Viewfinity was mentioned in a Wall Street Journal article this week.  Below is an excerpt with a link to the full article.

Though there’s nuances to each product, most of the small companies in this sector are either providing a subscription service with a lower price tag and ability to incorporate mobile workers in the platform, or selling virtual desktop technologies that enable customers to get a better handle on management by storing all their desktops inside the data center.

Here’s a sampling of start-ups and small companies trying to change this sector:

Viewfinity Inc. is selling a subscription service geared towards smaller companies that don’t have the means to buy and run a traditional PC management suite. Since the service runs over the Internet, it easily pulls mobile workers under its umbrella- something that’s difficult from the traditional on-premise vendors to accomplish. Investors include Giza Venture Capital, JK&B Capital and Longworth Venture Partners.

Read the full article: http://blogs.wsj.com/venturecapital/2010/07/26/start-ups-look-to-disrupt-stodgy-pc-management-space/

-New OS Image Deployment, Patch Management, Privilege Management and Interactive Dashboard Features Continue Viewfinity’s Commitment to Customers-

Waltham, MA – June 14, 2010 – Viewfinity (www.viewfinity.com), the innovator of privilege and systems management, today released version 3.0 of its solution suite. Nearly 3 months after its debut launch into the market, Viewfinity continues to make good on its commitment to customer-led product development and to build products that are critically needed in the market.

See the new features and updates in a live webcast demonstration, June 16th at 11:45 am ET

Register here to attend: http://www.viewfinity.com/Resources/LiveDemo.aspx?reg=sm

Additional Viewfinity features / functionality include:

· Privilege Management: administrators can create policies that will execute scripts without needing to assign local administrator rights to the end user; identify applications that require administrator rights, and permit or block the use of child processes

· OS Deployment: creates an exact disk image of the laptop/desktop including the operating system, configuration files and all applications and deploys the image to multiple systems simultaneously, making it ideal for rapid bare-metal installations (OS deployment via Acronis Snap Deploy)

· Patch Management: fully manages the distribution of updates released through Microsoft Update to computers in your network as well as mobile computers not connected to the internal network

· Viewfinity Dashboard: provides a quick view into the operations and status of the company assets through live monitoring of select desktops and servers to identify problematic areas

· Windows 7 OS Deployment with Viewfinity User Migration: a valuable add-on to the Acronis image deployment software for domain based migration of user personal settings, application settings and user data files to prepare for and perform the migration from Windows XP or Vista to Windows 7.

Viewfinity also complements traditional systems management, such as SCCM, by offering new flexibility to manage administrator rights for locked down computers.

Viewfinity Systems Management solution can be delivered from a web-hosted platform or installed on premises. All desktop management is done through a secure and encrypted HTTPS connection which provides the ideal method for managing PCs for remote and mobile workers. Its web-hosted platform is also ideal for proof-of-concept evaluations because it eliminates the need to build a complex server environment to evaluate or deploy the software.

Online registration is available for trial evaluations here: http://www.viewfinity.com/SaasStart.aspx

Tags: Viewfinity, Desktop Management, Systems Management, Patch Management, OS Deployment, Software Deployment, Privilege Management, SaaS, Windows 7 Migration

About Viewfinity

Viewfinity is the innovator of systems and privilege management via cloud-computing, allowing IT professionals to focus on managing systems and not the platform's infrastructure. With the cloud model, IT can be up and running quickly to provide management, support and control for desktops, servers and laptops. This makes it extremely cost effective and easy for IT to support local as well as mobile workers.

Viewfinity uses virtualization technology as the foundation to simplify and automate deployment and management of applications, licenses and assets. Viewfinity also complements traditional systems management by offering compliance adherence to flexibly manage privileges for locked down computers. Viewfinity's cloud approach delivers immediate and long-term value, scales with business need, and eliminates the equipment, training, and substantially higher costs of on-premise implementations. Based in Waltham, MA, information on Viewfinity systems management solutions can be found at www.viewfinity.com.

Wednesday, June 9, 2010
1:00 PM ET / 10:00 AM PT / 5:00 PM GMT
Overview: Managing the mobile user is the number one pain point in desktop management, and is a challenge that continues to escalate. Most IT professionals are struggling for a better method to remotely perform patch management, deploy/update applications, manage user privileges, and resolve problems faster. Are you relying on traditional tools that were designed when only 10% of your users had laptops?

Read more…

http://www.myitforum.com/Forums/calendar.aspx?eventID=28&calDate=2010-06-09

If you’ve been following the news lately, you are already seeing us making some serious inroads into the industry for Cloud computer.  Today, NetworkWorld adds us to the top 15 companies to watch:

Read it here:

http://www.networkworld.com/supp/2010/ndc3/051010-ndc-cloud-companies.html?page=7

At MMS 2010, Microsoft announced it has rebranded the “System Center Online” product to “Windows Intune”.  Microsoft’s intent is to offer Intune as a small business alternative (25 to 500 PCs) to its System Center on-premises product line.

Microsoft’s move into managing computers in the cloud is a great step and one that Viewfinity believes serves to validate the direction of applications to the cloud, as well as our efforts and vision in this area. The public release of Windows Intune is probably about a year off but Viewfinity is already providing cloud-based solutions to customers.   While Windows Intune targets consumers and small business, Viewfinity is built to scale to large deployments. 

The beta for Windows Intune was limited to 1,000 of the first respondents and Microsoft has announced that the beta is now closed.  For those that missed the beta deadline, Viewfinity is extending a special offer to utilize its cloud-based management capabilities through a one year discounted subscription.  So, you can use the full feature-set of Viewfinity, which includes scalability, software deployment, and server management, and then switch to Windows Intune when the public release is available and Windows Intune pricing has been set.

For those thousands of users who fell outside the beta limit, Viewfinity is now offering a 25% product discount for the first year.  All you need to do to participate is to use the following link to sign-up:

https://www.viewfinity.com/signup.aspx?Product=SystemManagement&Source=Intune

Feel free to pass the link along to your peers.

The purpose of this brief survey is to collect information on how enterprise IT organizations use desktop virtualization technologies.
In this context, we define desktop virtualization as some combination of:

• server-hosted desktop virtualization (VDI), client-hosted desktop virtualization or cloud-hosted desktop virtualization;
• OS and application isolation and streaming; and
• user profile management or user virtualization.

The results of this survey will be published in a forthcoming major report, "Desktops as a Service", from The 451 Group.

The survey should take no longer than five minutes to complete.

Participate using the following link:

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/GZMHYDX

Business Need

I need an efficient way of deploying software to PCs and laptops that are not regularly connected to my corporate network.

Viewfinity Capability

With Viewfinity, you can deliver updates using only an Internet connection. As long as your users connect to the Internet, you can keep these machines up-to-date — without a VPN connection. The Viewfinity platform (SaaS or in-house server) can be utilized to store software packages. IT Administrators can then use this storage area as the distribution point. Our service will deploy software packages onto laptops and desktops located anywhere as long as they are connected to the Internet.

ROI Considerations

• Improves delivery to off-network machines, ensuring all laptops and desktops are running approved versions of applications
• Distributes software from local server and web hosted service to outlying users

Read more:

http://www.viewfinity.com/Products/SystemsManagement/Software-Deployment.aspx

Business Need

A majority of our help desk calls are related to inadvertent changes an end user makes, such as deleting a printer and not knowing how to reset back to the original settings. How can I empower my IT Help Desk people to resolve these trouble calls faster?

Viewfinity Capability

Viewfinity comes with precise desktop activity recording and rollback functions, allowing IT support personnel to identify and take immediate action to correct (or "undo") changes which have been made on any desktop. A basic explanation is all that is required before the IT person can take action, easily searching screen shots of desktop activity by application or event-type to pinpoint relevant user actions.

ROI Considerations

• Allows IT professionals to resolve problem calls in minutes
• Enhances reputation and value of IT with smarter, faster diagnosis
• Decreases end user downtime and increases satisfaction due to faster problem resolution

• Activity Recording
• Rollback

As businesses grow, the issue of systems management for IT grows with them. Unfortunately, the need for IT management in SMBs is rarely addressed, because of the expense and expertise required to implement software management solutions that IT can use to simplify systems management. The SMB market (500 to 3,000 desktops), can greatly benefit from a comprehensive systems management program. But finding a way to implement such a program without breaking the budget can be daunting. This guide will help you with this process.

Download: Essential Guides: The Essential Guide: System Management Moves to the Cloud