The nitty gritty: Brian Madden notes MokaFive has the first "real" layering product

Brian Madden has just written up an article on our 2.0 product titled "The first “real” layering product? MokaFive’s new v2.0 looks pretty good!" and I would like to follow up on it by providing a few additional details.
As Brian mentions in his article, our technology separates the system state, application state, user installed applications, user data and preferences transparently. To the end users, when they use a Windows XP LivePC, they will just use it the same way as they are using their Windows laptop.

An important point is that we allow the IT administrator to customize and control the policies. An IT admin can enable or disable user installed applications from the centralized console and also edit the layering policy file and determine what the system should or should not preserve. For example, IT can choose to only approve use of MSN instant messenger but not Yahoo IM. He can edit the layering policy file to only preserve all the settings and files related to MSN IM. If the user downloads and installs Yahoo IM on the corporate LivePC, it will be wiped clean when the user reboots the LivePC.

There is a misconception that layering is easy. When scrutinized, it is clear that it's quite a complex proposition. Our first implementation three years ago was similar to other offerings today. Originally we used junction point to separate the Windows "Documents and Settings" folder to a separate disk and then preserved that disk. However, we learned that does not work for all applications and system preferences. Some times applications or the system needs to put data in locations other than the user folder. That's why we spent time developing this advanced system for dealing with sophisticated requirements for the broad variety of applications a user could choose to install.

The layering technology is cool but what makes it very powerful is the flexibility it provides to the IT admin to customize for your organization's needs. In the upcoming weeks, we will be writing more articles on how to configure and deploy Windows XP LivePC using this new feature.