Jonathan Alexander, who came to Liquidware Labs through the vmSight acquisition is no longer with the company. Despite being removed from the Liquidware Labs website over the last few weeks, Jonathan's LinkedIn profile shows that he worked at Liquidware Labs until May 2010. It's unclear why Liquidware Labs would list Jonathan on the management team for the second half of last year and it's even less clear who is heading up the engineering organization at the company since no one is listed in a similar role. Hopefully Jonathan's departure had nothing to do with the agent-based nature of Stratusphere.

Update (January 14, 2011)

It looks like Pat Clark is no longer the Chief Revenue Officer at Liquidware Labs either, although Pat's LinkedIn profile still lists him with the company. The new responsibility has been taken by J.Tyler "T. Rex" Rohrer who is definitely hungry for more revenue.

In a recent comment on www.brianmadden.com, Jason Smith, VP of Product Marketing at Liquidware Labs said "we do not claim to be agent-less but we did use that term at one time by us to describe our self dissolving agent." Jason has been at Liquidware Labs since August 2009. In May 2010, Liquidware Labs made a press release and used a handful of terms to describe its "agent-less" monitoring in Stratusphere:

Agent-less design
Agent-less approach
Agent-less desktop monitoring design
Agent-less desktop design (Quote from David Bieneman, CEO)

While this marketing is "creative" we do not believe it is an accurate reflection of reality. We are glad that after our blog post and one by Alessandro Perilli, Liquidware Labs actually re-wrote its press release and started to use more conservative terms like:

Self-dissolving agent
Streamlined agent desktop design
Zero-touch agent

The title of this press release page and several other pages on the Liquidware Labs website still say "Agent-less VDI assessments" but this was probably an oversight or an SEO tactic.

We look forward to seeing more creative marketing from Liquidware Labs in 2011.

Update (December 24, 2010)

Based on another comment from Jason Smith, the zero-touch agent is actually "a kernel driver." According to Microsoft, "85 percent of unexpected system stops were caused by drivers and not by core Windows kernel components." If the agent is indeed a "kernel driver" it may not only cause system crashes but may actually interfere with running applications.The same agent is also most likely used in Quest VDI Assessment.

Why would any company want to take on such a risk with all of their users and applications when truly agent-less data collection can be performed by leading virtualization solution providers using products such as Lanamark Suite?

As part of its OEM agreement with Liquidware Labs, Quest Software has decided to make Stratusphere available for free to end customers for up to 45 days for VDI assessments. Unlike Liquidware Labs, which claimed to use an agent-less approach, Quest is completely upfront about the agent-based nature of Stratusphere. Furthermore, Quest is even more upfront about the privacy (or lack of it) that comes with the VDI assessment. Here is a screenshot of the login screen from the Quest VDI Assessment Setup Guide:

While explicit, the claim that "...all uses of this system and all files on this system may be intercepted, monitored, recorded, copied, audited, inspected and disclosed to...government, and law enforcement personnel, as well as authorized officials of government agencies, both domestic and foreign." in our opinion sounds simply draconian. Add the fact that now there is an agent sitting on every single machine under this privacy policy, the question is, how will this fly by any company's legal department?

The good news is that if no one reads this screen, cares about privacy or worries about security risks created by agents on every single endpoint, then the software can be used for free to perform a VDI assessment for up to 45 days.

Update (December 21, 2010)

After this blog post went live, Quest promptly responded by saying that this "is the same verbiage you get in the Liquidware Stratusphere product on which Quest VDI Assessment is based" and promised to remove it. Hugh McEnvoy, Product Manager for Quest VDI Assessment, goes further by saying "there is nothing 'secret' in this stuff", referring to the data collected.

At Lanamark, we beg to differ. All data collected within a customer's environment, especially about users, is secret and allowing a statement such as the one above to fly under the radar raises another question: how confident is Quest about what is happening in Stratusphere "under the hood"?

Update 2 (December 21, 2010)

And now Liquidware Labs responded to Alessandro's blog post, saying "any commercial product that goes as in-depth for assessment and user experience monitoring should carry a disclaimer warning about how the data is gathered." Let's set the record straight:

1. Lanamark Suite doesn't use agents
Instead, it leverages standard OS instrumentation to collect all the necessary data. Stratusphere requires agents because it is a Linux-based virtual appliance that cannot otherwise interface with standard Windows operating system instrumentation.

2. Lanamark Suite doesn't touch the data on target systems
There is no interception, inspection, copying of data on / from target systems or packets to / from these systems. Based on the original disclaimer from Liquidware Labs, it is probably fair to assume that this is not the case with Stratusphere.

3. Lanamark doesn't disclose the data
Only the Lanamark partner delivering desktop transformation services to end customers can access the data collected by Lanamark. There is no disclosure of data to "government, and law enforcement personnel, as well as authorized officials of government agencies, both domestic or foreign." Also, the product name "Stratusphere" seems to imply that the data is going outside the "Troposphere" of client environments into the "Stratosphere" (and beyond perhaps).

Source: Commission for Environmental Cooperation of North America

VMware Professional Services organization recently announced partnerships with Lakeside Software and Liquidware Labs. Tools from these vendors will supposedly be used for VDI capacity planning. If this is really the case, then what is the role of VMware Capacity Planner in desktop virtualization planning? Is VMware conceding that VMware Capacity Planner is suitable for server virtualization planning only?

One of the most common concerns customers have is whether agents will be installed on target systems. Some customers, particularly ones in defense, healthcare and financial services sectors, will not allow agent-based data collection to be performed. Lanamark is the only ISV that provides desktop optimization and virtualization planning software that is agent-less, ensuring privacy, security and compliance of desktop infrastructure.

Then of course there is Liquidware Labs, which wants everyone to believe that its software does not use agents, when in reality it does. If you are a customer, don't let anyone convince you to install intrusive agents on your endpoints. Doing so can not only jeopardize user experience, performance and compliance of all monitored systems, but also expose these systems to data theft, malware and other security risks. You are much better off working with a Lanamark partner using Lanamark Suite.

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.

In April 2009 Tyler Rohrer reached out to Lanamark from VMware with an interest in exploring a "partnership." For those of you who do not know Tyler, he used to work as the Director of Business Development at Foedus which was acquired by VMware in January 2008. Shortly after reaching out to Lanamark, Tyler became the Founder and COO at Liquidware Labs Inc. With a little more research, here is the picture that is emerging:

1. Liquidware Labs was founded by Tyler Rohrer and David Bieneman, former CEO of Vizioncore which was acquired by Quest Software also in January 2008. This is evident from the SEC filing by Liquidware Labs where both Tyler and David are listed as "Related Persons."
2. Tyler Rohrer openly mentions in his LinkedIn profile that “First order of business was purchasing vmSight” and underscores this further in his short biography on www.brianmadden.com.
3. Jonathan Alexander, currently listed as CEO of vmSight is also linked to Liquidware Labs. This is evident from Jonathan’s VMworld registration on April 9, 2009 which lists his company as vmSight / Liquidware Labs Inc.
4. The SEC filing by Liquidware Labs indicates that the company just raised $526,316, most likely to acquire the assets of vmSight.
5. Registered address in the SEC filing is the same as the address of vmSight headquarters.

It would come as no surprise if Liquidware Labs starts offering a desktop virtualization solution to service providers (Project Apache) that will compete with Lanamark and our flagship Lanamark Suite offering with integrated Desktop Analysis Pack designed to help solution providers accelerate delivery of desktop virtualization services to enterprises.