Something a co-worker asked me made me think about a way to store, backup and deliver ThinApp applications over the web from anywhere with as little jumping through hoops as possible.  While this is by no means a go-to market solution (VMWare View using PCOIP would be much better suited for that) or even a complete thought I was thinking what if we uploaded ThinApp applications to a SharePoint 2010 document library?  How would they be accessed?  Could we use it as the file share for our View/XenApp repository?  What benefits would it provide?

So I gave it a shot.  The answer is still being tested but the initial results seem promising.  By using the UNC path ability of a SharePoint doc library you can point View/XenApp to this repository by utilizing \sharepointaddress.domainname.comsitedoclibraryaddress", you can also do this from anywhere on your network (as UNC implies) and over the internet if your SharePoint 2010 solution is internet facing to access the ThinApp applications from anywhere (given the right credentials of course).

But this also had some decent side effects, you could use the power of the SharePoint document library to add descriptive data to each ThinApp application.  Such as last modified date, who packaged it, who owns it, license information, notes on the packaege, supported operating systems, etc...  Users could download the packages themselves from the library (again, credentials) and run them locally if desired.  You could configure alerts, workflows, all that fancy management stuff that makes SharePoint a great business tool to help IT manage the packaged applications.

Then there is the backups, a few lines in a scheduled PowerShell script and you have complete backups of your entire SharePoint farm including content in doc libraries.  Making backup management and restoring simple and more reliable.

Leave your thoughts below if you can come up with any more uses... more to come.