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Why XenApp Monitoring Is So $#%!?@ Expensive

September 21, 2015 By Andy Milford Leave a Comment

This post is likely going to irritate some folks in our industry, and that’s OK. Frankly, that’s the point.

Let’s Pull Back the Curtain On How Server Based Computing (SBC) / End User Computing Software Is Sold

I’ve now been in the SBC industry for nearly 2 years. Prior to that, I was the CEO of Dorian Software, a Windows log management vendor that helped governments and businesses shore up their network security and compliance.

At Dorian, we sold some through the channel, but sold direct to the end user most of the time. Because of this, we we could deliver max value because we didn’t have to pad our pricing to leave tons of margin for channel partners. It was a win-win for everyone involved – we could close deals quicker, and our customers saved a ton of money and realized a quicker return on their investment.

The Citrix and Server Based Computing Markets Are Heavily Channel Driven. Which Means Businesses Of All Sizes Get Soaked By Higher Costs Down the Line.

In my two short years as RDPSoft’s CEO, I’ve been amazed by how insular the server-based computing / end-user computing market is. Big channel players effectively act as gatekeepers of the market, and unless you bring an expensive product to them from which they can extract healthy margins, they’re not going to talk to you.

When I’ve challenged them in conversations on why more customers don’t buy solutions directly from vendors, they speak with open contempt about how “businesses don’t have the skill or expertise to deploy these solutions on their own.” Given how complex, buggy, and temperamental SBC solutions have become, they may well have a point.

However, there are plenty of admins who deploy these products every day with nothing more than online E-Docs and message boards to guide them. I know, because I talk to them each and every week.

As a consequence of the above, most XenApp Monitoring solutions sold through the channel cost more than $600 per server or $50 per concurrent user. When compared to the nearly $300 difference per concurrent user between XenApp Advanced Edition and XenApp Platinum Edition (which ships with all the EdgeSight / Director monitoring goodies), I suppose $50-$100 per concurrent user becomes a relative bargain for larger enterprises. But it’s still out of reach for most SMB shops. And it’s a complete non-starter for Managed Service Providers.

Here’s What You Get To Pay For When You Buy a XenApp/XenDesktop Monitoring Solution From the Channel

Yes, let’s dissect this. It’s not pretty.

  • The portion of the sale paid to the channel partner by the vendor (typically anywhere from 20% to 50%)
  • All those steak dinners and “lunch and learns” the vendor gets to treat the channel partner to once a quarter, in the hope that the channel partner a.) actually knows how to sell their solution, and b.) doesn’t jump ship to a different vendor that’s promising higher margins.
  • All the “under the table” payments made by the vendor to those “independent” server-based computing / end-user computing “experts” you know and love, so said experts will hawk their products in blog articles, online reviews, and at trade shows. Yes, I know said experts have to eat too, but there’s an appalling lack of transparency about how prevalent this practice is in our industry. Could we have a little more voluntary disclosure, please??!!

The Net Result: SMBs Often Get Priced Out Of the XenApp Monitoring Market

Most of the channel fat cats described above (and by extension, the vendors they partner with) have no interest in dealing with Citrix and RDS deployments in organizations with fewer than 100 concurrent users. Many of them also don’t want to deal with shops that have fewer than 500 concurrent users. However, the irony in all of this is that the *vast majority* of Citrix and RDS farms feature fewer than 500 users. Because of this effective orphaning of the SMB market, admins in these smaller networks don’t have a lot of options in their budget range. They may cobble together some scripts, lean too heavily on traditional Network Monitoring Software that doesn’t have much depth when it comes to monitoring/reporting on SBC activity, or sadly, go without. This needs to change.

It’s Time To Disrupt This Industry To Benefit the SMBs and MSPs

Now that we’ve studied this market, and seen it for how it truly is, warts and all, we’re throwing down the gauntlet.

For only $9 per server per month, or $1 per workstation/virtual desktop per month, you can now acquire subscription licensing from us. Yes, you read that correctly.

Want to continually monitor 10 XenApp servers year around? No problem – that will cost you $1080 a year.

Want to do a simple 90 day assessment of remote worker productivity on your 5 RDS servers? Easy enough – just carry a subscription for 3 months, and pay only $135!

Have two RDS servers you need to check bandwidth consumption on for 30 days? We think you’ll find that $18 to be a bargain.

Now It’s Your Turn. Help Us Get the Word Out About Our New Flexible and Affordable Pricing.

Let your colleagues and friends know about our new offering, via social media, forum exchanges, trade shows, and simple word of mouth. As a token of our appreciation, if you send us a link to a post or share you made about our new pricing model and feature set, we’ll give you a 2-month subscription credit on monitoring in your own environment! Help us shake up this niche so that organizations of all sizes will benefit.

Filed Under: RDS License Metering, Remote Desktop Bandwidth, Remote Desktop Management, Remote Desktop Protocol, Remote Desktop Reporting, Remote Desktop Services, Software Releases, Terminal Server Logging, Terminal Server Monitoring, User Productivity, XenApp Monitoring, XenApp Reporting Tagged With: XenApp monitoring, XenApp Reporting, XenDesktop Monitoring, XenDesktop Reporting

SaaS Over Remote Desktop: License and Resource Metering Techniques

December 30, 2013 By admin Leave a Comment

Believe it or not, there’s a nice sized portion of SaaS vendors in the marketplace that are delivering their SaaS applications to clients over RDS (Remote Desktop Services) as opposed to the Web.

Why Remote Desktop and RemoteApp?

There are several reasons many software vendors choose remote desktop (or RDS) and RemoteApp as the mechanism by which to provide their software as a service over the Internet. Here are the big reasons:

  • Inherent limitations in building a web application with a consistent, rich, and responsive user interface.
  • Additional development and QA costs associated with web apps.
  • The costs to migrate an existing non-Internet based application.
  • Security considerations.

But Don’t Forget License and Resource Metering

As we do more and more business with “Saas over Remote Desktop” vendors, one of the biggest problems we see them experience is license and resource metering.

SaaS vendors using remote desktop have some numbers to crunch.
If you’re an SaaS vendor using Remote Desktop to deliver your application, you’ve got some numbers to crunch when it comes to license metering.

It’s one thing to develop and bring a SaaS application to market.  It’s quite another to figure out how to:

  • Capacity plan for additional hardware / virtualized servers in your server farm as your client base grows.
  • Attribute costs of business to specific clients (How much bandwidth/memory do they use?).
  • Reliably meter client usage of your application for billing purposes . . . and to know when to bump your clients up to the next subscription level based on that usage.

. . . or the Bottom Line

We then help SaaS vendors solve those very problems. As an aggregator of Remote Desktop Session metrics, our Remote Desktop Reporter solution is being used to produce lots of different reports that help a SaaS vendor stay on top of client license and resource usage, and in turn, significantly improve their bottom line.

Some of those metrics include:

  • RDP bandwidth by user.
  • Peak concurrent sessions by server and/or by user.
  • Distinct RDS users by time period.
  • Total time by RDS user.
  • Specific application use by user.

Are You a SaaS Vendor in a Similar Situation?

We can provide a web demonstration of how to configure our software and establish these reports. Reach out to us here or message us on Twitter @RDPSoft.

Or, post a question below and continue the discussion!

Filed Under: Cloud RDP Monitoring, RDS License Metering, Remote Desktop Bandwidth, Remote Desktop Reporting, Terminal Server Logging, Terminal Server Monitoring Tagged With: license metering, remote desktop, resource metering, SaaS

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From the RDPSoft Blog

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