At E2EVC, I presented a session on the various different application management products on the market including application streaming technologies, application layering, application containers and FSLogix application cloaking (as I call it). I also presented Frame.
If you follow my blog you may have seen my posts about Cameyo over the last number of years. In recent years, Cameyo evolved their product from an application virtualization tool that allows you to deploy applications as portable standalone executables to a product that allows you to run your hosted applications embedded within the browser. I covered this in detail in a previous blog post. Cameyo also has the added benefit of allowing you to play the application within the browser OR download as the standalone .exe that you can put on a USB thumb drive, CD or DVD or any media and run from any Windows machine.
Not long after Cameyo launched the embedded browser application feature, I gleefully approached a couple of guys from Frame at BriForum in Boston to show them what Cameyo was up to. I thought I was so cool when they said they weren't familiar with it and I just took out my laptop and launched Firefox instantly....that's when they launched AutoCAD with Frame and put me back in my box :)
To see an example of this, view my short demo:
I have followed Frame for quite some time! I really dig the idea of running applications embedded in the browser. Some of the big application hosting products are super expensive and require a comprehensive infrastructure. Hosting your application with Cameyo and Frame is much more simple, doesn't require deployment and management of an agent and works from any device that has a browser that is HTML 5 ready. (which is every browser these days!) Eliminating the need for a plugin or agent is huge! How many headaches in your environment are caused by a funky release\update of a an agent?
Conclusion
Frame is a pretty mature product at this stage. The most mature in this unique space! Performance of graphic intensive applications like AutoCAD is awesome and really set them apart! The overall look and experience of Frame shows it's maturity vs competition (there are now multiple vendors in this space). If I had any qualms, it's just the fact that certain windows applications have not been developed with touch in mind. While I can run my Windows applications right from the browser on my phone using Frame, the experience may not be the best depending on the navigation of the app. It works great on my laptop and desktop and nobody is saying I have to use this on my tablet or phone. It's so great not having to rely on an agent. It will be interesting to see how Citrix further develop their own HTML5 based solution. Maybe Frame is showing the way to a Receiver-less world!
