Sepago released a white paper on User Profiles, this document describes the concepts behind Windows user profiles and explains common pitfalls and how to avoid them – both with and without the profile optimization solution Citrix User Profile Manager.

From the Management summary:

ser profiles store application and configuration data for individual users. Contrary to popular belief, this data is business critical; since each user’s familiar working environment is contained within his or her profile.Thus, successfully managing this kind of data is essential for any enterprise, because in-consistent or lost personal settings cause expensive help desk calls and effectively prevent the user from working.

Instead of providing several different mechanisms to resolve the challenges of user profile manage-ment, Citrix Profile Management overcomes the inherent limitations of Windows user profiles by re-placing the classic process of loading and storing personal settings with an advanced approach of merging settings from several devices and sessions. Citrix Profile Management not only supports ter-minal servers, but also client operating systems. As today’s application delivery methods become more and more heterogeneous it is more important than ever to provide one single set of personal settings on any device via any delivery method.

As application and desktop delivery becomes more complex, the limitations of classic Windows user profiles become evident because they were designed only with fat clients in mind. But in today’s world of virtualized applications and desktops, the basic assumption is not true anymore that every user accesses applications from only one device. Citrix Profile Management overcomes these fundamental limitations of classical user profiles and combines high flexibility and performance with practically maintenance-free operation.

The white paper can be found here.