Some time back, Quest Software purchased Provision Networks. They have sense re-branded and re-released their Virtual Access Suite (VAS) product line as vWorkspace.
Earlier this year, I got the opportunity to work with Patrick Rouse from Quest, he is a Microsoft MVP and a well published writer. This was a Proof of Concept to determine if Quest vWorkspace 6.x could replace our Citrix XenApp 4.5 farm. After a thorough testing and analysis, we determined Quest could replace Citrix, and possibly surpass the XenApp offerings in key areas. The next step, beyond a PoC, is a pilot roll out, which has not been completed yet due to time constraints.
However, I wanted to mention a few other things from Quest. I REALLY like this product, the company, and the engineering staff. Everyone I have met at Quest has been personable, knowledgeable and willing to answer all my questions (or hunt down the answer for me). I feel they provide an Enterprise solution, but with a start-up's flexibility and resolution time. They maintain a comprehensive blog for information release as well.
Along with ease of installation, configuration, and management; their universal printing solution and profile management make maintaining an enterprise deployment very simple. Like everything, the devil is in the details, but Quest and their staff make vWorkspace robust yet not overly complex.
Of course, vWorkspace is not just application virtualization. If it was, it would still rock. It does much more. vWorkspace is really designed to be an all-in-one broker for your virtual platforms... this includes App Delivery (via Terminal Services) as well as VDI.
My background has been primarily Citrix/Terminal Services, which is how I was first introduced to Quest. However, as I have branched more into ESX and VDI, I see more opportunity for Quest in the marketplace. Their VDI manager integrates nicely with VMWare ESX or Hyper-V (plus several other hypervisors), allowing for permanent or temporary desktops to be served on demand from templates. Since the management interface is the same, you can manage your TS APPS and your VDI from the same location, using the same toolset. As a matter of fact, you can even manage your existing Citrix servers from the vWorkspace console as well!
If you are in the market, I highly recommend checking out vWorkspace. It should be considered against Citrix XenApp, XenDesktop, or ESX View.
Additional Reading:
- Check out Sean Clark's blog on his vWorkspace training.
- SYS-CON Announces Virtualization Journal Readers' Choice Awards Winners:
- Best Desktop Virtualization Platforms
- Best VDI - Virtual Desktop Infrastructure
Andy,
ReplyDeletethanks for your post. It was really interesting to read and i hope that story will continue someday.
We - Terminal-Services.NET - are SBC consultants located in Germany and do roll-out vWorkspace solutions in Germany since late 2006 as it was still named the Virtual Access Suite under Provision Networks. We started to be interested in vWorkspace because in our eyes it is a RDP based SBC solution that may be of interest for a lot of environments that depend on Citrix in the past. Further on we think that it can be seen by design that most of those guys come from Citrix consultancy. What means that their solution is easy to understand and to administrate for anyone who already had some contact with Citrix, but we also think that it can't be called none complex. It may not be complex for what options it provides, but it is overly complex for most of the people who only was in the microsoft terminal services so far (we do not talk about 2k8 R2 here). Most of our customers are german IT solution providers or bigger companies with their own IT staff, but as long as they havn't any Citrix guys they hardly understand what vWorkspace can do and how it is to set up.
Three of us know the true promise of the vWorkspace training that was held by Terry Lewis from Provision Networks who also is with Quest now... and we REALLY love this suite too, but it is a pity that many people in Germany download it, arn't able to catch the suites abilities at first glance and put it aside without talking to any of the professionals.
Closing i like to note that we run a german vWorkspace blog in conjunction with Quest Germany on XING. Maybe it is of interest for one of the followers of your blog:
http://www.xing.com/group-39613.1f4995
Kind Regards,
Holger
(http://www.sbcpro.de)
I like to read it. It's great post dear. Thin Client Software & Citrix Thin Client
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