Author Note: This is a guest post by Jeff McNaught, Executive Director, Marketing and Chief Strategy Officer, Cloud Client-computing at Dell
When Dell Wyse Cloud Connect first became available in January we were ecstatic to be pioneering an entirely new end user device category. There’s no other gadget like it, offering cloud access with enterprise-level security and manageability, in a form factor just slightly larger than a USB stick. Cloud Connect brought organizations a compelling new mobility option to enhance user productivity without sacrificing IT control and manageability.
Of course, at launch we knew that our work with Cloud Connect had just begun. Since January we’ve kept our eyes and ears open to ensure that the device’s evolution keeps up with our customers’ needs and demands. Our goal is to continuously make people’s jobs easier by enhancing convenience and usability for end users, while simultaneously improving and facilitating IT control and security.
Today we’re very excited to announce our first functionality updates to Cloud Connect, developed directly from customer and analyst feedback. The focus for this round was improving the user experience, expanding desktop virtualization options, enhancing IT management and control, and offering a true end-to-end digital signage solution.
The updates include:
- Cloud Connect Controller App: This new app, available from the Google Play Store, transforms any Android device into a keyboard and mouse for Cloud Connect. By pairing Cloud Connect with the Android device via Bluetooth, users can interact with the device without requiring a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse, with all basic Android gestures supported including Swipe, Long Press, Drag, Pinch Open and Pinch Close, as well as keyboard strokes. Also, through the app Cloud Connect now supports the Android navigation bar.
- Advanced Capabilities for Digital Signage: This update makes using Cloud Connect as a digital signage engine easier by enabling people to install and update digital signage through a secure digital (SD) card inserted into Cloud Connect. This means digital signage partners can preload their apps directly or remotely onto Cloud Connect. Additionally, people can now enable digital signage persistence and integrity by configuring lock screen and stay-awake settings and disabling notifications.
- Improved User Experience: IT administrators can now bypass Cloud Client Manager (CCM) log-in and boot directly into the main interface and digital signage apps. The interface has also been updated to have a “desktop-like” look and feel, and the Bluetooth pairing wizard has been enhanced. Cloud Connect also now offers Ethernet over USB support.
- Google Dynamic Touch: When connected to either a touch screen or non-touch monitor, Cloud Connect now detects and indicates touch compatibility for each app downloaded from the Google Play store.
- Dell Wyse vWorkspace client inclusion: Now pre-installed on Cloud Connect in addition to clients for Citrix XenDesktop and VMware Horizon View, the Wyse vWorkspace client offers vWorkspace customers easy-to-use access to their systems.
Thanks to its rich feature set, customers are already singing the praises of Dell Wyse Cloud Connect.
“Dell Cloud Connect is one of the most exciting projects that we’ve seen for a long time,” said Zach Rustad, Senior Account Manager, Nanonation. “We see it as an excellent platform for being able to deploy digital signage because of its powerful processing capabilities, great graphics capabilities, its very small footprint, and a price point that makes it very affordable and can cut down the cost of digital signage deployments.”
This update is just one more way Dell strives to enrich and simplify our customers’ mobility journeys. It is immediately available for all existing and new Dell Wyse Cloud Connect devices. Give it a try and let us know what you think!