Virtual Desktops - options and costs

Let me get this straight.  So companies are going to purchase XenDesktop Enterprise or Platinum at $175-$275 per user, then pay another $350-$450 per user to deliver streaming apps or apps from XenApp?

I remember sitting at the table with Citrix more than once, with Brian and all of the other CTPs trying to convince Citrix that XenDesktop should be included in Presentation Server Enterprise and Platinum Licenses.  Did they listen, apparently not.

So I've been trying to get an answer to this question, but my question on support.citrix.com has gone unanswered for 3 weeks.  How well does Provisioning Server scale for desktop provisioning, i.e. how many concurrent clients can connect to a vDisk, or different vDisks hosted by Ardence (Provisioning Server)?  Has any enterprise deployed this for desktops.  The reason I ask is because I'm working on several projects where there could be > 5000 virtual desktops, and I want to know how may Provisioning Servers one would need to support this number of desktops, or if it'd be better to just use SAN ThinProvisioning technology like NetApp Flex Clones or EMC Snap Clones.

Hi Patrick;

I would assume that the ability to connect a decent number of concurrent clients to a vDisk is there, given that popular Ardence video of 50 desktops simultaneously booting. We have customers in Japan booting 200+ clients off a single shared image on SAN, on a 10/100 mbps network, with fairly low range SAN device and a Celeron-based server. I am sure that could scale higher, given a GbE network, more capable SAN, etc.

Steve Marfisi /emBoot