Friday, January 15, 2010

VMware goes after Xenapp Customers for VDI with Amazing Offer

This By-The-Bell story reveals some very aggressive and impressive announcements of VMware going after Xenapp customers and move to the  VMware View VDI offerning.
The highlights I found most interesting are below:
  • It offers XenApp customers a free upgrade to VMware View 4 Premier, but with an innovative twist that converts a normal CapEx budget expense into OpEx. Customers just make 36 monthly payments equivalent to the Subscription Advantage costs they had been paying to Citrix.
  • AltTech estimates that XenApp customers spend on average around $75 per concurrent user per year in Subscription Advantage licensing to remain current. XenApp customers can instead spend the equivalent in monthly payments, without any cost for financing, over a three-year period and will receive a free VMware View 4 Premier license (also licensed by concurrent user).
  • View 4 Premier includes the back-end vSphere Enterprise Plus licensing as well as ThinApp for application virtualization.
  • The program, which requires customer credit approval, includes 3 years of basic Subscription and Support on the View 4 Premier licenses.
  • Customers will receive a free physical PC infrastructure assessment with SysTrack VMP from Lakeside Software
  • One of the big appeals of the virtual desktop model to IT administrators is its simplicity – it's just Windows running in a VM. It doesn't require specialists who know how to manipulate applications, dive into printing intricacies and work with registry hacks.
  • Providing the assessment, migration planning and financing to make this a nearly cost neutral process for the end user creates exciting new sales opportunities for our resellers."

6 comments:

Unknown said...

Great info...

Jay - I read in one of your blogs that you do not use a broker for your VDI sessions. How do you go about managing all of your sessions? Also, do you just have your users RDP to the VDI name when they need to connect? I'm on the fence about putting in either a Citrix/VMware broker, but have not made up my mind. I currently just spin up the VM's on my VDI cluster and allow the user to connect using RDP. As we grow and get more and more remote VDI users I feel a broker would/will come in handy.. I'm POC'ing both brokers now.. Just curious to how you're managing. Thanks, Brian

Jay Rogers said...

We do a 1-1 mapping of user to single VDI machine. VMware's Broker solutions with VMware View are now really ready for prime time and the way we will go as somepoint hopefully this year. You can create pools and deploy from a single master image copy and patch from one location. Much better than a 1-1 setup like we are doing now.

Proper training and planning are needed for a VMware View setup.

Jay Rogers said...

Aslo, before thin provisioning came about with vSphere 4 the VDI large scale was a rough sale due to storage needs...but that is fixed now as well.

Unknown said...

Thanks for the info. Yeah, View 4 and XD 4 have come a long way in the past few years...

Take a look at Xen Desktop as you POC different brokers. From all our testing and user feedback it's putting View 4 to shame.

Being a VMware guy this wasn't easy news to swallow, but XD really is a better product for my environment.

Now, Xenserver still has a few years to even get where ESX 3.5 was.

pesos said...

Hi guys, we are a long-time Xenapp shop, currently finishing up our migration to XA6.

Always trying to keep my eyes open WRT vdi though, and wondering if and when it will become a viable/sensible option for us to consider.

We use Hyper-V rather than VMWare though - and are curious if you guys have tried out xendesktop with hyper-V?

Jay Rogers said...

I have not tried out Xen Desktop personally...and I have no desires to run Hyper-V. Gartner has announced at Vmworld 2010 though Xen Desktop and Vmware View are Enterprise ready. Microsoft (gartner said) is not even trying to compete in this space and suggesting Xendesktop. One other product I plan to test next week is Kaviza (www.kaviza.com), Best of Vmworld 2010 VDI winner. It allows easy scale out and Citrix HDX graphics (without licensing it).

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