Cameyo Gives Partners ‘Simple and Secure Means’ to Provision Fully Functional Windows Apps in the Cloud

Cloud may be all the rage, but it doesn’t automatically accommodate all applications.

A number of organizations still rely on legacy programs — in particular, those based on Windows — that do not play well, or at all, in cloud settings. If the question arises whether an application qualifies as “legacy,” refer to Gartner’s definition: “An information system that may be based on outdated technologies, but is critical to day-to-day operations.”

The founders of Cameyo identified and understood this challenge, subsequently starting the company in January 2018. Then, in July of this year, the Cary, North Carolina-based vendor earned its first patent for the way in which it delivers Windows desktop applications to any device. (Hint: It does so through HTML5 browsers. Other businesses bringing legacy apps into the cloud tend to so through cloud virtual machines or containers.)

That win sent Cameyo into a flurry of activity. And partners will want to take note.

Why Cameyo Matters

ESG’s Mark Bowker

Perhaps Mark Bowker, senior analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG), said it best: “With Cameyo, channel partners have a simple and secure means to deliver Windows applications without the worries of managing a full payload of the operating system.”

There is no device management overhead or the “threat presence currently sprayed across endpoint devices,” Bowker told Channel Futures.

Further, as businesses adopt new devices such as the Google Chromebook, Cameyo enables continued access to legacy Windows applications.

“Users don’t need to give up functionality by using the mobile version of the application and can get all the functionality of the Windows application without the complexity and risk of managing a full Windows desktop.”

The collective ease and capabilities appeal to SADA, Synnex, and other partners including resellers and independent software vendors who already have teamed with Cameyo. As for why they are joining forces with the company, all one has to do is examine the latest announcements.

Securing Remote Desktop Protocol Ports

Ransomware attacks grew by 118% over the last year. That’s according to the August 2019 edition of the McAfee Labs Threats Report. To make matters worse, “an increasing number

of attacks are gaining access to a company that has open and exposed remote access points, such as RDP and virtual network computing,” McAfee analysts wrote. “RDP credentials can be brute-forced, obtained from password leaks, or simply bought in underground markets.”

Partners know they must protect their enterprise customers as much as possible, and these findings only underscore the urgency of that need. Last month, Cameyo released its RDP Port Shield to address that very gap.

RDP Port Shield is built-in security technology that automatically closes RDP ports. It then dynamically opens and closes ports only to authenticated users, based on white-listed IP addresses, and only when needed. Cameyo says RDP Port Shield works by creating and managing an RDP white-list rule in real-time on the server, through Windows Firewall.

For Cameyo’s channel partners, RDP Port Shield “will help further ease their customers’ cloud migrations by enabling them to deliver any application to…

…any device, from the browser, while also proactively protecting their RDP ports,” said Robb Henshaw, chief marketing officer at Cameyo.

As of publication of this article, Cameyo had rolled out RDP Port Shield to all users, requiring no action from partners or end users. RDP Port Shield does not incur additional cost, either.

Cameyo’s Robb Henshaw

“There are no pricing implications for our channel partners to communicate to their customers,” Henshaw told Channel Futures. “Rather, this provides them the ability to highlight a solution that is proactively addressing their customers’ RDP security concerns without the need to upsell those additional capabilities.”

But Cameyo didn’t stop there. The company also in September introduced RDPmon, a free, open-source monitoring tool for spotting RDP security holes.

“You may not realize what’s happening in your environment,” Hensaw said. “This will show you the entire landscape.”

Any organization may download and install RDPmon on an RDS/cloud server from GitHub.

From RDP to GPU

Cameyo didn’t stop with the RDP releases.

On Oct. 2, the company debuted multitenant support for graphics-intensive applications such as video, graphic design, 3-D rendering and imaging. This removes the same cloud-migration roadblocks organizations faced with their CPU-based applications. Now, they can support between eight and 10 users per GPU for a whole new spectrum of software programs.

“These application types typically require direct access to internal processing power to perform well,” Bowker told Channel Futures. “Cameyo’s support for apps that require GPU puts a stake in the ground to demonstrate that they can deliver some of the most demanding applications without having the application locally installed and maintained on a device. This new means of application access and delivery means users can access applications they may not have been able to in the past and are not tied to a single device. And, IT professionals have a new opportunity to deliver, manage and maintain applications that demand intense graphical processing without having to weld the application to a device.”

Andrew Miller, co-founder and CEO of Cameyo, agreed, adding that the ability to put GPU-based programs into the cloud opens new opportunities to channel partners.

Cameyo’s Andrew Miller

“Smaller ISVs know they need to move to cloud … but the problem is they don’t have a huge development stack,” Miller said.

Quotes for redeveloping software can run into the millions of dollars and extended timelines, he said. One ISV discovered it was only going to gain about 70% parity with Windows desktop functionality after going through all that money and effort — in other words, not good enough.

One ISV, Idealpos, based in Australia, was able to save itself and its resellers substantial money and time through Cameyo. Instead of rejiggering legacy software, Idealpos turned to Cameyo. Partners now may conduct demonstrations of Idealpos’s point-of-sale interface on the web.

“They no longer have to do full installations and full free trials that are expensive, don’t always work and have no revenue guarantees,” Miller said.

For now, Cameyo only is offering the GPU support on Windows PCs and laptops. The…

…company expects to add Chromebooks support by the end of this year and will announce other devices in early 2020.

Of Provisioning and Functionality

Cameyo offers two methods of multitenant access. The first is fully hosted on Google Cloud Platform; the second is self-hosted in any environment, including public, private or hybrid cloud. All functionality remains the same regardless of which option a partner or enterprise chooses.

“As long as you can spin up a Windows server, you can use Cameyo,” Miller said.

Most other cloud-native providers lock in customers to a specific cloud or, with on-premises variations, have to install applications and gateways, “which basically becomes Citrix-lite,” Miller said. “And in most cases, you want to get away from Citrix. With us, you don’t have to add anything.”

In fact, Miller said, most organizations moving from Citrix to Cameyo see a 10x decrease in the number of servers they must manage when self-hosting. Not only does this cut down on capital expenditures, it also reduces money spent on licensing.

Cameyo also integrates with Dropbox and Gdrive, features autosave and can be customized.

That’s all useful, but what about how applications work once uploaded through Cameyo? Indeed, one of the most frustrating aspects of using browser-based versions of Windows applications, and especially Microsoft Office, is the truncated functionality. As one example, Excel on the web does not support macros. Cameyo solves the issue.

“When you double-click Excel, instead of opening a desktop app, it opens the full desktop version in the browser,” Henshaw said. “All the functionality you’re used to is there.”

That applies to any program funneled through Cameyo — think anything driven not just by Windows but also Adobe, computer-aided drafting software and so on.

To prove this on the spot, Cameyo supports demonstrations from its website, from the cloud. Partners who take advantage of this encounter a shorter sales cycle “because leads are much warmer when they come in,” Henshaw said. “From a channel perspective, this is a relatively easy, if not incredibly easy, product to demo and sell.”

Speaking of Partners…

Cameyo runs a two-tier partner program: Standard and Preferred.

Anyone may join the Standard level, which comes with a certain percentage discount and vendor materials and other support. Synnex and SHI are two of Cameyo’s key Standard partners, and each brings unique strengths. Synnex has its own Google team, which works well in terms of resellers doing more than just ordering, Henshaw said, while SHI targets the government sector.

Meanwhile, the Preferred tier is more exclusive than Standard.

“We’re pretty selective about who we let into the Preferred program,” Henshaw said.

Partners must meet a specific need — specializing in an untapped Cameyo vertical such as oil and gas, or education, for instance, or operating in a new geography. Preferred partners such as SADA agree to pay Cameyo $500 per month.

“We believe that both sides should have skin in the game,” Cameyo writes on its website. “Your monthly fee goes to providing you…

… the benefits we offer.”

However, once Preferred partners meet $500 in monthly recurring commission, the charge goes away.

Support for Preferred partners includes joint promotions, demonstration servers, playbooks for marketing programs, white-labeling options, offers an additional 10% discount and more.

Cameyo is open to talking with potential partners who want to be part of the Preferred tier. Those partners would have to comply with all aforementioned requirements, of course, yet “if they really focus on a vertical that’s important to us in a certain country that we really don’t have access to right now, then we’d be willing to bring them into the fold,” Henshaw said.

Finally, Cameyo provides deal registration to all partners. The company says it does not compete with the indirect channel.

Pricing for end users varies depending on whether they opt for the CPU- or GPU-based products, and whether they rely on a channel partner providing additional services that might incur more expense. For its part, however, Cameyo includes all costs in its pricing. For example, the fully hosted version of basic CPU software costs $25 per user per month.

“There is no bill shock at the end of the month,” Henshaw said.