A Free Tool to Identify Virtualization Candidates

If you are responsible for application management, application delivery or building a business case for virtualization I recommend you take a look at Centrix.

Two potential sticking points with virtualization projects are:

• We dare not virtualize an application because of the licensing implications
• Or, Uh-oh – How do we license that application we just virtualized?

Workspace Discovery - Plotting TCO Forecasts using Free Tool

Centrix offer a free tool for building a business case for virtualisation candidates, allowing you to discover users, applications and devices, assign them categories for virtualisation and then plot likely cost scenarios.

I’ve written before about Centrix raising the bar when it comes to auditing virtual environments. Six months on and they continue to build a very solid proposition around application delivery.

The Centrix portfolio is roughly broken down into three groups:

1. A FREE tool to identify virtualization candidates and justify funding
2. IQ – Manage applications and usage
3. Workspace – Provides a webshop for application delivery. This is  a business layer that encompasses all applications delivered to end users regardless of their platform – desktop install, virtualized application, Citrix Session, Internal or External Web App etc. This is pretty smart and will be useful to anyone looking at presenting users with a service catalogue type choice of applications. It means the user is presented with an application gateway via the web. Behind the scenes the application delivery team can be virtualizing, outsourcing, insourcing or changing platforms whilst the user has a consistent experience.

Centrix is not the first vendor to offer a free version of their technology to entice you to sample their technology but I am quite surprised how much value they have crammed into their free offering. It is certainly an aggressive way to gain some attention and traction. The upgrade from the free tool exposes more detail about the discovered devices, allows management of entitlement and forecasts savings or risk reduction.

Find out more about Centrix Software here.