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Remote Desktop Commander v4.9 Highlights

June 12, 2020 By admin Leave a Comment

Version 4.9+ of the Remote Desktop Commander Suite and Premium Management Features overlay offers:

  • brand new reports that track things like RDP loss and retransmission rates, hourly load on servers, user reconnection attempts through a Remote Desktop Gateway, and much more
  • an overhaul of our existing reporting, with a focus on better chart presentation and automatic chart data aggregation in larger environments
  • the ability to delegate out management tasks and shadowing to Citrix help desk staff members, allowing them a much more streamlined shadowing experience that does not require the use of Citrix Director or Microsoft Remote Assistance
  • numerous other product enhancements

[Read more…]

Filed Under: citrix edgesight, Citrix Edgesight Replacement, RDP Loss Rate, RDP Security, RDP Transmission Rate, Software Releases, Windows Virtual Desktop, XenApp Monitoring, XenApp Reporting Tagged With: citrix shadowing, rdp loss rate, rdp retransmission rate, remote desktop monitoring, remote desktop reporting, shadow citrix, shadow citrix help desk, shadow citrix no consent, shadow citrix without admin, user activity monitoring

Flexible Licensing for RDS Tools

December 14, 2015 By admin Leave a Comment

Years ago, we launched a flexible month-to-month subscription licensing program for our Remote Desktop Commander Suite, and the result was phenomenal. The traditional channel-driven, expensive perpetual licensing models used by our competition were simply making less and less sense.

While occasionally we offer promotions, you can always count on this: We offer month-to-month licensing that starts at less than $10 per RDS/XenApp server per month, and at about a $1 per virtual desktop/physical workstation.

For more details, check out our pricing for Remote Desktop Commander.

RDS Tools for Specific Tasks . . . And Within Reach

Small and medium-sized businesses who run server-based computing farms designed around Microsoft Remote Desktop Services or Citrix XenApp continue to enthusiastically embrace our licensing model, thrilled to finally have reliable tools that cover areas like:

  • User activity monitoring
  • Remote Desktop connection logging
  • Remote Desktop session management

. . . and the little features that help with things like enabling Remote Desktop remotely and the demystification of RDP logs.

All with so little additional cost.

Not sure where to start? Determine what your needs are for RDS tools or Learn more about Remote Desktop Commander Suite and its many features.

Updated: January 2021.

Filed Under: Cloud RDP Monitoring, Performance, Remote Desktop Memory Usage, Remote Desktop Protocol, Remote Desktop Reporting, Remote Desktop Services, Terminal Server Monitoring, Uncategorized, XenApp Monitoring, XenApp Reporting Tagged With: RDP monitoring, RDS monitoring, Terminal Server monitoring, XenApp monitoring

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

BriForum Recap: Storm Clouds Over Citrix, Microsoft Rising

August 10, 2015 By Andy Milford Leave a Comment

It’s been a little over two weeks since BriForum 2015 ended out in Denver, and as usual, it was a blast, filled with knowledgeable speakers and engaged attendees covering the entire gamut of virtualization and server-based computing.  This year, I had the privilege of being a BriForum speaker, focusing my talk on the hidden benefits provided by Version 8 of the Remote Desktop Protocol available in Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows Server 2012 and later operating systems.

One of the larger trends I’m seeing, which was echoed by many speakers at BriForum – at least in the server-based computing segment – is how Citrix’s star is fading as a viable solution for mid-market companies.  It’s gotten so bad that key shareholders in Citrix (e.g. Elliot) have effectively forced Citrix to start the spin off of some of its assets and have forced out Mark Templeton as CEO.  There’s a lot to this story, and Gabe Knuth has summed it up much more comprehensively than I can, so read his post for all of the gory details.

What is getting less press, but in my mind is just as or more important, is the fact that Citrix has made critical internal personnel decisions over the past few years leading to offshoring of certain departments with rather poor results.  I noticed the fruit of these decisions years ago when I merely attempted to get XenDesktop/XenApp 6.5 up and running in a lab environment.  A quality software product should not require multiple patches to fix critical issues just to get a solution installed.  And I’m sure CIOs continue to question a.) the high costs of the software itself combined with b.) the high costs of bringing in consultants or other hired guns just to keep their stuff running.  For a smaller or mid-market company without an unlimited budget, this creates a huge incentive to divest themselves of Citrix, and look towards other solutions like VMWare’s Horizon product and “Citrix-lite” alternatives that run on top of RDS.

Which leads me to Microsoft.  Fueled by their expansion of Azure as a comprehensive cloud computing platform, they have been investing *significantly* in remote desktop technologies, especially the latest Remote Desktop Protocol versions.  Their most recent version of the Remote Desktop Protocol, RDP 8, features incredible improvements over previous versions, primarily in the adaptive graphics department AND in the use of UDP as a transport protocol to vastly increase data throughput and responsiveness over less than reliable links (4G, WiFi, Satellite, etc).  While not as bleeding edge as Citrix’s emerging Framehawk technologies in extremely high loss networks, it’s simply *good enough* for the vast majority of corporate networks and teleworking scenarios.  And as we’ve seen in the past, once Microsoft gets *good enough* in a certain market / technology area, they tend to dominate.  Remember Novell, anyone? 🙂

As for us, we’re charting our path alongside Microsoft.  While our software continues to support Citrix and other configurations running on top of RDS, woe be to vendors who are “Citrix only” in their design focus, as I think they’re going to be competing for an ever shrinking piece of the pie.  There will be a lot of money to be made over the coming years on migrating people AWAY from Citrix on to pure Remote Desktop Services, and we will be a proud part of that vendor ecosystem.

Filed Under: Performance, Remote Desktop Protocol, Remote Desktop Reporting, Remote Desktop Services, Software Releases, Terminal Server Monitoring, Uncategorized, XenApp Monitoring, XenApp Reporting Tagged With: Citrix, Microsoft, RDP 8, SMBs

RDPSoft Announces Support for Citrix XenApp Reporting and Monitoring

May 1, 2013 By admin Leave a Comment

RDPSoft is pleased to announce support for Citrix XenApp reporting and XenApp monitoring in Version 1.2 of its flagship product, Remote Desktop Reporter.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Remote Desktop Reporting, Software Releases, Telecommuting/Teleworking, Terminal Server Logging, User Productivity, XenApp Monitoring, XenApp Reporting Tagged With: Citrix, XenApp

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Recent Posts

  • Remote Desktop Commander v6.5 Now Available!
  • AVD Monitoring: An Easy Step-By-Step Approach
  • Three Reasons Why You Need to Monitor CAP and RAP Failures On Your Remote Desktop Gateways
  • Remote Desktop Commander v6.0+ Highlights
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From the RDPSoft Blog

  • Remote Desktop Commander v6.5 Now Available!
  • AVD Monitoring: An Easy Step-By-Step Approach
  • Three Reasons Why You Need to Monitor CAP and RAP Failures On Your Remote Desktop Gateways
  • Remote Desktop Commander v6.0+ Highlights
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