Quest's desktop virtualization product line as of 2009

As ever, Quest (as much as Symantec) appears to me as the modern time Frankenstein. So many body parts sewed together.

Regarding Quest, the whole (whatnot)-IT as a product name(s) is ...hmm...shivering.

There's sure a lot to be poked. But seriosly guys, overlooking all the obvious claims, Does anybody really use these products and find them selves to be fit for argumenting for the same?

For surely there is a mountain to climb.

Actually, I just had an argument with my Quest sales rep...EOP is not free, its just not its own SKU.  So you can buy vWorkspace Enterprise w/ EOP or just vWorkspace enterprise....If I'm incorrect, please feel free to correct me so I can go back and lobby for 80 licenses of EOP :-)

@ Tony - As of November 1st, 2009 EOP is part of Enterprise and Desktop Editions, and is NOT a separate SKU as it was in the past.  This means if you buy a Desktop or Enterprise Edition license (from Nov 1st forward) it includes EOP, and you can't get these licenses w/o EOP any more.

@ Kimmo - The difference with vWorkspace is that these are all one product, not just a single SKU.  There is one single management console for everything, one installer, one client... not a bunch of different products marketed under a common name.  And yes, we have 3000+ customers using vWorkspace, including some of the largest "production" VDI deployments in the world.  There's a reason Michel, Rick & I went to work for Quest, and why customers have been migrating from "other solutions" to vWorkspace.

vWorkspace 7.0 is scheduled to ship in the 2nd week of December and includes improved WAN Performance, full X64, Win7 & 2008 R2 Support, Linked Clones Automation (without purchasing View Composer), Linux and Mac Clients and Flash Multimedia Redirection.

I would love to hear from some people who actually use this stuff.  Are you out there?  Tell me about how it is working for you.  Why you chose it over VMW, MS, or Citrix?

@MattGeiger - I use vWorkspace and have been a customer since they were Provision Networks.  I chose it over View and XenDesktop because they have a completely agnostic solution that works with any hypervisor and end point device.  I've also recently started migrating some applications from XenApp to their Terminal Server product because I'm tired of paying a ridiculous amount of OpEx in Citrix subscription advantage costs which doesn't even include support.

I also use their Print-IT UPD and it works quite well as does their USB redirection.  I have users accessing apps and desktops both internally and thru their Secure-IT SSL

Lastly - just to be clear EOP is not "FREE", the list prices of vWorkspace Enterprise was increased.  It used to be around $99 per CCU now it's $140 per CCU so you're paying for EOP one way or another.

@Tony hit the nail on the head.  This is what we saw too...lower maintenance costs, all the features that we needed including the ability to deliver TS Hosted desktops, TS Apps, delivery to Blade PCs.  We have made recommendation to our hospitals to use vWorkspace as a Connection Broker (although I do not believe the term does the product justice as it is son much more than than) and we will eventually scale to over 70K seats.

@Gabe @Patrtick

I’m no stranger to Quest product lineage, au contraire; subsets thereof have indeed landed in customer environments, solving real issues.

So, in reality the glaringly obvious points I made was made as Amicus curiae, as a “friend of the court”.

In no uncertainty, we agree on the points made. I’m asking Quest to please get rid of the peculiar names and totally confusing brands and make the vWorkspace a single product, a whole body rather than a body of parts, and do so haltingly.

For how is a customer to make any sense or in any meaningful sense differentiate what’s offered, and lo, how am I to argument, justify or defend? How is anyone to do so?

That’s my point, that’s my message. Friends, let’s move on.

Kimmo, I really appreciate the feedback and will share it with my colleagues our our product strategy calls.  An issue with this is that we have many legacy Provision Networks and EOL customers that own one product or another, for example EOP Universal Printer/Provision Networks Print-IT that own software maintenance, and it doesn't help us to retire a product that a customer is happy with.

We basically have two offerings; Enterprise which does everything and Desktop Edition which is the exact same product, installer...but uses a license key that does not enable Terminal Services functionality.

The other SKUs are for management of TS/Citrix where a customer only needs to fix a specific problem with a tactical tool, vs making a strategic decision to use vWorkspace.

Hopefully this makes it a little clearer.

If anyone needs formal customer references, we're happy to provide those.  

I can see the view point here.  Sounds like an interesting product to look into.  What is the price point compared to Citrix?

@Matt  

We chose vWorkspace for:

1) agnostic hypervisor model

2) heterogeneous end-point support

3) EOP

4) lower recurring costs

5) extensive solution add-ons

I might also add the technical support is really quite good. As far as product naming conventions...not too imaginative :)

I know some commentators don't like a connection broker requirement (Appdetective for one) but vWorkspace includes a lot of functionality in a singe interface.

Rodd

Rodd

Gabe, you may want to amend this post since "EOP is included at no extra charge" is not correct.  It's not a separate SKU as previously, but is now included in the 'increased' license cost of the two vWorkspace offerings.

Rodd, that is correct.

The list pricing is:

Desktop Edition w/ 1 year software maintenance & support = $99 per concurrent user

Enterprise Edition w/ 1 year software maintenance & support = $169 per concurrent user

Any idea if Quest works with XenServer?

I didn't realise it had a connection broker. So if it was combined with XenServer it would an effective VDI solution for SMB.

@Nicholas Lee - I asked the same question.  I would love it if vWorkspace worked with XenServer too.  You can stand up VM's in XenServer and broker them thru vWorkspace like if they were blade PC's.  A lot of manual steps, but you can host desktops there.

I have spoken to Quest on a couple of occasions and their product lineup is obviously quite solid.

However in Australia there is no marketing around their vWorkspace suite of products.  Seriously if you did not know about vWorkspace, no body in Quest would ever tell you they exist.

Their marketing is almost like Sun Microsystems, but worse unfortunantly.

I use vWorkspace desktop edition to broker remote access to users physical desktops and VM's running in SCVMM R2 for remote and internal users. We went that route for two primary reasons. Flexibility and cost.

It's a good product that fit well with our enterprise and it provided the flexibility we needed to adapt and integrate existing architectural components.

Utilizing the investments in what we have now and allowing us to migrate components over as they reach end of life. No other cost model worked.

Patrick,

Bravo on integrating EOP into the product where it should be.  Good performance shouldn't be a "feature".  Even though you've bumped the license cost, I think you'll keep happier customers overall.

Shawn

Guys, I hear where you are coming from on XenServer support, as I get this question about once a month.  

That being said, our relationship with Microsoft is way to important "in my eyes" to jeopardize by offering support for a free "non-Microsoft" hypervisor.  I could surely sell a few widgets with XenServer support, but I would lose infinitely more deals by alienating Microsoft. Quest Software is a great partner with Microsoft and I will bend over backwards to keep it that way.  This is "my opinion" and while I do no make the product support/integration decisions, I surely influence them.  

This falls in line with pretty much anything Microsoft related, like Application Virtualization (for example).  If Microsoft makes a technology that we can enhance or support we will not make a competing technology or support one that directly jeopardizes their business by giving someone a competitive advantage against Microsoft (as their success is our livelyhood).  Once again, "my opinion", not official product messaging.

Thanks for everyone's support.  I'm thrilled that most people are happy with vWorkspace, as we work tirelessly to support our customers.  If someone is unhappy in any way, or has a suggestion please feel free to contact me directly anytime.  My contact info is available via Bing (grin) or as follows - "patrick dot rouse at quest dot com" or at 619 994 5507.  Our product is a direct result of years of great suggestions from our customers, so please keep them coming.

Cheers!

P.S.  Our marketing may sometimes seem non-existent or word of mouth, but know that in Australia (since that was specifically mentioned) you have access to the brightest person I know, and someone I am hold in the highest regard "Ulrich (Rick) Mack".  If those of you in Aus need Rick's contact info, please reach out to me and I'll make sure to get it to you.  Rick is an amazing resource.

Hi Patrick, I have spoken to Rick Mack previously and he was very articulate with what the vWorkspace product can do.  

Unfortunately Citrix just have a larger marketing budget and put across their message very well and the support they offer is awesome.  In Australia particular sectors have a very high saturation of Citrix and there is just no competition in the SBC space.  In the VDI space, we have VMware and Citrix and that is it.  

We are sheltered in Australia....

I am a vWorkspace user.

Currently have 2 projects (2nd project is just starting up)

1) 10+ users vWorkspace Enterprise

2) 60+ users; vWorkspace Desktop Edition

I was introduced to this product via a "Brian Madden/Jeff Pitsch" connection. My choice was vWorkspace or Citrix

Product is fanstastic (it works as advertised)

vWorkspace documentation sucks big time.

I'd like to thank Patrick Rouse for answering my questions & replying emails on Sunday. This guy is the "truth"!

We need some training sessions on the West Coast...

Patrick, are you saying that the vWorkspace product does not support VMware ESX or vSphere? If it does support vSphere that contradicts the Microsoft-only hypervisor.  If you don't support vSphere then you cut out a huge chuck of the market.

To say the lack of XenServer support is due to Quest's relationship with Microsoft doesn't chive as it's worked out well for Citrix and well they own XenServer.

Joe

@Joe: vWorkspace does support VMware, in fact, it was the first thing they supported as direct integration and - IMHO - it still has the most features of all direct integration available in vWorkspace. But note that it does NOT support ESXi..

I believe the lack of direct XenServer integration is more to do with Quest being competitor with CTX in more ways than with VMware (VDI _and_ TS), rather than this MS connection as suggested by Patrick. But with vWorkspace you can use XenServer hosted VMs as targets, it's just that you don't integrated management (automatic provisining of new VMs etc.).

@Shawn: believe me, I did my part in lobbying for putting EOP into core product. The whole concept of charging separately for protocol enhancements was somewhat stupid from my/our point of view (i.e. vWorkspace distributors), given that main competitor include those in the base product. Was glad to see Quest did the sensible thing even if it means adding little bit more price (which is still way cheaper than Citrix for TS usage).

@Kimmo: in reality, the full vWorkspace (Desktop and Enterprise Editions) are the only thing that new customers are even considering (or "seeing"), those this-IT and that-IT names are in the official price lists but nobody ever asks for them or we bother talking about them. I suspect they will be phased out in due time as separate products.

The most important single thing that I'm really most interested at at this point when it comes to vWorkspace, is who's driving the vision inside Quest for that product line? With both Ghostines gone from the picture, I'm not sure who's heading the efforts now.

errrr@ Tony. Re "I chose it over View and XenDesktop because they have a completely agnostic solution that works with any hypervisor and end point device".

Xendesktop supports XS, Hyper V and ESX (and vSphere even before View supported it!!!!) and you can use many more end points wiht citrix solutions than with Quest solutions.

Also as the subsequent blogs point out - Quest doesn't support/have limited support for Xenserver so do NOT have agnostic hypervisor support - in fact according to Patrick - massively favour Hyper-V. Let's not forget that a hypervisor is needed for this so additional cost can be added to the vworkspace license and as per the above MSFT is the only reall imporatant hypervisor supported - very  narrowly focused.

@ Patrick - That being said, our relationship with Microsoft is way to important "in my eyes" to jeopardize by offering support for a free "non-Microsoft" hypervisor....hmmmm nice line but not sure about that!! nothing to do with ocsying up to MSFT and offering limited support on key requirements for your solution

We absolutely have full integration with  SCVMM, Virtual Center, vCenter and Parallels Virtuozzo Containers, but have zero integration with any hypervisor except Hyper-V.  People mix up the hypervisor with the management tools.

Us supporting VMware vCenter/Virtual Center threatens Microsoft in no way, as those are paid for products and we need support for those to get in the door.  Supporting something that is "free" that is not made by Microsoft would not be in our best interest as that would undercut our partner.  I will make no  statements about the MSFT/Citrix relationship, as I work for neither conpany.  All i'm saying is that the Quest DVG goes out of its way to favor integration with Microsoft technologies.

As for product leadership we have a formal PM team and product strategy "team" that meet every few weeks.  Rick Mack, Michel Roth and I are members of the Strategy Team, along with our PM Team, our Director of Engineering and Lead Software Developer.  We are led by Simon Pearce who used to run all of Quest in EMEA.

I'm very happy with the way things have progressed in the 23 months since I joined Quest.  vWorkspace has gone from a product owned by a small company to being developed and managed by a well respected enterprise systems management company.

so you confirm that previous comments about quest's products from rodd and tony aren't quite accurate - Quest vworkspace does not support any hypervisor....in fact it only supports MSFT hYper-V locking customers into your biggest parnter (understandable but not very flexible).

Sorry to harp on about it - you have a solid product that does what is says on the tin but based on the fact desktop virtualisation - or at least the VDI component - requires a hypervisor and you only support Hyper-V that doesn't fit many requirements of all customers worlwide - only as select few that use both VDI and Hyper-V as the platform.

@ Wandered - No.  vWorkspace has very tight integration with three virtualization management systems as well as RDS/TS and App-V.

1.  Microsoft SCVMM

2.  VMware Virtual Center or vCenter

3.  Parallels Virtuozzo Containers

4.  RDS/TS & App-V

This integration automates each system, so automation of SCVMM provides complete support for Hyper-V, vCenter/Virtual Center automation provides for any version of ESX that's managed by those products and automation of Parallels Virtuozzo Containers is self explanatory.

In addition to automation of those three management systems, we have direct integration with Hyper-V hosts for customers that don't have SCVMM, i.e. a company with a single server.

vWorkspace was the very first product to integrate with each of these platforms (when it was called Provision Networks Virtual Access Suite) and pioneered the concept of VDI Connection Brokering. Ask anyone that was at VMware that has been around for more than 4 years and they'll confirm that.

vWorkspace is not really "platform agnostic" if one wants "complete automation", as that requires one of the mentioned systems for us to automate.  If one had XenServer for example, we can broker connections to VMs hosted on that platform, or any other "unmanaged" platform for that matter, but anyone can do that.  

Complete automation means that we can create, destroy, power manage, suspend, resume...VMs or Containers on each of these systems, as well as retrieve/send information to these systems.  We are now automating things like Linked Clones, Flex Clone... for people that want to do rapid provisioning of VMs. And no, this does not use View Composer, but rather is a substitute for that management feature.

The TS/RDS functionality is application and server load balancing, application publishing, web access, secure gateway, user profile management, user environment configuration and lockdown, CPU & memory management, file & registry redirection, virtual IP addressing, integration with Microsoft App-V...  

If you are still unsure, download the product and try for yourself, or contact some of the customers that have said they use vWorkspace or talk to Brian or Gabe who have followed this technology for several years.

@Patrick I think you are in a very interesting position right now. I've used your product in limited fashion so I will not pretend to be an expert by any means. However a few observations and questions.

What are your MSRP prices now? How do they compare to the VMWare and Citrix?

Can one buy EOP standalone? Why not?

How does EOP compare to PCoIP? Sure VMware screwed by no buying provision years ago. There was a dance for a while, but now you are also a second tier enemy. Why are you better than View with PCoIP?

Like Citrix you now deal with MS daddy. Hyper-V integration and extension. Smart move to help them over time. I do however worry that not supporting >1 hypervisor basically means you are dead or will stay niche. Citrix will eat you alive with their marketing machine and they will be right to do so.

You are only supporting App-V. What happens if App-V does not cut it. I understand why you do it, but it's simply part of the borg pulling you into their camp. Effectively you are an App-V sales team and will be forcing all your customers to buy $hitty MDOP that is $$$$, so I questions the TCO you really bring. In effect you are locking people into MS.

A MS friend of mine mentioned to me the other day that the Citrix relationship is on rocky grounds, he would not discuss the details. I can only assume that MS is worried that Citrix is getting too powerful and they risk loosing some control. So it makes sense for MS to elevate you guys up as a saber rattle to Citrix. I am sure this makes a great story for VMWare, at least we all know where they stand with respect to MS. Citrix plays the dance well with MS, and Quest will be interesting to see what it does to the Citrix/MS relationship. Is it time for a new bride for MS?

Once again, we support multiple hypervisors.  ESX and Hyper-V, plus PVC.  That being said, we talk to Virtual Center, vCenter & SCVMM, which in turn talks the hosts, so our integration is with the platform management systems, not the hypervisor.  This is done via VMware's SDK plus some special sauce, Microsoft Powershell Automation and via Parallels SDK.

EOP is like ICA, meaning if you want it, you have to use vWorkspace.  It's our intellectual property, and is not one technology, but a bunch of different RDP enhancements.  We have no intention of separating it out to add to other brokers.

MSRP is $99 for Desktop Edition and $169 for Enterprise Edition.  Both include 1st year maintenance and support and an equal feature set, except that Desktop Edition doesn't support TS/RDS.  In 7.0 we've successfully ported all of our goodies from TS/RDS to VDI, so all of the user environment configuration and lockdown features work on all platforms.

As for App-V, we only "integrate" with App-V, and no other broker (that I know of) has "integrated" application virtualization (that I know of), they just have their own products that they bundle with their brokers.  So customers ultimately have the choice of Application Virtualization, but we do "prefer" and encourage customers to use App-V.

As for MDOP $$$$, if one has to enroll in SA to get VECD (unless they do VECD for Devices), then MDOP is about $10 per year per covered device, which is affordable for what one gets (App-V, MED-V, DART, Desktop Error Monitoring, Advanced Group Policy Monitoring and Asset Inventory).  If one is a Microsoft shop, which there are many of these, we have a great story and for the others, they can use whatever application virtualization product they want.

We are more than holding our own in the field, and that's pretty good since we're competing against VMware & Citrix.  There are 10-15 other vendors in the space, but I rarely every encounter them.

I twould bet that if we listed the top 50 largest "production" VDI deployments in the world, more are managed by Quest than any other vendor.

I alost forgot to respond to the PCoIP question.  PCoIP looks good.  We'll see how it scales, but it's too soon to say.  I can say with absolute certainty that our stuff uses less bandwidth, works better over latent connections, supports more client and hosted OS, doesn't need a VPN for remote connectivity, will be accepted on any network (because EOP is RDP) and is not tied to one hypervisor,

We now support both flash and windows multimedia redirection, true multimonitor, seamless windows, every Windows OS with an RDP stack (including Win7 & 2008 R2), 32 and 64 bit everything, and most of our RDP enhancements have been ported to all of the different client OS, i.e. Linux, Mac, Windows...Java is still kind of clunky.

Our stuff is more comparable to ICA, as it works very well across a low bandwidth, high latency connection, whereas PCoIP is tuned for a much fatter pipe.  On my Verizon Wireless EVDO Card which maxes out at 500Kbps and typically has 100ms latency, my hosted Win7 desktop is really nice.  This is with the remote desktop 1000 miles away.

It's definitely an interesting time, and I'm glad there is a lot of competition, as we went way to long with only one player in this space.  All of the attention to this space has really pushed innovation, where there was not so much over the past 10 years.

We actually do not compete against the Microsoft VDI Suite. I realy see Quest as an "if you can't do what you need with the native vendor tools, we make something that extends those capabilities".  If I have a customer that can do everything they want with the native Microsoft tools, I completely support that.  I just let them and their Microsoft team know that if they need help, we're there.  We "try" not to push our way into accounts.

In 2010 you'll see this become even more evident, but I can't be too revealing about that, as press releases are made for that sort of thing.

The "tension" is from something completely different that I did not understand until working in the field.

Good night "y'all".

@Kalle,  I would be a little more understanding if Patrick simply said we don't support XenServer because it belongs to a competitor.  But hiding under the vail of the Microsoft relationship is wrong.  Microsoft hates VMware more than XenServer so for Quest to support VMWare and discount XenServer because of it's Microsoft relationship is a contradiction. I was simply pointing that out.

@Gabe, yes Citrix is competing against Microsoft in the VDI space but it is also interesting that Citrix is also helping Microsoft's VDI solution as well.  When you look at Essentials for Hyper-V it includes Provisioning Services.  PVS under Hyper-V goes along ways to helping MS' VDI solution gain traction.

Joe

@Joe, I understand fully and I also don't like hiding behind these "alliances" talks. Just like I'm equally frustrated (as the one who tries to represent vWorkspace in our local market) with Microsoft's close relations with Citrix i.e. the whole deal of "partner broker" bits in MS's slideware which always includes Citrix's logo.

Unfortunately no vendor ever would publicly claim some of the real reasons ("because they are our competitor") even if it likely is true. And when it comes that contradictory thing with VMware support.. well, it was already there before any MS/CTX hypervisors existed. No point _removing_ it now :-) Interestingly enough, they still improve it with new releases so it has to be important and very used in Quest's clientele.

Oh, and another important thing that I feel Quest has much, much work to be done is in making public noise about the whole vWorkspace product/solution.

VMware and Citrix both currently out-market them  by several magnitudes and given that it's no wonder people outside our "specialist" circle do not know them as serious player in TS and VDI space.. or player at all. Let's face it, Quest is _not_ small company so it's not really about not having resources available.

The problem with Quest is ultimately it's based on RDP. That means you will never get cross platform support that is any good. Callista (may not matter) will only work with hyper-V my prediction. MS will make sure of that, unless there are compelling economics which I can't see anytime soon. Due to this a major draw back eating into the value of Desktop Virtualization which is access from multiple devices and OSs. I doubt Quest has anywhere close the investment level in this space vs. Citrix who clearly are the most focused as a company on the Desktop.

It's also amazing to me why you tie EOP into your broker. You don't need to let competitors brokers consume EOP. Think about cloud providers both public and private. Come on Patrick, you're a smart guy, make it happen and show up Citrix..... I haven't tested but I have no doubt you kill PCoIP over the WAN.

I will say others should learn from Quest's mgmt console, it's decent. From a price point of view both VMWare and Citrix are very competitive, especially since they discount, throw in extra stuff in a lot of other and none of them require you to buy MDOP. BS that MDOP adds any real value outside of App-V. It's an annual App-V tax nothing else and Quest just helps people lock MS into that. Hmmmm maybe that's what pissing MS off not VDI. If indeed that's true it would not surprise me. Monopoly MS wants to rule the world with App-V and remove other options from the market. Slowly happening while people sleep at the wheel implementing it with understanding that they are getting f'ed.

I appreciate everyone's feedback and advice.