Wave 1: Workspace ONE UEM Is Getting Modernized
Radical changes, radical benefits
Workspace ONE UEM is modernizing, and in particular, containerizing. We’re delivering the modernization changes in a series of waves, of which this blog post is announcing the first: Wave 1. I’m excited to tell you about the journey we’re on, the improvements we’ve made, and how you are going to benefit.
Note: For the latest news on Wave 2, see Wave 2: CI/CD and what it means for SaaS customers.
Where are we going?
The short answer is that we started on the road to modernization from a monolithic platform to a containerized one. It sounds simple, but it’s a radical change that results in major improvements.
How will we get there?
We gave the Workspace ONE UEM platform a makeover, with a new, modernized and containerized architecture that simplifies provisioning while maintaining consistency. We created a series of self-sufficient microservices. These microservices are key for workflows you are probably already familiar with, and they also introduce new capabilities, all powered by the Control Plane. The Control Plane is the home of new and improved services which are key to the modernization platform and performance, as we progress with modernization.
Figure 1: Modernization: From monolithic to containerization, powered by Control Plane
Why go there?
The bottom line is benefits. The radical changes we’ve made have resulted in radical performance improvements as well as a bunch of cool new features. Let’s take a closer look.
New features and benefits
With modernization, come many performance improvements. For example, let’s say you’ve got a large enrollment, which requires the scaling of some of your services. The Control Plane is built to scale those individual services in order to meet that demand.
Improvements and enhancements
Along with new and improved services, Control Plane also brings many improvements and enhanced capabilities, along with the usual issue fixes. Some of these improvements and enhancements include:
- Better performance. With less reliance on the traditional database, we can expect improved behavior as workloads are transferred over, including both those in this wave and in the next.
- Greater self-sufficiency. We are now setting up self-sufficient services. Self-sufficiency means changes to each service don’t impact the other services. When components—such as sampling, smart groups, assignments, and so on—are tightly interrelated, even a small change to one impacts the others. That tends to slow down development of new features because they introduce risk to multiple components. With containerization, however, changes to a component impact that component only. That lowers the risks involved in changes and helps test each isolated use case more thoroughly. It is also easier to identify and resolve issues. Overall, reliability on our product increases dramatically.
- Increased scalability. With the self-sufficient abstracted services, horizontal scaling is improved. Environments can scale services as needed, both ad hoc and automated. For example, if an enrollment burst occurs, your new modernized platform detects that the relevant services are under pressure, and responds by increasing the number of underlying services to handle the profiles being generated. The Control Plane helps you grow these services and react to service needs as quickly as possible.
- More responsive development. Containerization provides the ability to develop and release new features to you sooner, without having large dependencies on many other features. Containerization results in shorter build times, faster feature development, and faster bug fixing, with the introduction of a CICD pipeline. Containerization also provides improved test coverage from the reduction of interdependent services. Containerization is not a silver bullet, but it addresses many challenges and improves the pace at which new value-add capabilities and feature requests can be met.
Are we there yet?
Yes, but the new architecture is available only to a select audience. Let me explain.
This is a transformational journey as we make these changes in stages (this being the first). We built new self-sufficient services, all powered by Control Plane. We keep the legacy canonical SQL dataset on hand when we need it, but meanwhile we are needing it less and less as we progress on our modernization and containerization journey. Whenever we can, we utilize the individual microservices and their databases. The microservices are enabled already for all shared SaaS environments, and open the horizon for many new possibilities.
Can I get it now?
The new containerized architecture, the Control Plane itself, and some of the services on top of the Control Plane are now in place. It is currently available for all shared SaaS and being enabled for dedicated customers per-request – so reach out to your SAMs/TAMS/CSMs. Keep an eye out for broader availability; this blog post is just the first of a series to communicate about the next stage of our journey.
Take-aways
That’s it in a nutshell: Workspace ONE UEM is modernizing and containerizing. We’re delivering the modernization changes in a series of waves, of which this blog post is announcing the first wave.
The move to modernization and containerization—with the reduced reliance on the canonical database and self-sufficient services—reaps many benefits. Companies that were formerly impacted by the need to scale can now do so automatically. New features can be added faster and with less risk, such as removing entanglements and fully automating test coverage capacity. Changes and updates can also be rolled out faster. Performance has improved, test coverage has improved, build time has lowered, scalability enhanced, and more.
Wave 1 includes resource delivery optimization:
- Increased single environment capacity up to 2 million devices
- Increased speed of resource delivery up to 3x faster for 100K+ deployments
- Ability to enable Freestyle Desktop, Freestyle Mobile (watch for the tech preview coming up!), Updates, Sensors & Scripts, improved Windows Updates, and more
Want to learn more?
As we continue to deliver the waves of modernization changes, keep your eyes peeled for the next wave on Digital Workspace Tech Zone!