Attachmate Reflection 2011 Marries Mainframe Access, Virtualization 
Attachmate Corp will marry cutting-edge mainframe terminal emulation and virtualization technologies in July when it ships its next-gen Reflection 2011 with native support for Microsoft App-V’s application virtualization environment. The product aims to reduce cost and complexity for moving to Windows 7.
Attachmate Corp will marry cutting-edge mainframe terminal emulation and virtualization technologies in July when it ships its next-gen Reflection 2011 with native support for Microsoft App-V’s application virtualization environment. The product aims to reduce cost and complexity for moving to Windows 7.
Attachmate will be among the first software vendors to natively support Microsoft App-V, Kris Lall, product marketing manager for Attachmate told Integration Developer News.
Reflection 2011 aims to make it easier and most cost-effective for IT admins to provide various desktop and remote users secure access to mainframe-based mission-critical enterprise applications.
“More and more organizations are looking to migrate to the Windows 7 platform while simultaneously using the latest virtualization technologies,” Lall told IDN. The latest version is built on .NET and with a Windows 7 look and feel, and provides unseen support for App-V and desktop virtualization, he added.
"With Reflection 2011, virtualization is a powerful approach for delivering the application and data each user needs in the way they want to see it.”
Kris Lall,
Product Marketing Manager, Reflection 2011
Attachmate Corp
Reflection 2011 will save customers “significant time and resources” by giving them centralized control over desktop applications across the enterprise -- no matter what operating system they’re using, he added.
Reflection 2011 can be deployed via server or client-based virtualization technologies, maximizing IT flexibility and eliminating incompatibilities with other operating systems and applications. The offering will securely connects browser and Windows users to applications on IBM, UNIX, and OpenVMS hosts, and will support desktops using Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows XP, Microsoft Office 2007/2010, .NET, VBA, diverse security architectures, and virtualization technologies.
“Microsoft’s App-V technology allows enterprise applications to be deployed in real time, to any Windows client and is becoming a ‘must-have’ for organizations,” said Karri Alexion-Tiernan, Microsoft director of product management said in a statement.
“Attachmate remains committed to offering our customers the most advanced terminal emulation technology that can be seamlessly deployed with the latest virtualization technologies,” Lall added.
“Our customers are interested in virtualization options, such as Microsoft’s App-V, to solve complexity of moving to and supporting Windows 7, Lall told IDN. “With Reflection 2011, virtualization is a powerful approach for delivering the application and data each user needs in the way they want to see it,” Lall told IDN. Microsoft’s App-V lets Attachmate “take a bite out of complexity” involved in allowing admins to provide that to users, he added.
Inside Reflection 2011’s
Latest User, Admin Features
Keeping the learning curve low is a key theme in Reflection 2011.
Reflection 2011 also allows users (and admins) to choose whether to update the users’ UI to the new ‘Ribbon’ interface or not, Lall said.
A lot of companies looking to upgrade to Windows 7, but may not want to force all users to learn a new UI at all at once, Lall explained. Reflection 2011 also comes with tools to let admins and end users configure the product to meet user requirements to access host applications, and balances that with admin controls.
For example, secure connectivity is an area where Attachmate is making upgrades easy for users and admin. “If I am running App-V on the laptop and I need to do an SSL connection to the host, nothing will be different,“ told IDN. “Keys and digital certificates in either context effectively the same, so there shouldn’t be any problem.”
The same for data privacy. “We also prevent users from hurting themselves,” Lall said, noting that Reflection 2011 runs with Windows 7’s user Account Controls (UAC) APIs, which let admins define what the user has access to. Further. Reflection has “data privacy filters” which prevent desktop users from breaching security policies or stealing sensitive data. “Sensitive fields, such as Social Security numbers are shown with pound signs or asterisks” which are generated by an algorithm in the admin tool, he added.
While App-V requests are only starting to pop up on Attachmate’s radar, Lall expects the momentum for virtualization solutions to grow. “App-V will provide a great option to admins, as it really uses virtualization to simplify desktop management, and a whole range of software upgrade issues related to platform and application compatibility,” Lall said.
