EUC World Amplify conference wraps up with a focus on the future and expanding to Melbourne, Australia!
As champions of innovation in end-user computing (EUC), Storage Review takes great pride in serving as an official media sponsor for EUC World Amplify 2025.
After two great days at Amplify, we were tired but excited about the final day of the conference, or more precisely, the unconference. Here is our recap of the final day of the second annual EUC World Amplify conference, held at the McNamara Alumni Center on the University of Minnesota campus.
In our original post about EUC World’s annual conference, Amplify, we pointed out that you would not want to miss the third day of the conference. This was the day the unconferences took place. We were right.
An unconference differs from a traditional conference in that participants actively submit, choose, and lead their sessions. This ensures that attendees receive precisely what they desire, rather than what the planners assume they want. Unconference-style events emphasize audience participation and spontaneous discussion over rigidly pre-planned presentations, fostering peer-to-peer learning and networking. It sounds like it would be catastrophic, but somehow it seems to work. We were first exposed to this concept at Thin Client Computing EUC Unplugged, presented by Steve Greenberg and his colleagues.
Opening Remarks and Unconference Sessions
After the leaders of the EUC World conference announced unconference sessions, an awards ceremony took place. This event featured a drawing for prizes for attendees who visited all vendors, as well as acknowledgments for key organizers and sponsors. Plans for the event were revealed, including international expansion to Australia and a return to a fall timeframe for the next iteration. Feedback from attendees will heavily influence future locations.
As mentioned above, during the conference, attendees were encouraged to submit their ideas for unconference sessions. At the end of the second day, attendees had the opportunity to select the sessions they would like to see on the third day.
On the morning of the third day, we were presented with a list of the sessions for the day. The morning sessions included:
- App Layering Panel
- Building Your Brand
- Image Build Best Practices
- Where to Start Automation
- Hypervisor Party
- VDI Protocol Battle
All the sessions were impressive, but we narrowed it down to two: app layering and the hypervisor party session.
App Packaging
Since we haven’t spent much time in the application packaging space, we believed it would be beneficial to attend this session. It turned out to be a panel discussion with three speakers focusing on application management and delivery. The main topics were App-V, MSIX, App Volumes, and FlexApp as solutions for enterprise application deployment.
The discussion highlighted the evolving landscape of application packaging, particularly with Microsoft’s shift from App-V to MSIX and the challenges posed by legacy applications. They emphasized the importance of automation in packaging, the goal of achieving high application compatibility, and the need for flexible deployment options across various environments (on-premises, cloud, and physical desktops). The panelists also touched upon the difficulty of standardizing application behavior due to developers’ varying approaches to data handling, suggesting that no single technology can address 100% of application deployment requirements.
Hypervisor Party
All the sessions we attended at the conference were outstanding. However, this session stood out as the best, highlighting the importance of having vendor-agnostic conferences, as attendees were free to speak their minds. Since this blog doesn’t provide enough time or space to examine all the points discussed in this session thoroughly, I plan to dedicate a separate blog post to it. This allows me to collect and organize my thoughts on the subject more comprehensively. Meanwhile, here is a high-level summary of the sentiments expressed during the session.
The discussion primarily focused on the substantial disruption and uncertainty resulting from recent changes to VMware’s product offerings, especially regarding their virtualization technology. A key issue brought up was the transition from traditional perpetual licensing to a subscription-based model that includes bundled products. While some participants noted experiencing price increases, one individual mentioned that their bill decreased.
Although the underlying technology may not have significantly changed, the transformation of business models is leading some organizations to explore exit strategies and consider alternative virtualization platforms or cloud migrations. We discussed the complexities of these transitions, highlighting the necessity for thorough planning, testing, and a clear understanding of application compatibility. One important point that emerged in our conversation, which we had not fully addressed before, was the crucial role of backup and disaster recovery solutions in any new setup.
An intriguing discussion emerged, focusing on the complexities and significant challenges organizations encounter when modernizing their IT infrastructure to adopt highly efficient models, like Google’s container-centric approach. One of the key takeaways was the common underestimation of what true IT modernization involves. This often leads to disappointment when companies attempt to transition to open-source solutions or move away from legacy systems.
We also discussed the challenges of replacing essential, outdated equipment that may be decades old yet still functional. This is typically due to high replacement costs, compatibility issues, or the “if it works, don’t fix it” mentality. Finally, we explored the trade-offs between open-source solutions, such as open-source hypervisors and Linux distributions, and traditional enterprise support models.
Conference Wrap Up
We then returned for the final wrap-up of the conference, which emphasized expressing gratitude to all attendees and looking forward. The speaker extended thanks to the participants, the community, and especially the diverse range of sponsors, including founding partners, new core partners, premier sponsors, gold sponsors, and media sponsors. All of whom played a vital role in making the event possible.
Vendors and sponsors then handed out their prizes. The speakers stressed the importance of attendee feedback through a survey to inform their decisions about future event locations and improvements. Lastly, the speaker announced the exciting global expansion of the event to Melbourne, Australia, and emphasized the board’s ongoing efforts in organizing such a successful gathering.
Going Home
After the conference closed, we took the time to walk around the University of Minnesota’s campus and were impressed with how they were able to mix new and old buildings to create a beautiful setting for learning.
On the way out of the hotel, I stopped to chat with Jack Madden, Sr. Product Marketing Manager at Omnissa.
He shared how much he enjoyed the conference and expressed his excitement about the upcoming Omnissa ONE Global 2025, their annual conference scheduled to take place in Las Vegas at the Cosmopolitan from September 15th to 17th. He mentioned a few of the sessions, which sounded fascinating.
You can find out more about the event at https://www.omnissa.com/omnissa-one/
Final Thoughts on Amplify
While flying home, looking at Mt. Hood, I thought about how Amplify is such a unique conference.
The event is truly vendor-neutral, and this neutrality is best demonstrated by its diverse list of sponsors. It included major thin-client companies like 10Zig and IGEL, as well as cloud giants AWS and Google. Additionally, both leaders in the VDI space, Omnissa (Horizon) and Citrix, were present. This variety provides participants with the opportunity to hear from a wide range of sources, each offering their perspective on the end-user computing (EUC) landscape.
A heartfelt thanks to the people (mostly volunteers) who sacrificed much time and energy to make this event happen. We were glad to be media sponsors of the event.
Engage with StorageReview
Newsletter | YouTube | Podcast iTunes/Spotify | Instagram | Twitter | TikTok | RSS Feed
