Our Company
We do things differently
We are an employee-owned software company built by people, for people, engineered with the purpose of crafting technology that genuinely serves our customers.
We are not just a company; we are a community of passionate individuals—engineers, designers, thinkers, and dreamers—united by a shared vision to make a tangible difference in the world through technology. Our commitment is to develop solutions that empower, enhance, and elevate the human experience, bridging the gap between technological innovation and practical, everyday needs.
In stark contrast to private-equity-driven entities, where the bottom line often takes precedence over the well-being of customers and employees, Apporto prioritizes people over profits. Our business model is built on the belief that true success comes from delivering value, fostering trust, and nurturing long-term relationships with our clients and the community at large.
We saw a need for a next-generation VDI solution that catered to today’s environment of remote users, diverse endpoints, and hybrid infrastructures. Our vision was to create a solution that runs seamlessly in the browser, supports multiple OSes (Windows, Mac, Linux), is simple to administer, and, most importantly, remains affordable. Apporto, with its state-of-the-art architecture and user-centric design, is the embodiment of that vision.
A Leadership Team with Big Ideas
Antony Awaida
Founder and CEO
Antony Awaida holds an MS degree from MIT. Spent decades in Silicon Valley with large (Oracle) and small companies (Intellicorp). Antony is passionate about taking complex matters and making them simple. When he is not working with the Apporto team, Antony can be found tending to his grapes and olives.
Daniel Hutchison
Chief Technology Officer
Leads the DevOps and Unix teams at Apporto. Daniel has a background in Computer and Electrical engineering. He has over 24 years of experience working in the development and operational sides of IT. When not tinkering with computers, Daniel can be found exploring the Rocky Mountains on mountain bike or snowboard.
Heather Wasserlein
VP, Product
Heather Wasserlein heads up Product Management and UX Design. She led transformative products at Intuit, Yahoo, and Travelocity. Heather is passionate about product market fit and solving customer pain points. She has 3 degrees from MIT and is an avid traveler, photographer, and yogi.
Sergii Vinnikov
VP, Infrastructure
With over 18 years of experience in IT infrastructure and system architecture, Sergii brings a wealth of expertise. As VP at Apporto, he has overseen critical projects, optimized performance, and consistently delivered results. His proficiency spans cloud computing and network design. Outside of work, Sergii is passionate about martial arts and racing on sailboats.
Max Lushchan
Director, Customer Success
Max heads up the Customer Success and Support departments for Apporto, ensuring customers receive the best consultation and configuration of their environments, as well as best-in-class support. Max has almost two decades of experience in engineering and administration. Max enjoys classic car shows, training for his PPL, and is an avid pickleballer!
Pritesh Patel
VP, Engineering
Pritesh Patel holds MS degrees from Cal Berkeley and University of Florida. He has built and led successful engineering teams at several leading tech companies and startups. He leads the global Engineering team at Apporto focusing on efficiency at scale. When not working, you’ll find him golfing or skiing.
Andy Tynes
VP, Sales
Andy leads sales and alliances for Apporto. A seasoned EUC veteran, he helped build FSLogix from a start-up to 1200+ customers, which led to its acquisition by Microsoft. He has also led teams at Microsoft, IGEL and Rimo3. Andy holds a BA degree from Wake Forest and is all about golf and college football.
Mike Smith
Director, Marketing
Mike heads up Marketing with over 16 years of building and leading high-performance marketing teams. He has a deep background in technology and holds a BBA from Texas State University. His passions are traveling, endurance running, food, exploring, and bringing happiness to his daughter Kaileia.
Phil Spitze
Solutions Architect
Phil has spent his whole career in the EUC space working with a variety of organizations and technologies. He is passionate about helping customers find strategic solutions to their mission critical problems. He's also passionate about artisan bread, lattes, photography, and snowshoeing.
Phil Morgan
Managing Director, Apporto EMEA
Phil holds a BSc in Management from Lancaster University. He's worked with HE, and corporate clients in over 15 countries, and leads the growth of Apporto in EMEA. Phil loves to enhance the end-user compute experience, using technology as an enabler. He's also a keen chess player and an aspiring pilot.
Our Journey
“There’s a way to do it better. Find it.“
-Thomas Edison
Windows Desktop (client required)
In the beginning, it all started with a scrappy entrepreneur with an idea working at his kitchen table. Initially, it was like the Model T - you can choose any color as long as it's black ;). In short, we had a Windows desktop. Initially it required a client.
Delivered a near native virtual desktop in the browser.
Delivered the first near-native virtual desktop in a browser. The company introduced advanced compression and decompression techniques to provide users with a highly responsive user experience - even for applications such as SolidWorks, Adobe, or videoconferencing.
Virtualization of hundreds of apps
Higher ed utilizes hundreds of applications ranging from the most popular labels (e.g. SPSS, AutoCad, and Photoshop) to the most specific (chemistry visualization, machine shop tooling, and nutrition software). Our packaging engineers learn how to virtualize over 300 labels, deploying them on right sized servers, with the optimal configurations. As we gained expertise, setting up new instances became "turn key" and our sales team helped size subscriptions optimally, helping universities have a predictable cost for their subscriptions.
Delivered the first LMS integration to virtual desktop environment
1st customer "Town Hall"
1st of many open discussions with customers (2x annually). Apporto shares future product vision. Customers provide feedback on possible features. The result of this first Town Hall was a clear request for the ability to easily access cloud drives from the virtual desktop. 2 weeks later, we hired an engineer with expertise in this area. He found solutions to issues google had not yet resolved. 2 months later, the Apporto Cloud Mounter was delivered. Initially, users could mount Google Drive and One Drive to their Windows Desktop File Explorer. Later, Box and Dropbox were added. And, finally, the ability to mount a university network drive.
Cloud Mounter
See notes above regarding 1st Customer Town Hall..!
Hyperstreaming
Significant improvements for graphics and video performance available in beta.
Canvas LMS Integration
The first of many LMS integrations, enabling students to login to Canvas and easily find Apporto along with other course resources. The integration simplified the job of the Apporto Admin by automatically passing the class roster and role information.
Delivered the first Mac virtual desktop in the browser
While Windows virtualization has been around for decades, there was no good solution for Macs. Using VNC to remotely access a Mac worked very poorly and required a client. Apporto introduced the first browser-based remote access to the Mac OSX - with a highly performant user experience.
Virtual Classroom
The Virtual Classroom provides faculty with a bird’s eye view of students’ desktops. Faculty can monitor student progress, students can raise their hands, faculty can click to open a larger view of the desktop or request remote control – similar to walking around a physical computer lab to assist students.
Server Management Tools
While Apporto offers a full DAAS solution, including application virtualization (over 300 types of software), we know some universities want to manage this in house. So, we added the ability to create and deploy images.
Cyber Lab
Special desktop utilizing nested virtualization to provide multiple OS's and networks where students can practice ethical hacking.
Hybrid (on-prem + cloud)
Ability to utilize existing on prem computer labs - running Apporto - for remote access. Rather than let an existing Mac Lab on campus gather dust, for example, Apporto was able to route students to these machines (or to the cloud if the number of studnets exceded the number of physical campus machines).
Video Conferencing (in the desktop)
For very secure environments that require all work is done in a virtual desktop, we have enabled video conferencing in the desktop. This will allow your staff and students to use tools like Teams and Zoom, that require a video camera, to be used within the virtual desktop.
Desktop Variants
After installing software on the base image server, Admins can create desktops with a subset of the software easily by selecting from a checklist of available software.
USB Streaming (POC)
Ability to communicate back and forth between the virtual desktop and a USB device connected to the user’s physical device.
Network Objects
For Zero Trust initiatives, ability to grant access to particular network objects by group.
Next Gen Apporto (beta)
Rearchitected for performance and scale.
Asynchronous collaboration tools
What are we cooking up next? Since students and faculty are not always able to communicate in real time (especially with online courses in which both faculty and students may be working professionals with "day jobs").
Join Our Team, We're Hiring!
