We recently sat down with IGEL Community member & VMware EUC Champions Hans Kraaijeveld to discuss his experiences working with IGEL's products and solutions.
Can you tell us a bit about yourself, your role in IT, etc., and something fun about yourself?
My name is Hans Kraaijeveld, I am an EUC Consultant/Architect at Fondo in the Netherlands. I have been in IT all my life, things went horribly wrong when my Dad put me in front of an Apple II when I was four years old, and now here we are… I help customers design, implement, upgrade, troubleshoot VMware Horizon, and educate them about it in my daily work, and I'm a VMware Certified Instructor. I have way too many hobbies in my spare time, riding a motorbike, flying race/freestyle quadcopters, writing about music, windsurfing, geocaching, grilling meat, and having a drink, preferably with friends, and much more. Something funny? I don't know. You may have seen me head banging front row at IGEL Disrupt's evening get together last time it was an actual in-person event… or you may not have 😊
How long have you been working with IGEL technologies?
I have known IGEL for quite some years, but working with them has been relatively recent. I work at Fondo, which has become a partner of IGEL not too long ago, which of course, had nothing to do with anything I did or said.
You recently had an interesting IGEL rollout. Can you share some of the specifics with us and why they choose IGEL over other endpoint solutions?
A recent project had me helping a customer with their VMware Horizon deployment. In one of the sessions, a question about endpoints came to the surface. The team had hardly any experience dealing with endpoints, as another team did this in the past. From this moment on, however, they had to also look at managing this kind of solution. At that time, I suggested they look at IGEL as a solution for their predicament. The company tested several solutions in a head-to-head comparison. In terms of speed and simplicity, there was no question which product was the top one: IGEL. They will use it in a production facility, where beer and other beverages are being bottled, packed, and made ready for shipment! So IGEL supports getting beers to your supermarket and bar from now on!!
Was IGEL your first experience with 'thin clients'?
Hardly… Having worked in IT for quite a while, I can remember supporting Green screen terminals connected to a serial network, running a Warehouse Management System on HP-UX. Yes, I'm that old. 😝
How do you see IGEL solutions compare and contrast to your other thin client-type solutions?
IGEL differs from the rest by focusing not on the thin client part but on the management and operating system. Its simplicity in setup is simply remarkable and helps to sell itself. Especially the prominent vendors such as Dell and HP have had no focus on what such an endpoint.
When would you recommend an IGEL style device over a traditional style "fat" client?
If you mean physical device, then it would be to save space on your desk. But probably, the use of a fat client would be to be able to work locally. If all you do is connect to your cloud-hosted desktop or applications, then you're better off with an Operating System that is lean and mean and also secure. This is what IGEL OS brings.
Can you share any other impactful use cases you have seen where you were able to leverage IGEL?
Teams optimization for a number of cloud solutions still isn't up to par, which meant running Teams from an existing cloud solution is very limited, or the performance is very poor. The IGEL OS actually lets you run Linux-based software locally. As there is an actual Linux version of the Teams client, this was run locally, while all other apps were accessed in the public cloud-hosted VDI desktop for the time being.
What do you feel the most significant challenges relating to working with IGEL, and were you able to work around these issues?
There are simply too many excellent people working at IGEL, and it's hard to compete with that. They are all very driven, committed, and pursue excellence, but besides this, they are all very sweet, compassionate, and lovely people. I found that acting the same way works best. Being cooperative, kind, and just enjoying working together makes it an awesome experience. 😊
What is your favorite aspect of working with IGEL software?
If I have to choose one thing, it's the sheer simplicity of the setup. Having an environment ready to onboard literally thousands of endpoints in under an hour is something I still find to be very impressive. It just works.
Can you share your experience as a member of the IGEL Community?
Well, there's one that comes to mind, and that's meeting a person within the Community: the head of the IGEL Community, Doug Brown. Not only has he set up this fantastic Community of, I believe, above 6000 members now, he's also very much fun as a person!
If you had one wish for IGEL, what would it be?
To be able to grow as a company but not lose its awesome current identity.
Special thanks to Hans for taking the time for this interview. We truly appreciated it!
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