VENDORiQ: Cameyo Announces Two New Features

The Latest

20 December 2022: Cameyo released two new features for its app. The first is a patented ‘Temporary User Profiles’ capability. Cameyo claims this new feature reduces reliance on Microsoft by offering an alternative to using Active Directory. The second is a ‘One-Click Cloud Failover’, that allows organisations to switch their application virtualisation infrastructure to a new data centre region when confronted with emergency situations.

Why it’s Important

Setting up and maintaining digital workspaces through virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) has historically been complicated, requiring specialist knowledge and hardware. Cloud Desktop-as-a-Service (DaaS) offerings go some way to reducing complexity, but are still effectively based on traditional architectural approaches. Microsoft’s Azure Desktop Services is an example of such an environment, and even its more recent Windows 365 DaaS services are built upon the same principles, albeit with streamlined administration.

Cameyo is one of several relatively new entrants into digital workspace marketing that promote virtual app delivery (VAD) as opposed to full VDI.

The key difference is that VAD enabled organisations to break away from the need for a full desktop image, in favour of just virtualising applications that can sit alongside web-based SaaS applications.

The introduction of Temporary User Profiles effectively reduces, or even eliminates, the need to use Microsoft’s Active Directory to store user application permissions and also allows user’s preferences and applications configurations to be stored in a persistent manner, even while no ‘desktop image’ is needed. For organisations slowly migrating to web applications and SaaS, this provides an opportunity to reduce reliance on Microsoft and the Windows ecosystem, while still providing applications that would be traditionally tied to Windows clients.

However, VAD has trailed in adoption due to concerns that it lacks VDI’s history of security and reliability. Certainly Citrix and VMWare have long-term investments in both of these areas that newer players such as Cameyo cannot match. However, VAD has an arguably smaller cyber security risk footprint. Like Google Workspaces and Chromebooks, it has little, if any storage footprint on end points, and is security at the server level. According to Cameyo co-founder and CMO Robb Henshaw, “You get an environment that’s completely wiped, so you don’t have to worry about it being hacked, everything is completely gone from a security perspective”.

In addition, VAD tends to offer greater density of users per server instance, compared to VDI.

This still leaves the reliability issue. All the major VDI vendors have solutions to quickly migrate or switch VDI environments. Cameyo’s new One-Click Cloud Failover feature shows that VAD vendors are now on par with VDI in terms of rapid recovery and business continuity.

Who’s Impacted

• Desktop services teams

What’s Next?

Organisations looking to migrate to an ‘all web application’ environment can consider VAD as a stepping stone, allowing them to deliver legacy thick-client applications via web clients, alongside newer SaaS solutions.
When planning new VDI investments, consider if similar functionality can be met with VAD. While VDI may be the most appropriate for your organisations’ needs, exploring VAD at least opens up new insights.
If moving VDI or VAD into Cloud services, consider how such services can be quickly redeployed into different cloud zones for reliability. This also required consideration of network routing.

Related Advisory

1. VENDORiQ: Cameyo Introduces Native File System Integration
2. VENDORiQ: Google Certifies Cameyo as Chrome Enterprise Recommended Partner