It’s almost 18 months ago since I wrote my last article on this blog, and I thought that it’s about time to come out of my self-imposed stealth mode again. From one of my previous articles you can see that I became an investor in FSLogix in July 2017 – and this is where the roller coaster ride began (in a very positive way). It was an experience of a lifetime to be part of a successful IT startup, both in the role of a technical evangelist and in the role of an investor. The icing on the cake was the exit, when Microsoft acquired FSLogix on November 19, 2018. The weeks before the acquisition were truly exciting. Some of the things I’ve learned during that time make some great anecdotes I can use in upcoming presentations and articles. Stay tuned…

But what’s next for me? Very simple, it’s business as usual. As a result of the FSLogix acquisition I’ve signed a 1-year part-time contract with Microsoft. My mission is to help them to “assimilate” FSLogix and educate my new colleagues and their customers about what FSLogix brings to the table – Office 365 Containers, Profile Containers and Application Masking are hot topics. At the same time, I will continue my EUC community activities around Azure Windows Virtual Desktop, Microsoft Remote Desktop Services, VMware Horizon and Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops. Add AMD and NVIDIA GPUs to the EUC mix and you get the complete picture. In that context, I have started building a software framework that can be use in remote end-user experience benchmarking projects. But why am I doing this? Simply because there is a growing demand generated by vendors and enterprise customers when it comes to measuring and optimizing perceived performance on end-devices used for remote connections. Desktop as a Service (DaaS) in general and Azure Windows Virtual Desktops (+ FSLogix) in particular are massive drivers here. But there is no existing remote end-user experience benchmarking toolset out there in the market – and together with our community friends in TeamRGE, we are the one-eyed among the blind now.

With that, I’m really looking forward to 2019, which I think will be the year of DaaS + GPUs + benchmarking. I’ll keep you updated about my community activities and the market news I find interesting. Next is my presentation “Remote end user experience benchmarking results when using IGEL clients in Microsoft RDS and VMware Horizon environments” at IGEL DISRUPT in San Jose, USA, on February 7.