Today's Funtroversy: Citrix accuses VMware of using a Gartner quote out of context to support View (UPDATE 2: This whole thing is Gartner's fault)

I always thought Gartner's use of the "SBC" term is faulty.

There is no doubt in my mind that VMware could have done this on purpose, but IMO it really doesn't matter.

This is just an example of how the whole desktop virtualization industry needs to revisit how technologies are labelled.

I think together the industry should lay out rules to correctly name their products. Saying something is VDI to me means "Virtual Desktop Infrastructure" NOT "Server Hosted Virtual Desktops"

Citrix, VMware, Gartner, everyone - get on the same page.

In my opinion, VDI should be synonymous to Desktop Virtualization and should be split up in two categories: Server Based Computing (SBC) and Client Based Computing (CBC).

In the SBC realm you would have Server Hosted Shared Desktops (SHSD), Server Hosted Virtual Desktops (SHVD), Server Hosted Virtual Applications (SHVA), etc.

SHVD can be split up into many different types (look at Citrix FlexCast model).

SHVA can also be split up into many categories. Some examples are XenApp can do Hosted and Streamed to SHVD while ThinApp can be distributed to SHVD.

In the CBC realm you would have Client Hosted Virtual Desktops (CHVD) and Client Hosted Virtual Applications (CHVA).

CHVD and CHVA can be streamed from the datacenter.

Just my 2 cents...

Good ol' VMware.  King of marketing, ruler of nothing..

I just through all the post. Clearly VMW is full of you know what. They have been doing it since 2009 and hence they are in breach of contract with Gartner. There has to be a legal issue here, otherwise F it do whatever you want with Gartner information. I am sure somebody will get fired over this, and it's good that all the idiots who think VDI is it are being called out. It's been a long time coming and I agree the media and analysts are idiots for the most part. I laugh when I read it's two horse race. It's even more interesting that Wyse is involved. Of course everybody's girlfriend loud mouth CEO of Wyse is happy to give reach arounds to anybody that will pimp his $$$$$$$$$ solution that locks you in. I don't understand why Citrix continues to do business with these scum bags. What excuse are they going to give, they don't understand SBC either.

Will be interesting to see the response. Surely they have to for legal reasons. I wonder if a customer can sue for false advertising etc.

We should care about pointing out misleading marketing tricks and we should also care about the indefinite terminology that allowed these tricks to take place.

@Brian - you stated a few times that VDI (hosted) is a form of SBC. What do you think now?

It is a strange way to interpret it but I must add that where I cannot deny that XenApp is the cheaper way sometimes, but only if you have the system in place. ThinApp is awsome these days and you should recognize it as a less expensive alternative also since it is usable without View or Xen.

Marketing departments and Gartner reports just confuse management and makes our jobs harder than they need to be. Instead of firming up the terminology we should just not let them talk about technology at all.

Yeah, we do need a common lexicon. All of the confusion, purposeful or not, stems from differing interpretations of the term SBC. The key is to take into consideration how each speaker defines the term. As techheads, we understand this.

But not all consumers of these technologies are techheads.

@Icelus - Your taxonomy is logical, consistent, I like it a lot, and it will never gain acceptance. Why? It doesn't cater to any of the vendors' desires. So far though, your post offers the most constructive thought.

Thanks!

@davidjlane - Seriously? Not let someone talk about technology?

@appdetective, I really appreciate most of your posts. They're like short out-takes of 'In The Loop', as well as being informative.

posted by @appdetective

VMware have no backbone community.citrix.com/.../VMware+refuse+to+take+any+responsibility+for+misleading+tactics

VMware are caught with their pants down and will cry like school girls. They are too arrogant to admit they screwed up big time. I also hold Gartner accountable here as well as Wyse. Basic tenants such as SBC are being debated by idiots in the media who have no opinion and moron commentators (vmw fanboys) in the blogs just goes to show how many dumb asses there really are out there. These are all well established things. All these idiots commenting remind me of creationist appeal to morons who still question evolution.

For the babies that read the blogs and cry about facts, why don't you step back for a minute pull out your desktop 101 book and then say something. Your VMware sales quota is not happening and the merit of what is being debated is very real. So much VMware BS out there it's holding stuff back as idiot server admins try to implement the desktop and even dumber desktop guys don't understand what TCO is about. It always hurts people trying to get into the industry or trying to make living of it when the vendor lies.

VMware should publicly apologize for spreading turd to their customers. If I am a customer who fell for the nonsense I would ask for my money back.

So all you dumb Fers who have your panties twisted, go yell at VMware for spreading complete horse S..T in the first place. Are you blind?

It could be a strategy... could not imagine that such big company (with good product in many cases) could persistently make such big mistake... The next BigBlue monster ???

Remember (just some I retreive)  :

- VMWorld US hotel policy to block competitive meeting (community.citrix.com/.../viewpage.action)

- VMWorld US booth policy (the 3x3 with no competitive demo)

- 2009 TCO "mistake"  (community.citrix.com/.../viewpage.action)

- VMWorld EMEA program (www.gabesvirtualworld.com/.../img_2754-292x300.jpg)

Thanks for sharing Brian.  I tend to agree that VMware and Gartner are both at fault for false advertising.  Their combat statement was pointless as you mentioned.  

Surly Gartner was referring to TS, no doubt about that.

Well then, that’s settles it.

Realistically though the "industry" is big and still we get a lot of presenters at our organization each with their preferred meaning to SBC... We have to be alert to keep confusion down :-)

No need for Google cache:

community.citrix.com/.../VMware+refuses+to+take+any+responsibility+for+misleading+tactics

@appdetective  What thin client company/product would you recommend if Wyse is too expensive and locks the customer in?

Gartner was several years behind before jumping on the virtualization bandwagon.  They should not be allowed to defined "industry standard" acronyms!

@AppDetective

I'm familiar with pass-through authentication, and I can just about avoid making a fool of myself when discussing reverse seamless, but this "reach around" thing that Wyse provides,  I'm afraid I've no idea what that is. Could you explain please.

Regards

Simon

@Mike Stanley

At the end of the day, you pay for the thin client, but it is only important that you select a vendor that is going to provide you with support.  I am confused about what AppDetective means by getting locked in to a vendor.  All thin clients support the most common remote protocols (RDP/ICA/etc).  You may get locked in to a solution (VMware PCoIP/XenDesktop ICA) if you purchase zero clients that may only be utilized with those technologies.  I would recommend that you look at thin clients that support all/most of the different application delivery mechanisms (SBC, desktop virtualization, etc).  This would give you the flexibility of being able to address the needs of your users depending on the application.  

As others have stated, the terminology is confusing and frankly wrong.

"Hosted virtual desktop" should refer to a virtual desktop hosted by a thrid party provider.  Whether this is server based computing "SBC" or virtual desktop infrastructure "VDI", the addition of the "hosted" to virtual desktop should only refer to a service hosted by a hosting provider.  Some may want to call this DaaS; however, a software vendor has copywritten DaaS and should not be legitimately used.

The industry as a whole slings these terms around too loosely and creates its own confusion.

I suggest that we clarify these terms and refer to a virtual desktop has one that is either provided as SBC or VDI, both have a place for certain users, and only refer to a hosted virtual desktop as one that is hosted by a hosting provider.

@BrianMadden - Not to be pedantic.... but VMware View does actually broker to Terminal Servers. Do you want to update your blog to reflect this? People might think that View doesn't do Terminal Services based on your comments.

www.cisco.com/.../290065.jpg

I feel so much frustration from many contributors it's scary.

I recall Citrix putting out big press releases about SAP, Oracle and others that had to be pulled out or corrected.  So no one is clean here.

My own opinion on SBC is that I take it to the letter.  It is computing on servers, which is what VDI is about.  So VDI is a form of SBC.  TS is another one.  Whether one is better/cheaper/whatever than the other really depends on the context, customer needs, etc.  To dismiss any of these technologies would be immature.

To Mattc and Mark Moeller, I think you made the most objective comments in this post.  Thank you.

To appdetective, you really should take anger management classes.  It would be good for you.  It's so easy to talk like this when you hide behind a pseudonym and a pilot helmet.  To me, and hopefully to all customers reading this, this only demonstrates your low level of maturity.

Brian,

You article is misdirecting.  VMWare Views broker does support Terminal Services.  Hell with modern advances of TS, you can do application publishing just using TS.  Now, I personally wouldn't do that, XA has a ton of features that TS doesn't.  But to say that VV doesn't support TS is misleading.  

There are only two key features missing from VV compared to XD.  Remote App streaming, and doing a VHD for a physical box which is doable using Provisioning Services.  I'm not sure in the long run if remote app streaming is going to be a hot topic.  If a desktop is already being streammed to the end user why stream an application and add that level of complexity.  I know this is an argument all in itself and I conceed that in a lot of scenarios for TCO there is a valid argument that disagrees with me.  As far as doing a VHD to a physical desktop... eh... is this really heavily used?  I think its a sweet idea that is getting over shadowed because VDI is the better way to go.

Evolution is real, global warming is real and there is precedence and science to support these facts. Despite that there are still plenty of dumb asses who insist that there is a better explanation that better fits with their own flawed misguided belief system.

@David_D You can certainly argue for what you would prefer, but as a typical junior IT admin mindset that you demonstrate and i have to fire every year you simply don't get it. There are plenty of so called experts like you in IT who simply don't understand that the economics of SBC and VDI are totally different even if you want to lump into some generic category to simplify for simple minds. However that doesn't change the FACT that there there are different distinct hosted data center desktop models that offer different economics that HAVE to be understood. If you don't then you are simply ignorant and of low intelligence like 80% of people in IT who simply press buttons and don't think or understand why or what. It's also why these other fools are posting about RDP brokering with View and not understanding  that SBC solutions require a lot more to become a solution and hence why VMW has removed their quote. And yes Gartner screwed up, but their definition is correct because it correctly identifies that there is more than VDI in the datacenter at different economics.

@Simon Bramfitt. Reach around can also be thought of as what RES is giving you to promote pay for Reverse Seamless, when it should be a free protocol feature.....

@Mike Stanley. Be very careful with all thin clients that remove Windows from the end point as you loose flexibility to run some local apps which you may need. If you 100% don't need to do that then it may be ok, but there is a huge benefit in using commodity hardware and is getting cheaper all the time and allows you to easily change provide and separate the software stack. I like the WinFLP replacement that is offered in Windows 7 now as part of SA :-(. It means I can use my existing PC fleet with a thinner cheaper Windows build and retain flexibility. Don't buy the Linux is more secure BS either. It's the same BS as Macs are more secure. Lot's of good blogs on this site about thin clients and why they are $hit from others if you perform a simple search.

@David_D

I'm afraid you will have to forgive appdetective, puberty is a difficult time.

SBC is one of those unfortunate acronyms that serves more to confuse than clarify. Rather than attempting to redefine it we would be better off accepting that it was a poor choice and burying it once and for all.  The same really should be said for VDI.  VDI was VMware's first generation desktop virtualization product, not shorthand for an entire computing architecture. VMware have moved on and new desktop virtualization architectures now exist that bare no resemblance to VDI, Yet still we persist in holding the industry back by slavishly hanging on to obsolete terminology to describe new concepts.

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@simonbramfitt I get it. You don't like Gartner after things didn't work out. You now have your own active and I will say mostly well written blog, but need to figure out how to get paid. So if you can pimp out vendor products with a more technical twist as opposed to the usual Gartner blah, try to sound as switzerland as you possibly can, then people may pay you for advertisements, you get consulting gigs from one post wonders like @David_D. I have nothing against that. I just happen to think you are completely missing the plot when it comes to the RES Reverse Seamless joke. I will write a blog soon that will outline in more detail why and you are welcome to comment. You refreshingly get what is SBC etc and are willing to talk about it, so hooray for you.

BTW since i'm in puberty I guess I figured out the answer to the question- who was the short bald old man on the "Benny hill Show" whose head Benny would constantly slap? I guess I should update the answer here www.funtrivia.com/.../Question93995.html Now go enjoy your meds with your scotch in hand and keep up your decent blog while you plot Gartner's downfall.

@simonbramfitt I get it. You don't like Gartner after things didn't work out. You now have your own active and I will say mostly well written blog, but need to figure out how to get paid. So if you can pimp out vendor products with a more technical twist as opposed to the usual Gartner blah, try to sound as switzerland as you possibly can, then people may pay you for advertisements, you get consulting gigs from one post wonders like @David_D. I have nothing against that. I just happen to think you are completely missing the plot when it comes to the RES Reverse Seamless joke. I will write a blog soon that will outline in more detail why and you are welcome to comment. You refreshingly get what is SBC etc and are willing to talk about it, so hooray for you.

BTW since i'm in puberty I guess I figured out the answer to the question- who was the short bald old man on the "Benny hill Show" whose head Benny would constantly slap? I guess I should update the answer here www.funtrivia.com/.../Question93995.html Now go enjoy your meds with your scotch in hand and keep up your decent blog while you plot Gartner's downfall.