Everything That There Is To Know About VDI Licensing with Windows

scottalanmiller

Same with Office. You might find Excel Online perfectly acceptable, but I couldn't use it day to day, it would drive me crazy.

It's acceptable. About as good as Google Docs. I don't really like either, they are both usable.

But that's really a temporary situation. MS is clearly on a major investment path to making that first class with the locally installed version.

But the important bit is that the "good" version works great from RDS, XenApp or equivalent. There is a great non-local installation option.

scottalanmiller

@Carnival-Boy said:

MS Dynamics ERP - there isn't a web interface for that? That's shocking.

There is a web interface, but it isn't as good as the desktop client.

I didn't dig into this one because I expect their web client to be their focus in the future. But I believe that the "fat client" works well from a terminal server?

Carnival Boy

It's still Windows only software though isn't? Using RDS doesn't remove your Windows dependency, or alter the fact that these are Windows only applications? Maybe I've missed the gist of the thread.

scottalanmiller

@Carnival-Boy said:

It's still Windows only software though isn't? Using RDS doesn't remove your Windows dependency, or alter the fact that these are Windows only applications? Maybe I've missed the gist of the thread.

Sorry, the THREAD itself was only about licensing. But later on there were some other discussions (you know how threads go.) The current discussion was around VDI limitations and Windows desktop lock ins. Not Windows lock in, but Windows desktop lockins. Specifically why someone would have to use VDI in order to not have physical Windows desktops.

So that is the focus. All of the software that you listed falls into a middle ground where it either requires Windows or requires Windows for official support (except VS which is officially on Linux) and ignoring Mac options which would just be a broader lockin (most of those are available on Mac as well) but can be installed in a shared computing model on a server and shared out. I say that this is a middle ground not because it requires a Windows server, that's fine in this context, but because they need a legacy sharing mechanism like RDS or XenApp. These remove the VDI and therefore Windows Desktop requirement completely, but they are still legacy designs (some like Autodesk by necessity, some like MS Office by heritage).

So Autodesk I give a pass as a special case hardware leveraging application and they do a great job of giving options within that space. The others are moving towards better designs and mostly will get there. They are ancient apps with a lot of baggage and all have addressed using Windows as MS stated they should decades ago and don't have the desktop lockins of lesser software. Not idea, but not bad.

scottalanmiller

So to expand on the logic that got us to this portion of the discussion:

Question?: Why does MS charge an arm and a leg for VDI? It seems unfair.
Answer?: Because customers who are stuck with VDI are almost exclusively stuck with it because they are willing to use really awful software that isn't modern in architecture (n-tier design or newer) and/or does not follow MS' own programming guidelines and doesn't work properly on Windows as designed and/or intentionally locks you in for whatever reason just to screw you on the licensing side.

The examples that you gave do not lock you in to VDI but allow you to use more cost effective and flexible options. They are mostly Windows-centric, and one could make great discussions around the value of server-side agnosticism, but that's an extremely different discussion than desktop licensing and desktop agnosticism.

Key reasons why it is different? As an end user, I can consume Windows-only services without needing Windows. I can also consume things that are not available on Windows just as easily. I can run anything that I need, from anywhere that I need given these models. I can work from an iPad in a pinch. I can choose the environment that is best for me as the end users. Similarly, the admins can choose the best platforms for the applications to run from. Probably for these it would be Windows. But that can be determined by workload. There is no need to run all Windows just because of one Windows application (or no need to be Windows-less because of one application not running on Windows.)

Carnival Boy

@scottalanmiller said:

Not Windows lock in, but Windows desktop lockins. Specifically why someone would have to use VDI in order to not have physical Windows desktops. So that is the focus.

Gotcha, but I was just responding to you writing "having an OS dependency means it is mired in a 1990s and older software design paradigm. Modern business software made even since the mid-1990s only very rarely has OS dependencies. That's quite literally a DOS-era problem."

I see Windows as being a single OS, whether that be desktop or server. Doesn't pretty much all Windows business software run on Windows Server?

scottalanmiller

@Carnival-Boy said:

Doesn't pretty much all Windows business software run on Windows Server?

That's long been my hypothesis. That any serious business software will run on a server (Windows or otherwise.)

However, any requirement that causes a need for VDI means that this isn't true. VDI exists solely for addressing business software that does not run that way. It's one of the biggest movements in IT currently and incredibly popular. It's overhyped, of course. But the number of businesses that run desktop-only software is unbelievable.

scottalanmiller

@Carnival-Boy said:

Gotcha, but I was just responding to you writing "having an OS dependency means it is mired in a 1990s and older software design paradigm. Modern business software made even since the mid-1990s only very rarely has OS dependencies. That's quite literally a DOS-era problem."

Yes, I was over-assuming the context there, that we were discussion the desktop. The DOS-era problem in question there is using the local system as if it were a single user system rather than as a multi-user system. DOS-era programming the running process "owns" the computer. After 1992 with Windows NT 3.1, that was no longer a viable model to use. But many companies kept writing software as if they were on DOS and many companies bought it anyway, even though it crippled them. It's a problem that never existed in the UNIX world, and only exists in the Windows world as a weird legacy of the pre-1992 era. That 1991 is still haunting us in 2016 is very sad.

FATeknollogee

@scottalanmiller said:

@FATeknollogee said:

@scottalanmiller

I hear you.
I've got some clients with medical apps tied to hardware (scopes). Software is available 1000% as Windows only.
It would be nice to have the option of "moving" to a more open form of O/S

What type of software is it?

Software that controls Gastroenterology scopes, processors & report writers

scottalanmiller

@FATeknollogee said:

Software that controls Gastroenterology scopes, processors & report writers

I had mentioned that equipment control software is an exception, but generally isn't that relegated to a few machines? What percentage of an environment needs that kind of software to hook to peripherals?

scottalanmiller

I've worked with multiple companies that had the opposite issue, all of their equipment control software ran on Solaris on Sparc only. So they had to maintain proprietary hardware and Solaris for everything.