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Mark: Hey, Simon. Thanks for joining us before we get the weekend started. How's everything?

Simon: Everything is good. Thank you. Thanks for having me.

Mark: Yeah, absolutely. So, Digital Workspace Alliance, you know, certainly, I find it interesting because it really does bring a group of members together and really rally around this term or this concept of a digital workspace. I'm curious, what attracted you guys and why did you join?

Simon: I think the ecosystem that is in and surrounds end-user computing has been important for as long as I can remember. I don't think there's ever been a case where anybody has been able to deploy a technology and it's been a silver bullet. You know, it doesn't matter whether it's printing, profile management, application management, endpoints, security, authentication, that ecosystem continues to be very, very important.

It's important to customers that are deploying end-user compute solutions, it's important to partners, and I think it's obviously important to the whole market. You know, being part of something and educating and enabling people to understand the art of what is possible and also, you know, work your way through that minefield, you know, that is deploying a solution like VDI or desktop as a service because for some organizations, they have just been deploying traditional desktops for many, many years.

And maybe, you know, it seems like a great idea to move over and deploy a virtual desktop or a hosted desktop. But, you know, we've been in the space a long time, lessons have been learned, and that's what I think an ecosystem alliance partnership is all about.

Mark: No, it makes total sense. I mean, we certainly see the adoption of those technologies you mentioned. VDI and DaaS certainly got a lot of attention even prior to the pandemic. Really were even, very much, I'll say the strategy to respond to the pandemic and then certainly a bigger strategy going forward as people kind of get back to office and think about, you know, what is their digital workspace strategy moving forward?

So, just another kind of thought is, you know, you mentioned a lot of these different pieces, where do you see IGEL really snapping into that digital workspace the best? Is it security? Is it endpoint? Is it a little bit of...just kind of give us a little bit of clarification.

Simon: Even though you are deploying a virtualized or a hosted desktop, either on-prem or in the cloud, every single employee still needs a device of some sort to access that workspace that's been delivered. The challenge that organizations typically face is that the device that is being deployed, you don't want to have to worry about it.

You don't want to have to worry about the management of it. You don't want to have to worry about the security of it, particularly if you've invested a load of time and money in, you know, building this hosted desktop environment and securing it, etc. So, if you're going to deploy Windows in the cloud, why would you want to deploy Windows on the edge? And that's where our job comes in.

An endpoint operating system that provides secure, very easy-to-consume access into that cloud environment. So, you know, yes, it's got a security play. Yes, it's got an endpoint management play, but really what we are is an endpoint operating system that gives an employee access into their workspace.

Mark: Makes all good sense. And I think that's a good way to be thinking about it as people are looking at, you know, how they evolve further and kind of scale with their digital workspace, you know, may look like inside of their organization. So, I think the alliance and the ecosystem that you guys have really brought together is important to help think through...help companies think through how they consider those strategies.

So, I appreciate you taking the time with us today. And as always, you know, looking forward to our next conversation and we'll checkback in soon, I'm sure.

Simon: Mark, thank you.