Liquidware Labs just added another product to its lineup called "Liquidware Labs Jumpstart." Since there is no mention of partner involvement, it's likely that Liquidware Labs is now offering services directly to customers and competing with its services partners.

And of course Liquidware Labs claims "agent-free design - no software to install, zero resources used" when in reality it continues to use agents. In a recent video, Tyler Rohrer decided to call the Stratusphere agent "virtual agent" rather than completely misleading the audience.

Update (June 25, 2010)

After this blog post went live, Liquidware Labs promptly added "The offering provides for optional integration services from our partner community to help guide your overall project to success." to the desciption of Liquidware Labs Jumpstart. What's interesting is the "optional integration services" statement for an offering Liquidware Labs describes as "Software + Integration Services." The question still stands - does Liquidware Labs deliver services and compete or does it always engage services partners?

Today, Liquidware Labs announced a new version of Stratusphere, claiming "Liquidware Labs Stratusphere v4.6 Sheds Desktop Agent..." and "new agent-less design." Then in the middle of the middle paragraph of its press release, Liquidware Labs says:

"To get started with an assessment, the administrator simply applies the Stratusphere module to selected user(s) through a straight-forward Microsoft Group Policy Setting. Stratusphere then runs silently on the chosen desktops, quietly gathering usage data and performance metrics..." David Bieneman underscores the "new agent-less desktop design..." towards the end of the press release.

In contrast, Alessandro accurately explained in his blog that Liquidware Labs Stratusphere "monitors users by attaching a stealth agent to their Microsoft Active Directory account through Group Policy."

Despite the agent being tied to users through Group Policy, it doesn't change the fact that a module "runs silently on chosen desktops." Obviously Liquidware Labs improved its agent deployment capability, but it is misleading to suggest that Stratusphere is using an agent-less approach.

When David and Tyler launched Liquidware Labs a year ago, we assumed that the lack of ethics only applies to competitors since our legal counsel had to send a letter to David Bieneman and request that "Lanamark Copyrighted Material be removed and destroyed on or before May 31, 2009" after Liquidware Labs decided to copy portions of the Lanamark website (Liquidware Labs promptly complied). In our opinion the high ethical standards seem to apply to Liquidware Labs customers and partners as well.