknesses s both before and after the upgrade to insure optimum performance and end-user satisfaction.

eG Innovations has the right solution to simplify the complexity of the migration process and deliver a high performing IT environment before, after and during your migration:

• Baseline performance of the existing XenApp Service to understand current application and user behavior and isolate resource intensive candidates.
• Know what is working, and what is not, with total performance visibility and management of every layer and tier of the new upgraded service. This includes support for XenApp servers, support systems such as Provisioning Server, database, web interface, netscaler, virtual or physical infrastructure, storage and network elements.
• Identify potential problems with real-time insights and “deep visibility” into actual user sessions and applications.
• Isolate legacy applications that have compatibility issues with the newer version of XenApp.
• Understand the bottlenecks that impact the migration and that lead to sub-optimal user experience.
• Pre-emptively detect, correlate and remediate performance problems before they start impacting users Gain a clear picture of how the migration has affected your IT environment and how to leverage the infrastructure more efficiently.

For a more in-depth look at how eG Innovations ensures a great user experience before, during and after the XenApp migration, join us for a webinar “Citrix XenApp 6.5 Performance – How To Ensure A Great End User Experience Before, During and After Your Upgrade” on March 28that 11am US PT | 12 US CT | 2pm US ET. Register now: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/841262904

How some of our partners address the XenApp 4.5/5.0 end of life:
RES Software (http://blog.ressoftware.com/index.php/2013/02/12/notes-from-the-road-22-the-end-is-near/)
WhiteHat Virtual Technologies (http://www.whitehatvirtual.com/blog/bid/232849/5-Business-Reasons-to-Upgrade-from-Citrix-4-5-to-6-5)

[Read part 1]  |  [Read part 2]

Here is the final post of our 3-part series about virtual desktop performance:

Best Practices for VDI Success
Based on the earlier discussion, we can conclude that for VDI success, you need to:

• Build performance assurance early into the VDI life cycle. For successful deployments, focus on the virtual desktop infrastructure, not just the virtual desktop. Build performance assurance early in the deployment life cycle in order to avoid costly issues and re-mediation downstream, and to mitigate the risk of VDI failure during deployment. It is imperative that IT considers inter-desktop dependencies from the very beginning. When deploying VDI on a large scale, avoid slow, manual ad-hoc processes not only for the deployment but also for performance assurance. Automation is a key to being able to be alerted to problems in advance, well before users notice and complain.
• 360-degree visibility is key. Today, service delivery is more demanding than ever. Companies require 360-degree VDI service visibility of every layer, every tier of the infrastructure ‒ from desktops to applications and from network to storage. The virtual desktop where user applications run is often a blindspot and VDI service managers require the ability to look inside the virtual desktop to understand user activity and the performance they are seeing. It is critical to be able to get this level of visibility without needing to install agents on each and every desktop.

Often, different tools are used for monitoring each of the VDI tiers. This leaves a lot of room for finger-pointing between domain administrators. Having the ability to monitor all the different tiers from a single unified console and being able to analyze the performance of these tiers from a single console, across a common time window, is a key to effective management of the virtual desktop infrastructure.

• Manage VDI as a service, not as many silos. Administrators need deep insights into the causes of VDI service performance issues in order to detect and fix root-cause problems. It’s no longer useful to monitor individual silos because of the complexity of today’s infrastructures. There are just too many opportunities for problems. Also, bear in mind that VDI service managers are not likely to be experts in each of the technologies used in the infrastructure. Therefore, it’s essential that they have access to management solutions that can intelligently analyze and correlate between problems at different tiers and help them quickly pinpoint where the root-cause of problems lie. Since the virtualization platform is an integral part of the infrastructure, the management solution must be virtualization-aware, i.e., it must be capable of monitoring the virtualization platform, but it must also be intelligent enough to understand the inter-dependencies between the virtualization platform and the applications and desktops that it hosts.

Conclusion
By proactively alerting administrators to problems and providing accurate root-cause diagnosis, a performance assurance solution ensures that the performance of a virtual desktop is comparable to that of a physical desktop. By providing deep insights into the performance of each VDI tier and identifying areas for optimization, a performance assurance solution can ensure that the infrastructure is right-sized and thereby generates the best return on investment. For these reasons, enterprises deploying virtual desktop infrastructures must consider performance assurance early on in the VDI life cycle. Historical analysis has indicated that these deployments have had the best chance of virtual desktop deployment success.