Disrupt on Tour – Back on the road again- Week 1 Recap

Last week in Europe and North America, IGEL and the sponsors of Disrupt EUC kicked off the 2022 ‘Disrupt on Tour’ event series. Attended by end-user computing professionals from across the globe, we welcomed over 80 people in Zurich and over 50 at the event in Boston. Being able to bring together many of our EUC friends after so long was quite simply, just AWESOME!

Both events opened with keynotes and ‘think tank’ panels, including speakers from Microsoft, VMware, Nerdio, HP, LG and IGEL. In Boston, we were privileged to have Skip Gumble, (VMware) and Christiaan Brinkhoff (Microsoft) on the panel, with THE very well known and loved, Bas van Kaam (Nerdio) on stage in Zurich. We worked out that the panel in Zurich had no less than 70 years experience on stage, (Daryl Gywn, representing almost 20 years at Microsoft).

These presentations and interactive sessions discussed some of the challenges and positive outcomes that organisations have faced over the last two years, focusing on the role that EUC will play moving forward in the “work from anywhere” era. The ‘think tank’ panels highlighted how smaller businesses have benefitted from the simplification that Desktop as a service (DaaS) solutions now offer. 

Of interest was the addressable market that Microsoft, VMware and Nerdio spoke of, indicating that it would be far larger than the estimated 50M existing virtualised seats in the enterprise today. Security also drove much of the conversation, again, with virtual desktops helping many organisations either reduce the risk of malware attacks or provide disaster recovery options for those who sadly had been attacked by ransomware. Dirk Daute (VMware session) also highlighted that DaaS comes in more than just one flavour, and discussed the various offerings VMware now has on top of Azure.

When it came to discussing endpoints, LG, HP, and IGEL shared the stage – discussing the benefits of employee experience, the importance of Unified Communications and the increase in mobile clients being used in conjunction with IGEL OS. 

After lunch, breakout sessions were delivered by Control Up, Lenovo, Login VSI, Workspot, Liquidware and DeviceTrust. These spoke further to the need for contextual security and visibility in the ‘work from anywhere’ era, plus showed off new integrations into IGEL OS and new technologies available from many of them

In Zurich the opening keynote included an excellent presentation from Simon Heller, (Deloitte), who delivered a relevant session on sustainable IT. This topic seems to be highly topical in Europe, with many organisations now looking at reducing their carbon footprint through the use of cloud delivered solutions. 

In Boston, the audience was treated to a customer panel, (customers also presenting in other locations like London and Minneapolis in the next couple of weeks). Customer stories rule, and Boston didn’t disappoint with many of the speakers highlighting how IGEL OS had been used as the OS of choice on Dell thin clients, (in replacement of thin OS 8 and 9), allowing them to move to newer versions of VDI, enable Unified communications and improve management,

In both cities, IGEL representatives also provided the audience with a technical overview of the ‘up and coming’ IGEL OS 12 release, due out later this year. This new release includes several new, ‘workspace of the future’ features designed to further improve security, management and experience in a multi cloud world.

At the events, IGEL, LG, ControlUp and Lenovo also highlighted a newly announced joint offering, entitled ‘WHY COMPROMISE.’  This offering allows those who are new or unfamiliar with IGEL or ControlUp to quickly evaluate the technology on an LG Gram or Lenovo L14, answering the question; Why compromise on security and management when it comes to the endpoint? Pre installed with IGEL OS and configured over the air to seamlessly access Citrix, VMware, Microsoft AVD and SaaS apps, IGEL will ship a device free of charge to anyone currently evaluating or migrating from/to a VDI or DaaS environment.

To test drive IGEL or ControlUP on LG or Lenovo machine, go to www.igel.com/whycompromise and we’ll send you one

‘Disrupt on Tour’ carries on this week, visiting Minneapolis, Belgium and Vienna before heading to London on 19th May and Germany and Pittsburg the week after. More events in EMEA and North America carry on through June…

To register and find out more, please visit www.disrupteuc.com/ontour2022

One thing is for sure – IT IS GREAT TO SEE PEOPLE, FACE TO FACE AGAIN!…So many smiles, great conversations and warm welcomes…..long may it continue