Vendor briefing notes: A look at Cameyo, which provides remote apps from the cloud
Cameyo also touts extensive G Suite integration, Azure support, and more.
We’ve been following Cameyo for almost two years now, covering their updates in the Friday Notebook. We have mentioned them several times, so we decided it was time to share our notes in a full write up.
Company info
The current cloud-based version of Cameyo was founded in early 2018, but founder Eyal Dotan originally created Cameyo Packager (aka Cameyo Offline) about a decade ago. Cameyo Packager remains available as a free download through the Cameyo website. It allows organizations to turn any application into an EXE file you can then upload to the cloud. Cameyo is based in North Carolina, and is still a pretty small shop, with half a dozen employees listed on LinkedIn.
What does Cameyo offer?
Cameyo focuses on application virtualization—of course, there are several different flavors of that—and in the case of Cameyo, they utilize remote apps.
Their solution allows organizations to access Windows applications from any device with the app sitting on RDSH on Windows Server 2012 R2 or above, which can be either fully hosted by Cameyo running on Google Cloud or Azure or self-hosted.
While it could be possible to use Cameyo for VDI or DaaS, in a call with Jack in October, CEO Andrew Miller explained that their focus is virtualized application delivery.
Cameyo is designed for easy integration with G Suite, making them worth considering if an organization wants to move to Chrome OS. You can use G Suite for single sign-on, permissions, persistent data storage, and printing. Some of the permissions Cameyo has include copy/paste restrictions, whether to launch the app in a new browser tab or same tab, and whether users can download to data to their local device. Users can just save documents to G Suite, but earlier this year they came out with a new session syncing feature, too.
Once published, admins get a unique URL for each application, which they then share with users. Users open the applications within an HTML5-based browser; Cameyo also has an Android app. Cameyo’s product is API based, so organizations can connect it to their own portal for employees to access this way, if preferred.
Organizations pay on a per-named user monthly subscription. If fully hosted by Cameyo, they handle all licensing aspects, leaving organizations to pay a monthly subscription, which is $15 for education organizations or $25 for other organizations (reduced to $20 per month if paid annually). The price range drops to $10 to $15 per month for organizations preferring to be self-hosted. For ISVs, you can pay $100 per month for self-hosting, $250 for their automated demo service plan, or $500 for their automated trial service.
To keep costs in check, organizations can schedule when apps get spun up for use and when they go into hibernation. An example could be 9 to 5 during the week for use, with it in hibernation outside those hours. However, if a user needs to access an application outside normal hours, they can; it’ll just be about a two-minute wait while it spins back up.
Recent announcements
Over the last couple months, Cameyo added a couple new features to their products and a free-to-use tool. The biggest news is that they support Microsoft Azure now, alongside GCP.
Cameyo also added two new security services, one is a tool built into their existing products and the other is available for anyone to use. The first tool is RDP Port Shield, which is now included in their delivery platform, that dynamically opens and closes ports. After a user authenticates and initiates a session, their IP gets whitelisted, allowing them access to a port; once they log out, the port closes. The second tool is RDPmon, which provides information around RDP vulnerabilities in your organization, such as the number of attempted connections to your server, the number of applications in each server, and the number of users on RDP and the apps they’re using.
Customers
So, what kind of customers does Cameyo currently have? A good chunk of their customers want to move to Chromebooks and G Suite but have a few legacy Windows applications they need to continue to access. Cameyo also attracts cloud infrastructure providers, education customers (largely because of their desire to migrate to Chrome OS), and ISVs that want to offer easy-to-access demos of their applications or want to more widely offer their Windows application.
In a call with Jack, Andrew mentioned that some of the potential customers they attract either currently use Citrix or were considering it. They leave Citrix for Cameyo to cut costs because all they wanted was app virtualization, not VDI.
Final thoughts
We were surprised to find out they’re still a small operation given their expanding products and customer base. We do like the idea of something that’s as simple as possible, oriented at Chromebook shops, and the G Suite integration looks pretty convenient. There will always be a place for all sizes of vendors to target different segments.
Do you have a favorite product that isn’t on our radar yet? Let us know.
