Recent Events and Community Dynamics

• Amazon's entry into the EUC space with their own thin-client is a cyclical event - thin-clients were prominent many years ago, but went out of fashion. Amazon’s investment in thin-clients shows that they’ve now come back into favor, and also shows a significant evolution where one provider can fulfill all aspects of the supply chain.  
• There is a ‘wait and see’ state with the recent changes at Citrix and VMware. There's now a reassessment phase about the role these companies will play in the space. In particular - small to mid sized companies will need to reevaluate what will happen in the near future. 
• Traditional EUC communities are evolving, with independent organizations like EUC Unplugged, World of EUC and E2EVC becoming more prominent. These types of events and communities allow the EUC professionals to really deepen connections and relationships. Twitter was once the way many people in the community met and built relationships, but that has changed dramatically. 

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Partner Ecosystem and Subscription Models

• The world has changed to a self-service, SaaS model and this has wide-reaching effects. 
• A proper ISV/Reseller relationship is actually three-way - you need to look at what helps the interests of the ISV, what helps the interests of the reseller and most importantly, what helps the customer. Over time, many of the larger public companies have prioritized shareholder value over channel and the customer which has reduced loyalty and commitment. 
• Over time, the transition from perpetual licenses to subscription-based models has had some negative impacts on partners and customers. Customers have been impacted by needing to change from CapEx to OpEx budgets and a long-term increase in costs, but it’s also significantly impacted partner margins and their part in cross-selling and up-selling. 
• If something is truly a SaaS service, there is implied value in the constant feature updates that you will get from that service. But organizations need to understand whether the software you have is truly a cloud-native SaaS product, or if it’s a legacy product architecture that’s merely been shifted to the cloud and billed out as a subscription service.  

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Embracing Cloud Methodologies

• The titans of the industry  - the big three cloud providers - are a major force in the industry, and they’ll continue to grow. Until recently though, cloud implied that things were easier. 
• Public cloud providers all have their own unique way of doing things which needs to be learned and understood. Then you need an ecosystem around these public cloud providers to make things work the way you want them to - eg. Nerdio and AVD. 
• In this next era, the new technologies will be the things that fill in the gaps. For example User Personalization - Liquidware and ControlUp are fitting into this category. 
• If these titans shift their focus, it will open up opportunities for more ISVs to fill the gap. Right now, everyone is shifting their focus to AI, which pulls resources from other places in their portfolio. EUC may not always fit into the titans top 2 or 3 priorities. 
• The future is about reducing complexity. For example helping customers run in Azure and AWS - that’s a complex thing right now, and there’s opportunity if you can solve these types of challenges. 

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Generational Shifts 

• With the proliferation of web and SaaS applications the question comes up - is it practical to think that at some point, the only thing a user will need is a browser? There are definitely some use cases where this is the case, however many organizations that have been around for at least five to thirty years still have a lot of windows apps. There are new technologies coming out that don't make this binary - Sonet.io for example allows you to deliver legacy windows apps alongside SaaS apps in any browser. 
• Generational preferences and changing application landscapes influence the future of workspace technology. Older generations still prefer a desktop, but younger generations are used to fungible devices - using their phone one minute and a laptop the next. Five to ten years in the future the majority of the workforce is going to be Millennials, Gen X and Gen Z - these people are used to doing everything in a browser. Organizations need to consider how their experience with corporate apps will affect things like retention - these people may leave if they aren’t able to have a modern user experience. 

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Must-Haves for EUC Projects

• Dealing with policy profiles and printing is a constant. This keeps getting solved and unsolved. The target doesn’t stay still long enough for the problem to stay solved. 
• Automation and DevOps style processes are coming into projects more and more. 

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Challenges of Enterprise Browsers and Persistent Issues

• Google recently announced updates that bring it closer to the enterprise browser market. Functionality wise the idea of running things through a browser makes sense, but browsers are very resource intensive, and this means there are often use cases that require VDI.
• Lots of venture money is getting poured into this category. They are often marketed as a VDI replacement - which is only true if all your apps are web and SaaS. The majority of people using VDI aren’t just using it to deliver web and SaaS apps. 
• It’s likely going to be one to four decades before there aren’t people using windows apps. 

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In conclusion, the future of end-user computing is filled with possibilities for those who are willing to adapt, innovate, and prioritize the evolving needs of users and technology. 

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