Call me a pessimist. ;)
Not to brag, but my crystal-ball kung fu is quite strong. Take a look.
I don't see their behavior ever changing until they are in an underdog
situation. The current crop of devices and remote protocols is
something they've never faced before. But they are not about to waive
the white flag and they will do what they have to do to protect their
market share.
Take a trip down memory lane. When did applications stop being more
important than the OS? 1995. Windows 95 made the OS the killer app.
Before Windows 95, applications ruled. They ruled because they made
device consolidation possible. The early PC OS was horrible, but
applications transformed on device into multiple things. The
applications on a PC replaced your typewriter, your filing cabinet and
your ledger. Forget DOS, forget Office, forget NT. Windows 95 is what
created the Microsoft we know today. Never before did people line up to
buy an operating system. MS marketing created a rock star before
anybody even clicked their first Start button.
But today you have non-Windows tablets and phones (iOS, Android, etc)
that are once again showing people that the application is what is
important. The application is once again transforming the device. My
phone can be a credit card terminal? My phone can be a GPS? My phone
can be (insert anything you can find on an app store)? Do you care
about the OS? Only if the App isn't available for it. So what are
application developers doing? They are writing more and more apps for
more and more devices. If an app is successful on one device platform,
you can almost guarantee it will be written for another. That hasn't
happened since 1995.
You also have the next generation of corporate users who use these
devices far more than they ever have, or ever will use a PC.
This spells *big* trouble for MS. Especially since they've failed at
almost every device attempt they've ever done outside of Xbox. And even
that's not the top selling console. This is not my opinion, the is fact.
One may say this is all the more reason the go with the RemoteFX = Free
WVDA theory. While a nice thought, that doesn't make up the revenue
loss should the Windows PC OEM market go south. And it's going to go
south sooner or later. A PC is more and more impractical as internet
access becomes more and more important. Today getting to critical
Windows apps is important for the enterprise space. But the apps that
will be critical tomorrow are those that can be accessed regardless of
the device. Devices are driving everything, and the majority of them
are not Windows-based devices.
Any enterprise app that has a hard requirement for Windows or worse IE
will be dead in five years if it's not also running on Firefox, Chrome,
etc and has no specific OS requirement. Name one enterprise app that is
showing up for iOS or Android that requires Windows. This trend will do
the proverbially hockey stick in the next year or so.
Remote protocols will always be important because speed of light issues
will always exist and the global work force will continue to be more and
more distributed. The protocols that don't require additional network
gear to perform regardless of distance from the server will be those
that survive.
Also against the RemoteFX = no WVDA theory is the fact that MS has
almost zero track record for making thin client computing more
affordable than than a PC. I'm not trying to make anyone who likes MS
Operating systems mad, it's the truth. The one thing they did that died
a quick death was the no TS-CAL requirement for W2K Pro machines.
Sure, sometimes their own licensing bites them and a loop hole exists
such as Office gets licensed where it is displayed. Great for call
centers, not so great for something like SGD or Citrix (or even OVDC)
where people access it from many different devices.
Finally, all of the RemoteFX = Requirement for future offering is based
on the assumption that RemoteFX will allow things will to scale where it
will still be a profitable ROI. Here's where you'll get my "opinion"
(mixed with a bit of perfmon results)...and I'd say that's probably not
going to happen. ;)
But if you were left with only the MS point of view, you'd see hear none
of the above. Thin clients, VDI, SBC, is dead. You do remember their
anti-Linux and anti-Vmware campaigns right? Those should have been dead
by now right? "Get the facts!"
I really like VDI, but if one really needs windows, it still seems like
the exception that terminal server won't do today. And if you *want*
VDI, I'd really like to have someone show me where a Win7 device has a
better ROI than Sun Ray given the same VDI back-end. The "VDI tax" of
WVDA is going to be about $60 a year more than SA. The admin, power,
and productivity of Sun Ray will blow that $60 per year out of the
water.
We are witnessing the rebirth of the application. Devices will continue
be important, but only if they allow unfettered access to the
applications or content users want.
I wonder how a device that doesn't ever need an app installed on it to
be transformed will fare in the future? The Sun Ray has always been
about access to applications. Most of those on this list knew this even
though Sun's marketing couldn't quite figure it out. Whatever you think
about Oracle, they've put more into this portfolio in one year than Sun
did in the past 10. The future is looking pretty bright. Of course, I
am very biased. :)
On 3/18/11 4:39 PM, Ivar Janmaat wrote:
Hello,
"Remote FX requires Hyper-V"
It looks like Microsoft is licensing Remote FX to chip manufacturers for
server and client side graphic accelerator boards.
So wouldn't it also be possible to license this technology as a plugin
for Virtualbox and Sun Ray firmware?
That would be something to negotiate between Oracle and Microsoft.
The alternative for Oracle would be to build some competing technology
with the same functionality.
Although I think the former Sun people would be capable of doing this, I
don't think Oracle would be capable of marketing this technology more
effective than Microsoft is marketing Remote FX.
Or might I be wrong here?
Although there is no correlation between Remote FX and WVDA at this
moment, I can not imagine that it will stay this way.
If clients with Remote FX licensed chip designs are available it would
be beneficial for Microsoft to drop VDA licenses for these clients.
We might see a change in the VDA license structure by that time.
I worry a bit about the statement that large sites will tend to use
Windows based clients because of SA advantages and small sites are
better of with VDA.
Oracle VDI works best for large scale deployments. Small scale
deployments are quite expensive because of the unified storage 7120 and
consultancy costs.
This would mean that the Sun Ray suffers indeed the most from the
Microsoft SA and VDA licensing model.
VMware is indeed not on the list. Their PCoIP is a competing approach.
The problem with all the protocol options is that it is hard for people
to choose. Not only for the professionals but especially for the customers.
So customers tend to go with what they know...Microsoft, Citrix.
A lot of Oracle marketing budget is needed to counter this if Oracle
wants to compete with their own Windows 3D and HD software/hardware
approach.
But if Oracle chooses to develop their own solution, there also much be
an answer to the WVDA license disruption of the market.
Maybe even some legal steps.
Nice piece from Brian ;-)
Ivar
Craig Bender schreef:
Hi Ivar,
I'm relaxed. Nothing but happy thoughts over here. ;)
The EULA is not pushing Hyper-V. RemoteFX requires Hyper-V , so I
guess that would be a no to your Virtualbox question.
I'm not sure I get the correlation between WVDA and RemoteFX and
roadmaps though. There's zero tie in between licensing the RemoteFX
spec from Microsoft and not having to pay the WVDA. That's only
possible by running Windows 7. But you do have to pay SA.
Since the price of SA is going to be determined by what your licensing
agreement is with MS (those who buy more copies of Win7 will get lower
SA prices), WVDA actually favors smaller companies because the delta
between the yearly SA cost and the full yearly WVDA license will be
less. IMO this is intentional. The biggest MS customers who may be
interested in VDI on non-Windows 7 devices will see such a huge
difference between SA and WVDA, they'll either not do VDI, or if they
still really believe in it, they'll buy Win 7 SA capable device.
Win/Win for MS.
I do wonder how many Citrix customers run the XD VMs on Hyper-V? I'd
guess not many. Citrix wants you to run on XenServer, Citrix customers
seem to want to run on Vmware. Citrix doesn't sell client devices, but
they do want to keep MS happy so XenApp can continue to be an upgrade
to WTS/RDS.
What you have left is companies that do not have protocols (RGS
doesn't count), though they do sell (or want to sell) a lot of PCs
(Wyse Cloud PCs are Windows 7 SA capable PCs). No big surprises on
that list who have signed up. Where is Vmware?
I've tried to illustrate why MS does not like VDI and why they like
Windows on PCs. Remember the stats I shared on the thin client market
on whole compared to the PC market on whole. They want they bigger
piece of the pie, and they want keep it as big a possible.
Here is Brian Madden's take on the subject:
http://www.brianmadden.com/blogs/brianmadden/archive/2011/03/02/why-microsoft-hates-vdi.aspx
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