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Brian & Gabe LIVE #19: Cláudio Rodrigues joins us to talk about messed up Microsoft VDA licensing, ditching Office, seminars, and our new book!

Written on Feb 21 2012 4,218 views, 0 comments

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by Brian Madden

This week's Brian & Gabe (& Jack) featured Cláudio Rodrigues, and we discussed how messed up Microsoft's VDA licenses are and our new book.)

As always, there was a lot that we didn't get to—which means that there's a lot to look forward to next week.

Transcript

Brian: Hello from San Francisco on Tuesday, February 21, 2012. This is Brian Madden and you are listening to Brian and Gabe and Jack live.

Gabe: Wow that is a lot of energy you have right there.

Brian: Actually, what happened is I – you know we moved the show back a few hours in order to make it more accommodating for those of us connecting from the West Coast and I – I’ve adjusted.

So now it’s – it has become the 10:00Am has now still early for me, though not as early as 8:00AM.

I hear a lot of background fuzz. Is that – is that Cláudio?

Cláudio: Yes.

Gabe: That is the sound of Canada.

Cláudio: That’s it.

Brian: So our guest today is Cláudio Rodriguez joining us from Canada. I don’t think we have to be more specific than that. So Cláudio thanks for joining.

Gabe: He’s not in Vancouver, Calgary or Toronto. So he’s in the other one.

Brian: He’s in the rest. The other one, yea.

Gabe: I don’t even know where Calgary is.

Brian: So – okay, so – so Ron – so today’s topic – I know Cláudio you’ve got – first of all, Cláudio, do we have you for the whole hour?

Cláudio: Maybe for half an hour or 45 minutes.

Brian: Okay, so let’s talk to you first and then – I love Sorrento Willsby his comments awesome it says, “Let’s hear Jack rail against Microsoft licensing, it’s fun to see the next generation bitch about a 20 year old licensing model.”

So I love that we have been able to pass that torch on about how asinine the Microsoft licensing is and Jack you discovered it was actually more asinine that we had previously thought.

Jack: Yes indeed and it also a – in this article I got in a VDI versus terminal server paragraph –

Brian: Oh man, so you are all over these –

Jack: It’s right there.

Brian: Oh great, so that will be the second half of the show today. I knew that Cláudio was a guest about two minutes ago when I walked in and I saw there was a little screen for Cláudio on our recording thing. So –

Gabe: So the back-story behind that is a this morning I signed into my email this morning at about 9:30 in the morning because I was up until 2:00 last night working on some stuff. And there’s an email from Cláudio talking about a solution that he put in place for a very small customer – a very small business that is like two or three seats of VDI. An actual, like they own the server, they own everything.

And I thought man, we should talk about this in the show because I know that something – Brian that’s one of your soap boxes, like why the hell would you want to do that. But then, Cláudio seems to stand behind this decision to actually have this kind of product, so I thought what the hell let’s bring Cláudio on.

And Cláudio can also – if we get to the Microsoft licensing, you know Cláudio’s been around for a long time, so he can – he can deal with that too.

Brian: So what was the deal Cláudio, you wanted to figure out how could we make a solutions even smaller than 2X and what do you call this now, like – is this 1X, what is this?

Cláudio: Half X

Brian: Half X.

Cláudio: Yes, that’s it.

Brian: So you didn’t –

Cláudio: No, here’s –

Brian: Yea.

Cláudio: Oh, here’s the deal…

Brian: Well, hopefully he’s not connecting over his now small VDI connection. I don’t know where he is right now; I think he’s not at home with a regular connection. He said he was going to be connecting over the 3G.

Gabe: It sounded like he was in a food court at a shopping mall.

Brian: I thought that he was at a hockey game. All right, well Cláudio if you – oh and Justin said that he dropped. So maybe we will get him back. But I wonder – let’s talk about this though.

Gabe: Well the idea here is that I mean – so he had this small business – it was just a friend of his really -- it wasn’t really a client. But it was a small business that had – it was two or three users and so he decided that they – they – that he likened it to a mall kiosk, I’m not actually sure if it was a mall Kiosk thing, but they wanted to be able to access their desktops from anywhere. They wanted to not have to worry about it out in the field. They wanted to keep it all back in – in one location. And they wanted to have – have some of those features of VDI.

So what he did, he just rolled out – he bought a – a really lightweight server that just had some mirror drives and – and then he used ESXI and Xendesktop Express and brought up a very very small VDI environment.

Is Cláudio back? Oh yea, okay. He’s going to dial in it looks like. If you have that number Justin.

Brian: On the telephone.

Gabe: Yea.

Brian: All right, cool.

Gabe: So he rolled this small VDI out for these people and I – and I asked him, “Why wouldn’t you go with Two Cloud or Desktone or something like that?”

And he said that there was a pride of ownership aspect of this. Like they wanted a – they wanted to have their own solution, they wanted to – they wanted to manage it. They were doing backups and stuff. They had a file storer that was on a NAS and they wanted to do backups – using drop boxes for that so that stuff was stored off line.

So that even if the VDI environment goes down, because it’s only on one server. They can still access the information from anywhere. So –

Brian: So why do you need – I mean I don’t understand why they don’t just buy three desktops and use remote desktop – RDP software or Windows. I mean, it seems to me that you’ve got three $400.00 desktops. So $1,200.00 and I don’t know, log me in and there you go. And you can still run drop box and all of these things.

Gabe: Yea, yea – I don’t know and that’s why we wanted to have him on, because I knew that you have some – have some special issues with all of this. You know, you’ve gone out – so far as to say like, what is it 10,000 and under you should outsource it.

Brian: Yea for sure, because I just don’t believe that anyone can do it better than – well, I can – I guess again it depends on what your goals are. If you are trying to do, it based on cost, if you are trying to do it based on flexibility or whatever.

And Justin is waving at me as your saying – are you there Cláudio? He’s super quiet. Do you have volume on the phone?

Justin: It’s all the way up.

Brian: What’s his – what’s his

Gabe: It’s really you for bringing in Canadian everything. Everything else we’ve done is –

Brian: Justin, do you have a gain on him?

Justin: Yea, that’s up too.

Brian: Oh really?

Justin: Yea, it must be off – wait.

Brian: Try now Cláudio.

Justin: I can’t hear him at all

Brian: Are you talking? Turn the gain up more for him. All right now try Cláudio.

Gabe: Well, we can edit this part out of the podcast. Sorry live listeners, if we get Cláudio back, we can go on to that. Let’s just listen to Jack bitch about Microsoft.

Brian: Segment two Jack bitching about Microsoft. All right so, Jack bring it on. So what was your article this week?

Jack: Well, my article was a – Microsoft licensing for VDA and for Office is a pain and – pain isn’t the original word that I had in there, but I figured there would be a few more years before I earn the right to use swear words in article titles.

But no –

Brian: The title would have been, “Microsoft – “the original title was like, “Microsoft is over – has us over a barrel and they are fucking us horribly and we are taking it because that’s the only way we can get our desktops and here’s why.” That was your first title I guess, right?

Jack: Right, right and because – so four months ago, three or four months ago, we were on this whole licensing kick when we were first talking about single user terminal server VMs as a licensed – as a free alternative to VDA. And I think we never actually came to a conclusion as to whether or not that was legal or not. And –

Brian: Well, what we determined is – is you have to have a remote desktop an RDS cal with those. I think that was the think, right. So the idea was that you buy – if you buy the data center addition of windows server that allows you to run as many VMs as possible. So that gives you the actual core Windows license and then for your users – so in my article I was saying, “Hey now, you can connect and connect each user one to one.”

And what we learned is that you can do that, but you also have to have RDS Cal even though you’re not using these things.

Jack: Well, so that’s interesting because that RDS cal that solved what – that solves one of the VDA issues that I wrote about in this article because the issue with the VDA is any single device that you bring into the office. Any device at all has to have a VDA license for it.

Brian: Who’s you? You the IP – the company, they user?

Jack: Well – well that’s the problem because the – the IT department has to have a way to audit or make sure that everybody’s in compliance and the users have to be – have to be educated.

Brian: So if we back up – you’ve got SA and you buy SA for all your desktops and now SA includes the VDA rights, so it’s built in SA.

Jack: Right, so your desktops are fine.

Brian: But there’s home use rights too, right? So you can use – so if I have – if I have a desktop that’s SA and then I install the citrus receiver onto my iPad, then I’m covered with that home use rights, sort of, right?

Jack: At home, but you bring that iPad that’s perfectly fine at home, you bring that into the office, suddenly that needs another VDA – another VDA license.

Brian: Wait, who brings that in?

Jack: The – the employee – maybe –

Brian: So if I bring my iPad –

Jack: You bring your iPad into the office –

Brian: Into the office, but how do they --

Jack: Your personal iPad – how do they know, they – they don’t.

Brian: Wait, wait wait – literally, Microsoft is – if it is in the office –

Jack: If it is in the office –

Brian: How do they define office/

Jack: That’s –

Brian: Even literally – so – so my – I have SA on my primary device which gives me VDA. I can use – I can use my iPad from home or the train or the hotel, but if I walk in the door of my building with an iPad, now my company is supposed to have a second VDA license specific for that iPad, even though it’s my iPad and they don’t even know I’m using it. They just make terminal server – well, it wouldn’t be terminal server, but VDI available to me.

Jack: That is correct – that’s the understanding that – that’s what we came to and –

Brian: Are you fucking –

Gabe: So it’s a device license, plus a proximity license, plus a user license all rolled into one bat shit crazy license.

Brian: Are you fucking kidding me?

Jack: So your – right, unfortunately, no, I’m not. And this – this is along – so I wrote in the article, I consulted with Nathan Kotino about this, we had him – he was on the show about three months ago and I would – I got the idea to write this article because there were a few things out there that I read that are sort of like if you allow users to use iPads, your building will collapse and everyone will die.

And I’m like, what, what is this alarmist crap. And – and I went back to the – I went back to the show that we recorded in November and – we were talking about this VDA and home use rights and it turns out that at the time, we were talking about it but we didn’t dig in completely specifically about the situation that you just described.

Are you bringing your personal iPad or your personal Kindle or whatever or your – your mini fridge that runs Android apps? So – so anyway, I contacted Nathan about this and we – we went over it one day and – and we were – we were at the first reading of the material we said, “Okay, personal – personal devices in the office is okay. That’s – that’s good under these extended roaming rights.”

And you know we said, “We’ll – we’ll check a couple of things and we’ll get back to that.” So that’s about 2PM that we have that conversation, a little bit later in the day, he’s like, “Okay, I’m going to talk to some other people.” And then it’s about 8:00 my time, 10:00 his time because he’s in Chicago and he’s like – he’s like, “Let’s plan on having another call tomorrow. I found out some new stuff. We need – we need to talk some more.”

And then 11:00 my time, 1:00AM his time, I get – I get another email from him, and he’s like, “Man, this stuff is really crazy. Is it too late to submit a session?”

Brian: And so hopefully he, it’s not –

Jack: So he did – did submit a session so we can get into this more. But we –

Gabe: When we had Nathan on here that day, I think we talked for – I think we went over our hour and it was one of the more interesting Brian & Gab live shows that we’ve done. Just having Nathan on here with his – I mean, he – he already had vast knowledge in his head, but still it wasn’t enough to explain all of the questions that you were asking.

Jack: We just – And – we need to have him on once a month.

Gabe: You have the energy to go after these questions. We just stopped giving a shit and we just do what we think is right.

Jack: Oh, I spent – I spent like three days pulling my hair out trying to – to figure this out from reading –

Gabe: It’s not – it’s not

Jack: older blog post from the two of you. And reading Microsoft’s website and they have this PDF that you can download. Its like, “Look at these simple scenarios that – to explain VDA licensing.”

And it has little pictures and diagrams. Like a company has 100 user and 50 of them log on from home occasionally and 25 of them work primarily in the office and are shared. It’s kind of like, one train leave Philadelphia going 50 miles an hour and another train leaves –

And so they’re simple scenarios like, this PDF there was like eight, not even using any hyperbole, there’s like eight of these scenarios like, which one of these simple scenarios does your solution fall under?

Brian: But, it sounds like they don’t even cover all of the scenarios. Because do they talk about –

Jack: No, they don’t.

Brian: To be clear – so like are you sure this is right? First of all, this – this is – this is – I guess this is you with the material and Nathan Coutinho and you feel confident that this is how it – like this is –

Jack: Yea, yea.

Brian: If you bring a device – so but as – so SA licenses is first of all per device, so I have – we’ll speak about me literally with me, right. So now I have a Kindle Fire, I have an iPad, I have an iPhone, I have a – I have the Blackberry Tablet. So these are the four devices that could run – oh, and I’ve got my laptop, which I use occasionally and then my desktop in the office.

So literally because I have six devices that anyone of them could be in my pocket at any day, connecting from the office, any – any one of those would – would need to be covered. And I say, it’s per device—

Jack: No –

Brian: Like I would need to buy like everyone – like once I connect – it’s like an old Rally’s commercial with Seth Green, you know. Every time you –

Gabe: Cha-ching.

Brian: You walk in the door; we might as well put a electronic eye in the door that just sends a thing to Microsoft. Oh, shit dude, that’s my first like project.

So – so look Gabe – so Gabe bought me – for my birthday last year in an Arduino kit and I didn’t really know what to build with it. And where this comes – I think building this project – so I saw this thing on Gizmag, earlier this week called the transparency grenade.

And I don’t know if you guys have seen this thing – and you’ll see – you’ll see where I – where I’m – like what the point is of this thing.

It’s kind of done like a public art project. It is literally, a translucent grenade shaped device but it’s an electronic device that has inside it batter, a little Arduino system, 3G connection, microphones, Wi-Fi, a processor, and like GPS connectors and you pull the pin and let it somewhere and it does two things: a.) it starts recording all audio it hears and broadcasts it to internet and b.) it intercepts as much Wi-Fi as it can and broadcasts it to the internet. And then you go to map and you can see where these grenades have been deployed.

And so like, the idea is – the idea you know is, like if you occupy or whatever – to throw us over the wall of the compound and see what you can find.

Gabe: Can we build one of these?

Brian: Well, I think – I mean – and the form factor is not so good because it literally looks like a grenade, but I mean, conceptionaly I’m sure they already exist. You know, and they are probably way smaller than we – than we imagine.

Jack: Just make it look like an iPad and but they’ll pick it up it will be like a Trojan horse.

Brian: Actually, did we talk about that with the with the USB sticks?

Jack: Oh, who –

Brian: Who were we talking to?

Jack: Who, who was that – that – that was awesome. That was somebody at – one of the two places we were at last – two weeks ago?

Brian: Did you hear this Gabe, where they said that the best way to penetrate security inside companies is you put a bunch of Trojans on like eight USB sticks and just drop them in the parking lot. Outside the building, you want to penetrate. And then they just work –

Gabe: Yea, that makes sense.

Brian: Totally.

Jack: It’s like, “Hey a USB stick.”

Brian: So anyway, where I’m going with this, so this truth grenade – I mean it’s all made up of like sterling silver and – and this kind of stuff. And its –

Gabe: It’s as pretty as it is technically elegant.

Brian: And it is – it’s going in – they made one copy it cost $30,000.00. It’s going in a museum. But it’s the sort of – it’s a public – well not public art, it’s like a conceptional art project.

But I wonder if this – or also think about the way that Colbert is doing the super pack and he’s making fun of – which is Colbert still off the air by the way?

Gabe: No, he’s back.

Brian: He’s –

Gabe: His mom was sick.

Brian: Oh, so, they – the way he’s making fun of the whole process of like the political system, by like participating in it.

Jack: I hear some stuff in the background. Does that mean that Cláudio is back?

Brian: I can hear music in the background. Oh, there is stopped, all right.

Gabe: I – I just called him off.

Brian: Okay.

Gabe: So.

Brian: So anyway, the – but if I make something that it’s – it’s like a – can you connect this third jack? If I make something that’s like an Arduino kit that detects people – that like detects people – that detects like devices walking through the door and that automatically sends a thing to Microsoft and charges your credit card.

You know I could actually sell that as the latest Microsoft compliance device. Fuck dude there –there’s our April fools –

Jack: Well –

Brian: There’s our April fool’s article. It’s like Kevin Goodman

Jack: It’s a – it’s like a metal detector for the door except it – it measure Microsoft’s compliance.

Brian: Oh my god –

Gabe: Well, here’s the thing though –

Brian: The question

Gabe: but you can’t – Microsoft doesn’t know whether your device is at home or not. And they rely on you to – you said in the article they rely on the honor system. So it’s not even like – even if you could track exactly what device that was, Microsoft would have no idea what the hell you were doing.

So they put all of this complexity out there and then their like, “A just let us know when you do it.”

Jack: And when –

Gabe: “And go ahead and pay us.”

Jack: Another – another question that I realize now that – that we still have to figure out if we felt like digging through this more is, are those VDA license like – within one user, like Brian can you have your – have your extra VDA license apply to your iPad one day and your Kindle Fire the next day. Or is it 90 days with –

Brian: That sounds a lot like per user licensing not per device licensing, doesn’t it?

Jack: But it’s like per user, per –

Brian: Right, but VDA is – right, so as long as – there’s a 90 day transfer period, right? So as long as I – if I use all of my devices –

Jack: Well, there’s that 90 day –

Brian: After the 90 days –

Jack: Transfer period for like – for like external contractors, but I wonder if that applied as to your personal devices.

Brian: And that’s you can only transfer a license once every 90 days to a different device, right?

Jack: Right.

Brian: Yea, but personal – so is the point that the personal devices stop being personal once you bring them into the company?

Jack: Well –

Brian: Like, I don’t –

Gabe: I don’t know that it’s actually been considered.

Brian: I don’t know like he was –

Gabe: If they looked at this from the perspective that we are, how – how the hell could anybody come up with a solution like this. Like I just don’t think that they’ve considered the fact that – I don’t think they’ve put as much thought into it as you just did. Suggesting that when a device enters the work place, it becomes a – a work device.

I just don’t – I mean clearly, they just haven’t put that much thought into it.

Brian: And what is –

Jack: And I think their language, by the way, is also just plan end points. So they – they don’t care who owns it they just want to know how many end points are in the door.

Brian: How do they define – because they don’t use the door? And one of the commenters was saying –

Gabe: How do you define the office?

Brian: Like, how—how’s the text – I don’t know if you have it in front of you but – do you know what the text says? Like do they say, like in the – they don’t call it an office – what do they actually say? Like, if you are on premises?

Jack: I – I don’t have that text in front of me.

Gabe: But if you work from the sidewalk outside, that’s the right of way?

Brian: But really – I mean seriously, right? And there’s Wi-Fi. Like that’s crazy, like I mean if I hold – I mean I’m being a little bit facetious, but seriously, if I hold my – my device out the window and only access my desktop from – I’m in the office, but the device is not in the office. Does it have air rights? What if I’m on the roof? And I –

Jack: I – I have –

Brian: And like, the fact – I mean, obviously I’m being like –

Jack: Yea, yea, and obviously, I don’t have the answers to these questions. And – but –

Gabe: Why not?

Jack: it just goes to show how –

Brian: But it’s – it’s – I mean so – okay, so what – what we have – so this is to me the second – the second straw. I don’t know how many I have though. I don’t know if it’s the final one because the final one may have happened a while ago but – the – my – for a long time my – my number one biggest complaint about Microsoft was they had no SPLA for Windows 7 and it looks like they are still not having any service provider agreement. So if you want to provide licenses for – for you know like, you know how that works. So no service provider –

Jack: But then so – so right – or – or you can continue if you want but I was going to go on down to – so the – the next part in the article I mentioned how great everything is with – with RDS per user client access licenses.

And – and to get my little – to get my little TS versus VDI thing in there. So what do you do, you send out an email to all your employees where you say, “Okay, so if you – if you’re accessing a terminal server desktop, and you bring your personal device in from home than that’s okay, but if you’re accessing a VDI desktop, please tell us so that we can tell you not to.”

Brian: Buy the appropriate –

Jack: “Or so we can buy the appropriate license.” And you know of course, how does the user know the difference? They are probably clicking on the same client icon to access – both –

Brian: Office.

Jack: Both environments.

Gabe: If – if we’re doing it right.

Jack: And – and maybe the – maybe the terminal server – the windows server has all of the arrow turned on, so it feels like windows 7 anyway. And –

Brian: Especially if it’s a seamless – so yea, it’s – that is crazy like please – kindly please notify us if you happen to be –

Jack: But if you use single user windows server VMs with – with per user RDS cals, then you can – then you have a single user benefits of VDI, but you have the per user cal benefits of – of the terminal server.

Brian: Okay – so okay that means that if we take this conversation back to the – back to what we were talking about before, you know, the RDS – using RDS with a one user per RDS host. You have to buy data centered licenses for your – for your base windows server, but then you can run as many VMs as you want.

And you can connect them into the – into XenDesktop just as easily as soon to connect Vorc space of course and soon you could even trick view into working where it’s giving single user RDS sessions instead of single user window VMS.

Then you’ve got per user licensing. And you’re – you’re done. So I feel like if it’s more screwy – like people say yea, maybe – maybe it’s a little bit more screwy to use RDS for desktop type stuff. But what’s more screwy, that or the scenario that you, Jack, just outlined for users that might want to bring in their own devices.

So we have to figure out what – there’s a lot to go in here. I think there’s a – there’s another article on this from brianmadden.com. And a new product launch I think for – for our next future company. Which is – yea –

So I hear some clicking around in the background. And Justin’s telling me that Cláudio is back –

Cláudio: well, I’m trying to be back, but I’m not sure if I am back. But –

Brian: We – we hear you.

Gabe: It sounds pretty good.

Brian: Alright, so jumping back to the topic that we first – a discussed with you Cláudio. You were talking about building a small VDI environment for just three users. Gabe explained it, there was sort of a pride of ownership thing there and you wanted to have this all sort of in house.

My questions, I guess, is – oh, well first of all is that right? What did you do with this small little VDI environment?

Cláudio: Yea, that’s it. But before I answer that, I just want to ask you guys a question. What if I connect to the VDI using a RDS session? So I give my users access to a TS and then they connect and then from their they start to get –

Brian: Oh—so the client – so the client –

Gabe: there was somebody in the comments in Jack’s article yesterday that was clearly was trying to sell one of their products for MAC virtualization, but he’s like, “Yea, I have a quick solution for that. Use remote from your Mac to my solution and then connect.” Or something like that.

And I don’t know if it actually works that way. But his – I think the message there was similar to that. Where if you, if – if you’re actually connecting to the VDI session from premises all the time no matter what device you are using RDP or something like that – then yea. I guess you find a way around it.

Brian: Yea, that guy – I think –

Gabe: Although –

Brian: I think that’s Derek, Derek Smith. Right, from Orchard Park, he’s another Canadian, so a –

Gabe: So – but – but – so my question there is how does Microsoft – like you are still accessing Office for instance and you’re still accessing Windows. I just wonder, if they can be this convoluted, why doesn’t that extend out –

Brian: How many hops does the access go through?

Gabe: Right.

Brian: The ultimate – ultimate end-user device you have somewhere in the chain has – has a windows desktop in it that I would imagine that you would ultimately need to have that – although what’s the device?

Yea –

Jack: And Gabe, since you did mention Office, the one thing that I want to get in – or mention is that the – the licensing for access to Office is essentially the same restrictions as VDA.

So if you have all those – with – with – if you have Office on terminal server, that freedom to use as many devices as you want at work goes away if you are accessing the Office, because Office is per end-point when on company premises. When off company premises it’s still whatever you want, but essentially having Office on that terminal server restricts that to – to the other – to the more restrictive sets of rules.

Brian: And –

Gabe: Right, so I feel like this is all about selling SA. In one way or another and I really wish it was easier to – to – to articulate that then. You know, I feel like if Microsoft just said, “You know, what if you guys buy SA, you just get it all.”

Just you know, fuck it!

Brian: You do –

Gabe: Do whatever you gotta do.

Brian: But it’s not per user though. It is about buying SA, but how do you – but SA – I mean you can’t buy SA for devices that can’t roam to those, so you can’t buy SA for your iPad.

Gabe: Well that’s – but if you’re in a SA subscriber in the enterprise, then you should just be fine. Because like, that’s clearly the goal is to sell SA, but if they are trying to sell SA – like where it gets complicated is when they’re trying to do SA benefits for devices that can’t run Windows and – like I feel like if they are just trying to sell SA, I think – nobody – nobody’s buying these licenses anyways, for their six different devices that could possibly access a system.

So – so I feel like if their whole goal is to sell SA they should just say, “If you buy SA you get all of this stuff and you don’t have to worry about it ever again. But if you don’t buy SA, then you have to deal with all of this crap.” And that – that would make it at least easier. Like the crap could all still be there, but people would take one look at it and go, “Uh-uh, I don’t want that.” And go over to – and just buy SA.

Brian: You know, this is the reason why I’m going to retire. I mean frankly, you know, I talked about – we publicly

Jack: No, no no – this is the reason why we should be excited about the future, because at the end of the day isn’t the question, listen, you didn’t bring your iPad into the office to access a Windows desktop did you?

Brian: That’s a good point. Yea, and is – and so –

Jack: Is that why anybody bought an iPad?

Brian: Mark Templeton. Actually, probably not Mark Templeton. Probably all the Microsoft – well no, Microsoft employees. You’re right, that’s a good point.

The only people who – yea, that’s a very good point. So the more we can further along this transition away from –

Jack: Gabe is saying, “So Jack is 26 and excited about this. Ah, to be young.”

Brian: I mean it’s –

Gabe: I appreciate your optimism and reject it.

Jack: I’m saying that I’m – I’m excited about the – the future of application delivery.

Gabe: I gotcha.

Brian: Well, we’ve got –

Gabe: And – and you’re right.

Brian: We’ve got four years of this – the – the thing is I’m starting to view – so we signed this deal with TechTarget that takes us through the end of 2015, so we’re down to about three – three years and ten months left give or take.

And what’s starting to happen more is I’m realizing that my – you know that sort of whatever you call it – chain around my – like the restriction I have – the lock in I have, let’s say. I’m forced to stay here from another three and a half, you know four years.

It’s not a TechTarget thing; it’s a Microsoft licensing industry thing. Like, I could work at TechTarget for another 50 years this is fine. But I’m like locked in to having to deal with fucking like bullshit Microsoft licensing policies.

Gabe: But we’re not because the desktop – the future of the desktop is going to change, right?

Brian: Yea, so –

Gabe: So it will still be there, but it will be less of a percentage of our pie.

Brian: I need to go cold turkey, man. The only Microsoft application that I use is Office for Mac. I got to get off this thing and figure out something else.

Jack: Go off that too?

Brian: If I get off that, then I’m not giving any money at all to Microsoft. And fuck them and the MVP program; I’m not going to that thing. And so, like, I’m already really working my way out of there. So, I – if I can get off of Office for Mac, I don’t know if that is possible though, but anyway –

Gabe: But what if – so we have Cláudio for just a few more minutes so let’s a -- let’s get back to his thing.

Brian: All right man, so Cláudio – so talk to us – so you’ve got the small VDI environment and Gabe was saying that you wanted to build it yourself because it’s a pride of ownership thing as opposed to paying like two cloud or Desk tone or something like that.

Cláudio: It’s not only that, like when you go through the – the licensing just from providers are – you know they have a place, some like a, which one you gave me. The link Gabe a –

Gabe: It was two cloud –

Cláudio: two – a two cloud?

Gabe: It was two cloud yea.

Cláudio: Yea, so that one for example, there is a medium fee buying that is like 50 desktops per month. So that’s – that’s the first problem. The second, funny problem is it’s a bring your own VDA license deal. So if you go through their agreement you need to bring your own VDA licenses.

So it’s like, man, I just want to get a fucking desktop. Like I don’t’ want to bring my licenses.

Gabe: You know what – Brian: But you have to have licenses for your solution.

Gabe: I think – hang on, I think that this is – I think that this solution is too small to use desktops in the cloud. A –

Cláudio: That’s it

Gabe: With the licensing about how there is no SPLA license for Windows, so in this situation, two cloud can’t have – can’t just take these three Windows desktops and put them on the same host that they are using for some other company.

Brian: Wow – why doesn’t he just use OnLive? Clearly, they don’t have the problems with Windows SPLA and ten bucks per user per month. It’s American, which is now the weak currency too. So –

Gabe: Yea, except – well up there in Canada we already know that a – the internet connection isn’t all that great.

Brian: Oh yea.

Cláudio: Exactly. That’s why we kept in-house.

Gabe: But, so – so my point though is that since they have to dedicate hardware to each specific customer, then to – to have three desktops running on a server is ridiculously expensive per desktop.

And so that’s why they have to make you do 50 to make it cost effective for their price model to work with – with their – with their info structure. So –

Cláudio: That’s the case.

Gabe: So – so I think that – and I didn’t think about this before, but I think that there is actually, probably a minimum threshold until what Microsoft gets a SPLA license in place for Win 7.

That I think there is a low end of this threshold too so that at some point you are too small and you have to roll your own VDI if you want those features.

Brian: So my question – so okay, so – so—right into part two, if your business requirement, Cláudio, is to deliver these desktops to these users, you want to build it in house that’s fine. Why – I mean you’ve got VDI – I don’t know, why just not buy a few desktops and then use something like LogMeIn and just have like three physical desktops. Which by the way, then you don’t need any SAI there, you can just have the just regular – pardon me –

Cláudio: That’s a – that’s a good point. Like, as a LogMeIn user as well, I – I can give you the feedback on using both solutions. Performance if we compare just like usability, how it works, I would say LogMeIn is a great solution, but it’s just still not there. Like – you know it’s not the same as like going through – whatever, RDP or Citrix on desktop.

Brian: Why not use RDP –

Gabe: At the end of the day –

Cláudio: Why not use RDP?

Brian: Yea.

Cláudio: Well, then you need something – it can be done, yes. It was just the easier use of Xendesktop being available on an alternate platforms.

Brian: Wait so –

Gabe: It’s available for free too, so –

Brian: It’s free, oh, oh, oh –

Gabe: Userdesktop Express and ESX so it’s not a – it’s not a –

Cláudio: Exactly.

Brian: Oh, okay –

Gabe: So there was not pay of that.

Brian: Okay, I’m on board.

Gabe: So why not use terminal services then on an even more lightweight box? Although –

Brian: Oh yea.

Gabe: I guess in that situation, then you have to buy a server license, but you still – but you still need – would you – you still need a Windows server license to refer XenDesktop Express, right?

Cláudio: The reality is that everyone – oh yes, you still need a license. Like we have to buy it, the reality is these guys, they have several different devices. Like everyone has like a iPad or whatever it is. And they want access from anything.

You know even though they are small, but they are still using these things. iPadS, IPhones or whatever, and that’s where the Xendesktop free fits perfectly.

Gabe: Man, I got a – there’s an article there getting priced out of getting – doing VDI for small organizations because of SPLA. We are just going to rail on Microsoft. We should have like fuck Microsoft week.

Brian: Oh my gosh, and via market sponsor or something –

Cláudio: Yea.

Gabe: That’s –

Brian: You know if you go to our search sites all the ads are from Microsoft, so let’s –

Gabe: One article series and we retire.

Brian: Oh my gosh, I – this is just – and I guess getting back to this – this is to Jack’s point it’s like, hey what can we do – it’s like we can revolutionize from within. Like, we can be champions of trying to move off of the Windows platform. It’s crazy because it’s easy for us to move off of the Windows platform because we don’t have any real applications.

But for companies, it only requires one Windows application and then they have to have the whole Windows desktop and all of this garbage and on and on and on.

Yea, we have – Ron Oglesby says, “You guys have become the anti-Microsoft site.” That is a true statement, no objections, next question.

So anyway – so Cláudio was – so I never thought about it so the Xendesktop Express – it didn’t even occur to me – I kind of forgot that – that even really exists, but I guess in your case – so you have literally just one server EXSI, so that’s free. And Desktop Express, you have to buy your three SA or VDA licenses or whatever you’re, using and I guess probably one server – one Windows server license, right? And that’s – that’s it.

Cláudio: That’s it yea. All done.

Brian: And then you’re –

Gabe: And I’m sure there’s nothing – I mean yea, these are all persistent VMS, you know one to one. There’s nothing complex going on here. It’s just – it’s three individual terminal servers.

Cláudio: Exactly, very simple.

Gabe: And – and so – and so you can – you said you can support, you’ve got room for a few more people on that one server, but Xendesktop Express will support up to ten users.

This is a great commercial for Xendesktop Express and they’re not even paying us.

Cláudio: Yea.

Gabe: So but I mean – really this solution does work pretty well. And so, what did you say you were out total, like $6,000.00?

Cláudio: Yea, because you know we bought a little better server and we got a NAS like a Q-NAP, so we – you don’t need to go as fancy as we tried to do, but you can probably do like a small – like I did for myself actually. I did everything similar, for under $2,000.00 – under $2K.

Brian: Is that – so again, why did you go the VDI route instead of terminal server? I don’t –

Cláudio: Well, in this case, it was just a better compatibility we thought whatever crap they may want to bring down the road. So it’s just in like if they want to install something, I don’t need to worry about, O, will this work properly? Do I have to change this or that? It just works.

Brian: I guess you don’t have to administer for this also, because you can say, there’s three computers there – they understand that they can have administrative rights. They can do whatever.

Gabe: Yea.

Cláudio: Yes, very simple. And as I was mentioned to Gabe, like even the file shares that we – that you know, like you have a shared folder for company data for example. It’s inside the drop box share.

So we are sharing a soup folder of drop box. So whatever they dump there it’s automatically back it up to drop box, to the cloud. Then they can access from home, from an iPad, from whatever.

Gabe: And if their one server goes down, and that hooks all their desktops, they still have access to the data.

Cláudio: Yes and if the server goes down – as I said, like the – the VMS they are stored on the external nest, so it’s just a matter of bringing up a new box and pointing to the same storage and you are back online.

Brian: The VMS are stored in the external NAS; they are not actually running from the external NAS, are they? They are just backed up there somehow?

Cláudio: No, no, they are running off the external NAS.

Brian: Oh, wow! Three users, you can do fun stuff like that. Because it’s extra.

Cláudio: Yea, exactly.

Brian: It’s three users over a singular connection on a three foot cable. So –

Cláudio: That’s it, so nice and cozy.

Brian: What – what is – how about VDI in a box?

Cláudio: Well, I don’t – do they have like a free ten user thing for VDI in a box?

Gabe: No, and that’s why not right there. Because it’s not free.

Brian: And that’s why not – and that’s why they don’t do it because then people would – if they are targeting it for under 50 users, like percentage wise, they would have to have free 1/3 of a user. You can have one user who can use it every alternating day. And that’s their free solution, otherwise they are losing money.

Cláudio: That’s pretty much it, yea.

Gabe: Wow.

Brian: Cláudio, are you still a Microsoft MVP?

Cláudio: Yes, I am indeed.

Brian: Are you going to the – to the summits in a few weeks?

Cláudio: No, unfortunately not.

Brian: You, I believe that you might be the – the – I know that you were an MVP before me and I think that you might be the longest term MVP of all the current MVPs. Do you think that’s correct?

Cláudio: Yea, I was the first one in 2001.

Brian: And it was you and some Andre someone maybe?

Cláudio: No, it was me. Only me.

Brian: But then – and then – and then I remember because we had Matthew Harris was there for a while, but I think he’s out. And yea so –

Cláudio: Yea, they added a bunch – a bunch of people after, yea.

Brian: So you’re 11 years now, so still going strong.

Cláudio: Still going, until they kick me out.

Brian: Apparently – apparently it’s not possible to get kicked out because I didn’t reapply this year and they just made me one anyway. And I’ve been sort of dropping lots of “f” bombs with Microsoft – with the word Microsoft in the same sentence and that’s fine.

Maybe now they are keeping me in just to prove a point. Just to show like, no, we love – we embrace all opinions.

Cláudio: Yea, probably.

Brian: Though, I’m not going to – instead of me going MVP so I don’t have to – I’m going to be at home trying to figure out how not to use Microsoft Office. There’s my tweet.

Jack: Thoughts to go, quick Office a –

Brian: No, I need a –

Jack: Drop box.

Brian: Well the problem –

Gabe: You need PowerPoint.

Brian: Yea – well, actually. So here’s the thing too and –

Jack: Slotrocket –

Brian: So Cláudio – incidentally Cláudio, I don’t know if you have to go now Cláudio or you can hang out longer, but I think – I don’t have any more questions specifically about your VDI solutions, so if you want to take off you can, but if you want to stay and join – join us feel free to a – feel free to stay.

Cláudio: Yea, for now I’m okay.

Brian: All right. So anyway moving – and Cláudio, you’re a Mac user. Do you run Mac OS or do you run Windows?

Cláudio: I run Mac OS.

Brian: And – with Microsoft Office or other Office Suite?

Cláudio: No unfortunately with Microsoft Office.

Brian: Yea – yea the problem I had – so – so first of all the Apple Key Note product. That’s their version of Power Point is a better product than Power Point. But the problem is, is not the compatibility, so – so many people send me PowerPoint slides and I can’t really be like, “O, I don’t use Power Point.”

Because, I’m like that guy, like if I don’t use Power Point, you’re kind of a pretentious ass-hole a little bit. You’re like someone without a TV or someone with a – with a Hybrid and they like remind you of it every ten goddamn seconds.

Gabe: And that’s why organizations can’t go to Open Office and things like that too because you just – you have to be – you have to be compatible 100 percent with the stuff that other people have too.

Brian: And so, if I just had no – I don’t know maybe I could give it a shot. I’d have to rebuild my entire presentation which would take – that’d take a while. And then – tell me – Jack’s pointing at Justin.

So – so the – but the other thing is too is – yea, it’s just hard because then I mean anytime you go to a conference and so like a lot of time I can use my own laptop. But if I go somewhere they have like the built-in computers and they are Windows computers and –

Jack: And their slides – there are slides that they want to insert into your presentation or Power Point slide and –

Brian: Yea –

Jack: And they won’t be able to figure that out. But hey maybe that’s a –

Gabe: Maybe export to a PDA app thing you’re just like scrolling through pages in a PDF and there’s not builds or transitions or a – yea, I think you’re stuck with Power Point man.

Brian: There’s no transition is the key and so there are – so there’s that.

Gabe: But you can build a slide at a time or whatever too, but animations and that kind of a thing.

Brian: Yea and I looked into the whole –

Jack: You can just build a whole bunch of slides and do them really fast.

Brian: I looked into Slide Rocket. And it just didn’t – it’s just not there yet in terms of function – and – and Google has a presentation product also – it’s part of Google Apps and it just has a very small sliver of functionality that it supports.

And then the same is true of Microsoft Word, so you know, Apple has their Word processing software, but it’s not compatible with docx. I think it can – I think it can open docx, but it can’t save as docx and so –

Cláudio: Keynote sucks big time. Like, Keynote I can still use it, and I actually like Keynotes, but they just – oh my god, they just is terrible.

Brian: Pages is like –

Gabe: Yea, I know you like Keynote because every year at briforum you send me your Keynote file and I have to be like dude, I can’t post this on BrianMadden.com can you send me the PDF?

Cláudio: That’s it.

Gabe: And there’s Prezi too that for some reason people like and I’m not – I don’t get it.

Brian: Prezi has gotten – they’ve gotten better. The problem with Prezi is for the longest time was that you couldn’t adjust – you couldn’t customize your formatting. They had like five templates to choose from and if you didn’t want, you know the CCCCC background color and the like the one gray blue foreground color, then – then you couldn’t use it.

Which is exactly why I don’t want to be a start-up company and also because I’m sure that Prezi wanted from day one is to have –

Gabe: What type of Prezi? What platform?

Brian: It’s a web-based a presentation software. But it – instead of having slides and being linear, you – you have a canvas – it’s like a two-dimensional canvas and so you sort of zoom in on areas and then zoom out to other areas. And it’s like a Candy Land board, but you’re zooming in super small to each slide.

So it’s kind of cool, but I don’t – it would be very hard – what’s nice about using traditional presentation software. We had these libraries so that when I’m asked to speak for a half hour instead of two hours, I can go to my think and pull out stuff really easily.

Or, if I need to combine two presentations, I can do that very easily. In Prezi, that would be like, you know your slideshow is a Candy Land Board and you’ve got to take out every fifth slide, but still make the board look good and connect everything together and it – it would be impossible.

Jack: Just fly over those parts and ignore them.

Brian: So a man, I think we’re stuck. I don’t know, maybe I will just start pirating Microsoft Office for Mac and then we – and maybe that’s one way to stick it to them.

And I’ll donate the $300.00 to say a children’s museum or whatever. I mean I’m fine with – I mean it’s not that I don’t want to spend the money it’s just that I don’t want Microsoft to have it. And – and people say, “Well, if you don’t support them – then that’s going to make them – they’re not going to make software for Mac.” Which that would be great because then that would force the world to – to – like if Microsoft Office suddenly did not exist for Mac, the world would figure out how to use other formats besides Power Point.

Gabe: Although frankly, paying for Microsoft Office for the Mac though, it’s the only thing you use. It’s not like you are paying for Windows and all this other stuff. I mean, you are – you are at least only paying for the thing that you use.

Jack: You paid like $300.00 and paid it like once. So it’s not

Brian: And I – I guess I should tell How, he’s our IT guy here, that he can – that he can cancel my server Cal because I don’t use the share for anything here, so I don’t even know if I know how to connect to it.

And you know, I bought my own printer – did we talk about that? I bought my own printer and plugged it into my Mac, so I don’t even use it for printing services. So yea, they can have their $45.00 back or whatever that is.

Gabe: So there, problem solved –

Brian: So speaking of presentations – so Gabe, next – no this week, right? You’re going to –

Gabe: This week – yea –

Brian: You’re going to Seattle.

Gabe: Tomorrow – yea.

Brian: Speak of the devil.

Gabe: Well talk about rebuilding your presentation because I mean, I’ve seen you give your presentation, and I’m basically giving the same thing. It’s not – it’s not word for word copy.

And so I go to your – I can make my own slide deck, so – I can’t give your presentation. Your bat shit crazy out there. Your arms waving and your – your presentation is so refined after giving it a 175 times that you’re just pop, pop, pop. And you could do it behind you – you – you could just probably set your – to auto record your presentation and then just hit play and talk.

And you’re that synchronized. You’re just – so for mine I thought, okay even though the message is fairly similar, you and I have a few different views and this isn’t – this isn’t the Brian VDI show, this is mine. So I’m going to go through – I’m going to give the same –

Brian: Is that your first slide?

Gabe: Huh, a – I think it’s the first thing I came up with. It’s like okay, so thanks everybody for coming. We are here for one of a few reasons, we are here for one is that you thought Brian was coming and –

And so – a – so – so I took the same flow. I took the same 12 tenants of desktop virtualization that you talk about. They are spun my own way, a little bit. And basically, I re-wrote the whole thing from scratch. Using some of the build, some of the slides and things like that. But things that are universal, but my god man, that has taken – I decided to start like maybe this time last year.

Jack: Didn’t you say like 158 slides?

Gabe: I do, it’s like 185 slides. I don’t use as many builds as Brian does, but I have more slides to accomplish the same thing that Brian would with two in one.

Brian: To be clear, those who are listening, we both present in that sort of like, Garr Reynolds presentation Zen style. So when you hear 185 slides, there’s no real words on slides. This is as we are talking like different images and stuff like that coming up on a screen behind us.

So I don’t want anyone to be afraid of – not going to these things – because there’s 185 slides -

Gabe: It’s not 185 slides of each with 600 words.

Brian: Yea, exactly.

Gabe: So – so I’ve gone through and I’ve – I mean, it’s – it’s just been – I can’t imagine you’ve built this thing up over time and I have to get there – I have to put a two hour presentation that sums up all of desk top virtualization and I started to do this last week.

And I have to do that in addition to my normal job, in addition to this book that we’re writing and so like, I woke up at 9:30 today because I was up until 2:00 last night, still working on my presentation. And I did that the night before and the night before.

Brian: Well luckily, you’ll – you only have to build it once, I guess and then you will be giving it and – what do you have like four or five cities this year?

Gabe: Yea, my wife last night asked me, she’s like, “So do I like get my husband back next week.”

Brian: Awww…

Gabe: So a yea –

Brian: What is – do you remember off the top of your head any of the sort of philosophical differences that you have from me?

Gabe: Mainly – the one that sticks out in my head because I just wrapped up that section, was the fact that you have thought that terminal server based desktops have been dead for years. And I still maintain that lots of people use them, so – and it’s not like – even – that doesn’t really change the message that much. It’s just that I’m more reaffirming that it’s okay if you’re doing this. And I feel like it’s okay if you continue doing that. Where you feel you need to me.

And Cláudio, do you see that? Are you still on?

Cláudio: Yea, yea, I’m here.

Gabe: Do you see – so Brian – Brian argues that – that – not argues but says that – that most terminal servers are used for publishing applications. And I think that a lot of people still use them for desktops.

What do you think?

Cláudio: Oh, I agree big time. And especially –

Gabe: Which one, with who?

Cláudio: I agree with you like, there is a ton of people using full desktops on terminal services. And today, after the call we just – you know, we are just having, they are going to be – start using RDS even more to use as a lounging platform for VDI.

Brian: We’ll find out. I will have to see if I can find anyone who’s actually going to go to that MVP summit. Actually, I know that Benny will be. Benny Tritsch so I’ll ask him and he’s – so Benny you know works for APsense, which has a big office here in the Bay area.

So Benny’s flying over from Germany to attend the MVP summit and then the weekend after the summit, he will come down here and stay with me for the weekend and then head down to a – to wherever Apsense is, somewhere south? And – so I’ll ask him to debrief me – fully respecting his non-disclosure agreement, of course. But I’ll ask him to brief -- so maybe we can have him ask that question for us.

Anyway, Gabe, so you’ve got – so the show that you’re doing is Thursday, yea?

Gabe: Thursday, yea and I can’t remember what hotel it’s at but I could probably find out pretty quick, but I don’t know if we’ve updated our events page yet or not.

Brian: We have a actually.

Gabe: So, Brianmadden.com\events will have that information out there. It is –

Brian: Brianmadden.com\events has that information currently.

Gabe: So it is at the W Seattle hotel, 1112 4^th avenue and starts at – starts at 9:00 or so in the morning. And so it – and it’s one of these – it’s these typical shows, so I’ll speak for an hour and then we have another hour – or half an hour I think where vendors come in and present and then I round up the day with another hour. Just kind of rapping – excuse me – rapping up the presentation. So we’ll try to get about half way through the 12 tenants of desktop virtualization and then a – the first hour and then round it out the last half – or the last hour with some Q&A at the end.

So – and I got to finally watch you do this when I was in – I – I went to Denver to watch you do a show there and I realized that this is the same show. Like I think I’ve given this session with you on a – on a more concise level at conferences and I mean, god knows we have this conversation so often that it’s not really that big of a deal.

It’s really, the biggest difference between your presentation and mine is just the way that the story is told. And – and because of that though the presentation and everything had to be restarted from scratch and so – which is good because now it’s – not it’s entirely in my voice. Which a – which I think that’s great.

Brian: The voice of calm reason.

Gabe: Yea, I call you out a lot – I put up things like Brian Madden’s paradox number one. I think I even – I think one time I even, call myself like the rope that holds your hot air balloon down.

Brian: A man – so speaking of starting from scratch, so you mentioned that – you mentioned this book that we’ve been working on. And I think we’ve mentioned a couple of little things via Twitter – actually, I actually put the little stub of a book on our – on our books page if you go to Brianmadden.com and click on – oh, we don’t even have books on here anymore. I think – Brianmadden.com\books.

There we go – so we and that is me, Gabe and Jack, are working on a book. It’s a tentative title, Why VDI Failed To Live Up To The Hype And What The Future Enterprise Desktop Will Really Look Like.

Gabe: And essentially what these presentations are too?

Brian: Well it’s essentially what our website is, which is essentially what Briforum is, which is essentially whatever goddamn webcast we do is.

So this is – so we talk about this same thing and you know I haven’t written a book –

Gabe: So if we write this book –

Jack: Just like the future where it will be choose your forum factor, everything is the same. Now we are offering a book forum factor.

Gabe: Man, he is so new and he is so good.

Brian: I’m telling you man, in five years he’ll –

Gabe: Do we ever have to talk about this again after we write a book though?

Brian: Oh – well – well, you know, they pay us to do it, so – I mean it’s no different than a doctor like he probably – you know the dentist fixes the same 15 teeth problems 438,000 times in a row and then retires.

And so this is just – this is our rotten tooth and –

Gabe: And – and the perfect storm here – so this book, it needs to be written at the same time that I’m doing this presentation, so I have to – when I – when I tried to sit down and write some of this book and I just couldn’t do it because I was in presentation mode in my head and it’s a different style, it’s a different message. It’s more long form and so – so I just couldn’t – I couldn’t think that way.

I couldn’t wrap my head around book writing at the same time I was trying to do you know presentation deck creating. Even thought a lot of it is the same, it is just so much more to be said about it than you can say in a two-hour slideshow that I mean, this book is going to be really really great when it’s all done. But man, it’s a big process. I’ve never actually written anything.

You’ve got like what three books under your belt now and – this one will be number four, I think, right?

Brian: Yea, I a – well first of all I guess this was – like we just heard you describe why you haven’t written anything yet. So I got – I hear you loud and clear, yea – I don’t know if Ron –

Gabe: This saves us from having the conversation later.

Brian: I don’t know if Ron – if Ron Oglesby is still listening – the last book that I wrote was co-authored with him. It was actually written in 2003. It was about terminal server, 2003. And then – and then Ron has gone on – so Ron wrote three books, at least with us and he might have done one on his own also.

But – so Ron and I wrote that terminal server book together and then, we published for Ron and Scott Harold and ultimately with the two of them and Mike Laverick a couple of VM ware books, but those books I didn’t write, I just published. So yea, I really only wrote two books. Although to be honest – and I say two because I have also got two editions.

So I wrote the Mediframe book, there was the first edition, second edition. The second edition did add a lot more stuff, but it was really kind of – like kind of the same book. So we’ve got those two or three books and then this – this a – this ones the first one I’ve written now in, I guess, nine years.

Ron put on the chat that he is tired of writing and that’s how I felt too. And probably why I –

Gabe: We write everyday man.

Brian: It’s been nine years. But where this book is coming from – so there’s a couple of differences with his book. The first one that’s kind of nice is that this book that we are doing, it is going to be way shorter than our – our last one. So it’s going to be, like 50,000 to 70,000 words as opposed to 250,000 to 300,000 words.

The second one is since this is not a technical – I mean it’s technical like the way our articles are technical. We talk a lot about technology and that stuff, but we are not getting into, oh, here’s the architecture – there’s not a lot of research that goes into this one. So – so –

Jack: I don’t’ think they are going to be any lines of code to font in this book.

Brian: Yea, and there’s – there’s a – and this one is – I mean it’s a – it’s really a brained up and it’s everything – and the reason so – you know Ron’s – I can’t say it’s not Ron it’s Brian – Briolson – Brian Olson – I don’t know.

Anyway, it’s talking about book writing being a hard way to make money and that is true. Our focus for this one primarily is – the nice thing is we have our day jobs which pay our – which pay our salaries and I’m sure we’ll make some money. I’m not even going to worry about having a distributor put this book in stores. It will be on Amazon. You can buy it from Amazon, via the Amazon Advantage Program and then it will be in the Kindle and hopefully in IBooks – although you have to apply to IBooks, so – we might not –

Gabe: If they deem us worthy, we will be there.

Brian: But then again, you can have Kindle for IOS so I guess that’s – I guess that’s fine. But the – the point though I guess is that this is good for us because it’s – it’s going through our worldview. And we’re going through – I mean really everything, like you were mentioning Gabe putting into the – into the seminars. You know, we are going through like the promise of VDI and why VDI failed to live up to that. And why VDI projects failed and then we can think about desktop personilzation as more than VDI, but how Windows is not going anywhere anytime soon.

And sort of like a future Windows desktops and – you know Windows Apps versus Webapps and how you can tie Webb apps back to Enterprise and how you can make Windows more like a service and it’s just like going through all of that stuff.

So it’s – it’s a – oh, it’s Brian Olson, thank you. Showing us that writing is hard with the spelling of his name. And a – so I um – I – but the – but with this book though it’s – it should be cool. I don’t know – it’s only probably going to be like – I have no idea how many pages 150, 250 pages. We might actually do it as a hardcover, which would be kind of fun. So – but we are getting close to being done, so – after this I’m taking off and going back home I guess – I don’t know and I’ve got most of this week just sort of blocked out – blocked out for writing.

We expect to have this thing finished a by this week or next week. So I’m hoping that we get these into the Kindle version, the EBook version. I’m hoping we get them available for Amazon in the next – in the next two to three weeks. And the Kindle version, I think it will be kind of cheap. It’ll be like $10.00 or $15.00 or something like that. So it’s not going to be like a huge like $60.00 or gigantic IT book.

But I think like 70,000 words or $10.00. And you could probably buy the hardcover version for you know $18.00, $25.00 – something like that. And for those who want it. And we’ll use the hardcover versions when we go to these events and stuff too. So that will be like our – our free giveaways. But yea – so that’s our book. So I’m actually –

Gabe: Yea – it’s exciting so it’s – so it’s fun to be on the author side of it. So I’ve edited or reviewed all of them including Ron’s last book which a – wow dude. That was a fun editing job because Ron’s – Ron’s last book was this VMware book that was two books in one.

One was like an advance design guide and the other one was like a Mike Laverick Production and that was all super technical – like really down in the weeds kind of stuff and a – so yea, it will be nice to be in the writing side and then letting somebody else do the editing.

Brian: And you know – you know Jack I mean – so those of you who have been following ConsumerizeIT.com know that Jack has been sort of taking the lead with that. And so all of the stuff about the – how we’re taking sass and Webapps and bringing them into the Enterprise and looking at future applications and architectures. All of that stuff is being written by Jack. So that’s your first book – your first book writing also.

Jack: Yea it’s fun.

Brian: And your first webcast is actually this afternoon we’re recording too so –

Jack: Yea, that is.

Brian: So yea, you are in it man.

Jack: My first live deck.

Brian: Yea, that’s right. So anyway, I guess we are about out of time. By about out of time, I mean definitely out of time. So I don’t know if either of you two has – or Cláudio has any – has any final thoughts. But a – anything else anyone wants to add.

Gabe: Nothing from me.

Cláudio: Nothing from me either.

Brian: All right, well on that note then, Cláudio, thank you so much for putting up with our technical difficulties or maybe you should be thanking us for putting up with your technical difficulties, I’m not sure, but a – thanks – thanks for joining us.

Gabe: I think we need to get Ron on the show sometime. He’s so chatty there.

Brian: I – I would love to have Ron on the show, so we will talk to him afterwards. But Cláudio thanks for joining. Gabe of course, always for joining, Jack – all of you, Justin thank you for working like crazy to monitor the show and to figure how to hook up Cláudio. And we will talk –

Gabe: For being there on short notice too today so –

Brian: Yea and we’ll talk –

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Brian & Gabe LIVE #19: Cláudio Rodrigues joins us to talk about messed up Microsoft VDA licensing, ditching Office, seminars, and our new book!

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