Deal Radar 2009: AppSense

AppSense is a user environment management (UEM) software solutions provider for user profile management, optimized application response, application feature lock down, protection from unauthorized applications, reduced logon/logoff times, and virtual and contextual desktops. Founded in 1999, the company is based in Daresbury, the United Kingdom, and has offices in London, New York, Melbourne, and Munich.

The company’s AppSense Environment Manager 8.0 allows clients to apply both personal and policy attributes without complex profile management or intensive scripting. The company views the desktop in three key layers – the OS as the first layer, the applications as the second layer, and UEM as a third layer that allows the other two layers to be managed more efficiently. This allows IT to standardize the corporate desktops and automate the delivery of the user’s working environment, enabling the user to keep the settings that are unique to him such as a favorite screensaver, wallpaper, and so forth. Further, IT can migrate profile data from a PC or server-based computing environments to virtual desktops without re-creating personalization systems. The software also allows portability across OS boundaries and application-delivery mechanisms with application-level personalization.

The company‘s other products include the AppSense Environment Manager, an enterprise-scalable solution for managing various aspects of a user by applying a user’s ‘personality’ to a desktop; AppSense Application Manager, which automatically controls application usage on a per user basis out of the box and also provides policy management; AppSense Performance Manager, which provides resource policy management, disk I/O resource management, physical memory control, virtual memory optimization, and PC and notebook optimization; and AppSense Management Center, a framework that enables AppSense Management Suite to be used across the entire enterprise. AppSense Limited’s also offers enterprise migration and license management solutions.

AppSense’s technology is used by over 4,000 companies worldwide including JPMorgan Chase, Lowes, United Airlines, Wachovia, Wal-Mart, ESPN, and CB Richard Ellis. AppSense works with Microsoft, Citrix, and VMWare to develop application and data virtualization solutions. AppSense’s VP of strategy, Martin Ingram, recently described AppSense as a large deal organization for which the average transaction is more than $250,000. According to ZoomInfo, Appsense’s competitors include Citrix Systems, Wyse Technology, and Packeteer, among others.

In September 2009, AppSense Environment Manager won the Gold award in the Desktop Virtualization category in the Best of VMWorld awards program. The company announced that it signed 14 new partners in the United States in Q3 2009, bringing its total number of resellers to 206 at 378 locations worldwide. AppSense has seen a dramatic increase in sales in the south-central and southeast regions of the United States over the past year.

Suggested Reading:
*SaaS: SFSF, Citrix, Omniture, RightNow
*VMWare’s IPO: Wait?
*Citrix: Acquisition Target for SAP, Oracle

This segment is a part in the series : Deal Radar 2009