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?