Zenworks for Desktops offered a Windows-only web interface for the Launcher. It is understandable why the feature was dropped for ZCM (fragmenting of interface and the relatively crippled functionality of the browser versus the Launcher's other forms). However, web portals with user-based access to web applications are only growing in popularity. Since ZENworks already has a great deal of information pertaining the which web applications a user might access, is increasingly cross-platform, and has a web services back-end, it is appropriate to create a new implementation of the web launcher. This new implementation might be restricted only to providing links to web-based applications (if links to local executables are difficult to stabilize), and could be implemented as a web service suitable for connecting to a portal and central authentication system such as NetIQ Access Manager. The specific need in my organization (a public school district) that is prompting this request is my IT Director's questioning of why we need the ZENWorks Launcher when we are increasingly using web applications and have deployed an Access-Manager based portal.

by: Johnnie O. | over a year ago | Application Mgmt