Mark at VirtualizationStuff posted a great blog item about what VMWare needs to do to (a) step their stock slippage and (b) prevent annihilation by Microsoft. The comparisons to Novell are spot-on. This is good stuff people - that is: If you care about this stuff.
I still say that VMware should "give" away at least *some* flavor of ThinApp at this point. Just give it away. Maybe strip out the new 4.0 features like App-Sync and App-Link. Take it back a notch like Thinstall 3.x was prior to Tucci's gang of merry goons kidnapping them. That simply led to Microsoft acquiring Softricity (SoftGrid) and Altiris getting SVS (later consumed by Symantec) and now we have Citrix eating up XenApp and Oracle and VirtualIron and God only knows what's next (no, that's not another product name, sorry).
SoftGrid, at this point, is still too far of a reach for even most enterprise customers. I'm sorry, but if you have Software Assurance on every desktop, and THEN have to fork out another $28 per node to get MDOP (and hence: SoftGrid) that's a tough nut to swallow in a budget planning meeting. So what does VMware do? They offer up ThinApp at $5000 for a base package of 50 clients, and $40 for each additional client. Yuck! Why? Give it away.
Like I've already said before: Microsoft will probably just shove SoftGrid features into Windows 7 and be done with it already. That will kill off a major portion of revenue VMware may be counting on with future ThinApp sales.
Showing posts with label softricity. Show all posts
Showing posts with label softricity. Show all posts
Saturday, July 19, 2008
Wednesday, December 26, 2007
SoftGrid Quirks
I finally decided to roll out SoftGrid on my home network and it seemed to go very well at first. 4.1 SP1 on the server, 4.2 clients. Some clients are XP SP2 and others are Vista (Business, and Ultimate editions).
The weirdness is best described as follows:
Windows XP SP2 clients - Slowness overall. The sftddc service seems to eat quite a bit of memory and CPU cycles, regardless of whether the AVS server is available over the network or not. As soon as I uninstalled the SoftGrid client, the performance levels seemed to improve overall.
Windows Vista Business clients - Not much (adverse) impact at all, however, that machine is running on 4GB of RAM (32-bit install equates to 3.x GB)
Windows Vista Ultimate clients - Performance appears fine, but the oddity here was with desktop and start menu icons. About 50% of them got wacked and replaced with broken icon image links. Most were fine when I visited each one to change the icon for the shortcut, however, some still refused to display correctly. This didn't happen immediately either. It seemed to start about 12 hours after the SoftGrid client was installed. After I uninstalled it, everything went back to working and displaying properly. Weird.
Don't get me wrong, I'm really optimistic about SoftGrid as a whole. It is a very cool and exciting technology. I'm hoping my experiences are something that will be addressed by the 4.5 upgrade. I'm going to attempt that in the next week if time permits. I do know that Microsoft acquired Softricity at a time when they were still getting their mojo together. A lot of features in 4.1 and 4.2 are simply unfinished or half-baked. Documentation is also sorely lacking. However, I also know that Microsoft is applying a serious effort behind addressing all of those issues. Even 4.5 is admittedly an "in progress" effort. The version that follows behind that, which will also be known (at this point anyway) as "Microsoft Application Virtualization", will be significantly improved and will play nicely with System Center and Active Directory.
The weirdness is best described as follows:
Windows XP SP2 clients - Slowness overall. The sftddc service seems to eat quite a bit of memory and CPU cycles, regardless of whether the AVS server is available over the network or not. As soon as I uninstalled the SoftGrid client, the performance levels seemed to improve overall.
Windows Vista Business clients - Not much (adverse) impact at all, however, that machine is running on 4GB of RAM (32-bit install equates to 3.x GB)
Windows Vista Ultimate clients - Performance appears fine, but the oddity here was with desktop and start menu icons. About 50% of them got wacked and replaced with broken icon image links. Most were fine when I visited each one to change the icon for the shortcut, however, some still refused to display correctly. This didn't happen immediately either. It seemed to start about 12 hours after the SoftGrid client was installed. After I uninstalled it, everything went back to working and displaying properly. Weird.
Don't get me wrong, I'm really optimistic about SoftGrid as a whole. It is a very cool and exciting technology. I'm hoping my experiences are something that will be addressed by the 4.5 upgrade. I'm going to attempt that in the next week if time permits. I do know that Microsoft acquired Softricity at a time when they were still getting their mojo together. A lot of features in 4.1 and 4.2 are simply unfinished or half-baked. Documentation is also sorely lacking. However, I also know that Microsoft is applying a serious effort behind addressing all of those issues. Even 4.5 is admittedly an "in progress" effort. The version that follows behind that, which will also be known (at this point anyway) as "Microsoft Application Virtualization", will be significantly improved and will play nicely with System Center and Active Directory.
Monday, December 24, 2007
Software Packaging/Sequencing Sucks
Yes. It's true. Shocking to many of you, but absolutely true.
I said "Packaging/Sequencing" which are slightly different things. For those of you not familiar with application virtualization technologies like Softgrid, "sequencing" is similar to capture-method packaging, where you essentially roll-up a state change from a baseline environment, and make it a package for deploying to other computers. Simple enough.
Unless you have to deal with Adobe products.
Oh my God. No. Let me put that in a more technically credible form: Holy fucking shit, is more like it.
If you work for Adobe, I'm sorry. But you really need to walk over to the developer team and knock on their door. When the door opens, just smile, and then punch them right in the face. Don't forget to say "Merry Christmas" afterwards either.
Why? Why so violent? Why such disdain for such nice, sweet people like Adobe?
Because they refuse to get with the program. Which program? The program titled "Software development and packaging for the 20th century". (keep in mind we're in the 21st century - ponder that for a few seconds, ok?)
If you package software for a living, primarily for the purposes of mass deployment in an enterprise environment, you will already know this and be simply fast-forwarding on to the next blog post. For those of you dealing with "sequencing" for Softgrid, ditto. For the rest of you, maybe you're an Altris, or SMS 2003, or System Center Config Manager, or Tivoli, or whatever administrator, who cares, the point being you're not a day-to-day packager, so you need to know just how badly Adobe sucks at making software easy to deploy. Let's just say that they don't.
In fact, Adobe makes it as f-ing difficult and painful to accomplish as humanly possible. I wonder if they have an entire department or division, dedicated to making mass deployment impractical and problematic.
It boils down to how they ship their software in the first place. While many vendors, from Autodesk, to Symantec, to whoever, provide you a neatly packaged MSI with all sorts of documentation to help you drop that into a Group Policy, or SMS package, or Altiris, or (holding my breath here...) Softgrid, Adobe does not. They give you an MSI alright, but it's not packaged properly to allow for such silly things like saving time and avoiding problems. No time for that stuff. Profit comes first (and only).
For those of you that have suffered with Adobe's crap while trying to sequence for Softgrid deployments, well, I cry with you and gladly hand you the liquor bottle. It turns out they never read the memo on how to base DLL's on Windows clients. They still do it the 1980's way: Push them all to one base address and ask Windows to dole them out on the memory stack, each and every time you launch the application. Goddamnit! F-you Adobe! Stupid. F-ing stupid!
Thankfully, the folks at Softricity (now Microsoft) thought enough of us whipped and beaten packagers (oops, sequencers), to add that nice little checkbox option: "Re-Base DLL's" for just such purposes. If you haven't tried this feature, give it a try. I would suggest that if you have any sequenced applications which make you sit there for 15 minutes while they drollingly iterate a shopping list of DLL's they load before you can start using the application, that you make another sequenced package using the Re-Base option and compare the results on some test clients.
You may often find many applications launch dramatically faster after they have been processed to re-base the DLL's. This is simply because they're asking Windows to do the chore once, and then capture it for future loadings. Do it once. Yes. What a fantastic idea. I suppose Adobe wouldn't consider doing something dumb just once. No, they'd rather do it EVERY SINGLE TIME they launch. Thanks Adobe. Merry Christmas.
I said "Packaging/Sequencing" which are slightly different things. For those of you not familiar with application virtualization technologies like Softgrid, "sequencing" is similar to capture-method packaging, where you essentially roll-up a state change from a baseline environment, and make it a package for deploying to other computers. Simple enough.
Unless you have to deal with Adobe products.
Oh my God. No. Let me put that in a more technically credible form: Holy fucking shit, is more like it.
If you work for Adobe, I'm sorry. But you really need to walk over to the developer team and knock on their door. When the door opens, just smile, and then punch them right in the face. Don't forget to say "Merry Christmas" afterwards either.
Why? Why so violent? Why such disdain for such nice, sweet people like Adobe?
Because they refuse to get with the program. Which program? The program titled "Software development and packaging for the 20th century". (keep in mind we're in the 21st century - ponder that for a few seconds, ok?)
If you package software for a living, primarily for the purposes of mass deployment in an enterprise environment, you will already know this and be simply fast-forwarding on to the next blog post. For those of you dealing with "sequencing" for Softgrid, ditto. For the rest of you, maybe you're an Altris, or SMS 2003, or System Center Config Manager, or Tivoli, or whatever administrator, who cares, the point being you're not a day-to-day packager, so you need to know just how badly Adobe sucks at making software easy to deploy. Let's just say that they don't.
In fact, Adobe makes it as f-ing difficult and painful to accomplish as humanly possible. I wonder if they have an entire department or division, dedicated to making mass deployment impractical and problematic.
It boils down to how they ship their software in the first place. While many vendors, from Autodesk, to Symantec, to whoever, provide you a neatly packaged MSI with all sorts of documentation to help you drop that into a Group Policy, or SMS package, or Altiris, or (holding my breath here...) Softgrid, Adobe does not. They give you an MSI alright, but it's not packaged properly to allow for such silly things like saving time and avoiding problems. No time for that stuff. Profit comes first (and only).
For those of you that have suffered with Adobe's crap while trying to sequence for Softgrid deployments, well, I cry with you and gladly hand you the liquor bottle. It turns out they never read the memo on how to base DLL's on Windows clients. They still do it the 1980's way: Push them all to one base address and ask Windows to dole them out on the memory stack, each and every time you launch the application. Goddamnit! F-you Adobe! Stupid. F-ing stupid!
Thankfully, the folks at Softricity (now Microsoft) thought enough of us whipped and beaten packagers (oops, sequencers), to add that nice little checkbox option: "Re-Base DLL's" for just such purposes. If you haven't tried this feature, give it a try. I would suggest that if you have any sequenced applications which make you sit there for 15 minutes while they drollingly iterate a shopping list of DLL's they load before you can start using the application, that you make another sequenced package using the Re-Base option and compare the results on some test clients.
You may often find many applications launch dramatically faster after they have been processed to re-base the DLL's. This is simply because they're asking Windows to do the chore once, and then capture it for future loadings. Do it once. Yes. What a fantastic idea. I suppose Adobe wouldn't consider doing something dumb just once. No, they'd rather do it EVERY SINGLE TIME they launch. Thanks Adobe. Merry Christmas.
Mystery of Mysteries Revealed: Software Assurance
I just returned from a week-long training session out in building 25 on the Microsoft campus, in Redmond, Washington. The course was all about the forthcoming Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack, or "MDOP", product suite. It will be available only to customers who have purchased Software Assurance (or "SA") on their desktop computers. MDOP includes five (5) main products, all of which were acquired by Microsoft over the past two years.
- SoftGrid - Microsoft acquired the company Softricity in order to get their hands on their renown application virtualization technology. The current version (4.1 on server, 4.2 on clients) has only been slightly modified from before the acquisition. 4.5 is in beta and set for a release in Q3/08 under the new name of "Microsoft Application Virtualization" and will have some notable enhancements.
... - Advanced Group Policy Management (AGPM) - Microsoft acquired this from the purchase of it's developer "Desktop Standard". Not much has been been enhanced or modified from before it was acquired by Microsoft.
... - Diagnostics and Recovery Toolkit (DaRT) - Acquired along with the purchase of Sysinternals/Winternals, formerly called Winternals' ERD commander. It also includes parts of Sysinternals various utilities and some notable enhancements for Vista.
... - Asset Inventory Services (AIS) - Acquired from Assetmetrix and bundled into Systems Management Server 2003 Service Pack 3, as well as making available within MDOP as "AIS" will be instead an entirely hosted solution.
... - Desktop Error Monitoring (DEM) - Replaces the aging and defunct "Corporate Error Reporting" product for collecting, reporting and forwarding internally generated desktop errors, failures, faults, crashes, etc. DEM is instead built from a subset of System Center Operations Manager (SCOM) 2007.
But the most peculiar thing I found during this training course wasn't related to any of these technologies. All of which are very good in their own rite. But rather, it was when I asked about SA. I got the same response I get from every sales person, technical engineer, and account manager: "Well, it's sort of subscription with some other goodies, but I don't know exactly".
Say what?!
That's what gets me. The single most important, vital, profitable venture Microsoft has underway is obviously one of the most under-communicated, misunderstood, and poorly explained services they have.
Go ahead. I dare you. Ask anyone around you to list five things you get for purchasing SA on desktops. I've asked people from all kinds of environments, countries, companies, you name it. Most can rattle off two or three at most. I could only list three. Here's what I've managed to cull from various Microsoft and partner web sites...
- Vouchers for Training Courses
- Vouchers for Partner Consulting Services
- Vouchers for 24x7 Technical Support
- Allows Conversion of Vouchers (training to consulting, to support, vice versa)
- E-Learning Vouchers
- Employee Purchase Discounts
- Home Use Program
- MDOP for $10/client more (15% discount on Enterprise coverage):
- Operating System Upgrades (XP to Vista)
Damn! If I were to pass along what many of the sales managers have told me, I would have said "You get upgrades and some support and some other stuff". Wow. That would really sell it to someone. Not. Seems to me that Microsoft needs to (A) simplify what SA "is" and what it gets you, and (B) communicate and educate their partners to better understand it enough to sell it effectively. Holy shit! That sounds like common sense sales and marketing to me.
Selling Software Assurance based on two or three of these key features would be abysmal. I wouldn't want to earn commission upon that horrible thought. I'd starve to death. As soon as you mention "upgrades" as a feature benefit, most customers will immediately shove you out the door and slam it behind you. All the while laughing hysterically. In my (humblest) opinion, Microsoft needs to bundle more than MDOP into SA to make it really attractive. Even as nice as MDOP is (and it is very nice), it's not going to sell itself.
Microsoft's partners will be putting in a lot of face time to get these points across, and hope, fingers' crossed, that customers are receptive and willing to stroke the check. It's a tough sell even so. I realize that much of the reason they have to tread lightly is due to their dealings with DOJ and the EU and their penchant for biting at Microsoft's ankles when they try to knock on doors.
I'm a Systems Engineer and I feel like I know it better than the people who are supposed to be selling to customers.
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