It's hard to believe that we still have to deal with licensing for our VDI and virtual desktop environments today. But between TS CALs (now called RDSH CALs), VECD, VDA, user-based licensing, etc., etc.. there's still a lot to understand!
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From the I-swear-I'm-not-making-this-up department, yesterday Microsoft announced a new license for Windows 8 which will be known as the "Companion Device License" (CDL). This is a license for users who want to access their Windows desktops (either locally...
by
Brian Madden
on
April 19, 2012
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28
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Yesterday Nathan Coutinho blogged that Microsoft has released a new FAQ document that spells out different virtual desktop and RDS licensing scenarios in very plain and simple language. (You might remember Nathan from one of his BriForum sessions about...
by
Brian Madden
on
April 12, 2012
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10
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We had two guests today. Jeff McNaught from Wyse stopped by to discuss their acquisition by Dell, and we also had Erik Westhovens on to talk about SPLA licenses and how he's approaching VDI hosting with his customers . Here's the full run-down of the...
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Brian Madden
on
April 10, 2012
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2
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4,884
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By now you're all familiar with the story of OnLive's Desktop as a Service (DaaS) offering where they appear to flagrantly break Microsoft's Windows 7 licensing model. (If you're not caught up, check out this and this .) Over the weekend, the OnLive enthusiasts...
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Brian Madden
on
April 09, 2012
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12
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From the " News we already knew, in spite of the fact that nobody would confirm it " department, we have an update on the OnLive Desktop and Desktop Plus offerings that have drawn the attention of a large number of industry experts and analysts over the...
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Gabe Knuth
on
March 09, 2012
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15
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A lot of people have long believed that Microsoft has been screwing us. But after last week's radio show and two fantastic articles from Gabe and Jack, it became clear that Microsoft is doing four very specific and intentional things that are holding...
by
Brian Madden
on
March 01, 2012
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33
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34,743
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We briefly touched on the subject of "very small business" VDI during Brian & Gabe Live this past Tuesday with guest Cláudio Rodrigues. The topic came about based on an email that Cláudio sent my way that outlined a recent VDI deployment...
by
Gabe Knuth
on
February 24, 2012
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10
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Dealing with Microsoft licensing is a pain—it’s arcaic, someone is always getting a raw deal, and there’s nothing anybody can do about it because Microsoft is a monopoly. It’s natural, then, to be worried about the possible fallout from BYOD and consumerization. But while consumerization does bring the potential for increased licensing costs, does this even matter in a world...
by
ConsumerizeIT.com - The Consumerization of IT
on
February 20, 2012
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For this week's Brian & Gabe (& Jack) LIVE, we decided to push the show back a few hours to give the West Coast folks a fighting chance to catch it live. (That's code for saying that Brian & Jack felt that they would be more interesting if...
by
Brian Madden
on
February 07, 2012
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2,974
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I've been trying to get together with OnLive for well over a year now, ever since seeing their cloud-based gaming platform. I'm not much of a gamer, though. For me it was the protocol that they use that generated the most interest. For a while my requests...
by
Gabe Knuth
on
January 25, 2012
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24
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10,433
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While we've had a lot of conversations on BrianMadden.com over the past few weeks about Microsoft's plans for Windows 8 and tablets, there still a few open questions that we haven't talked about yet. The one on my mind today is about the business model...
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Brian Madden
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January 16, 2012
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A few weeks ago, we struck a nerve with two back-to-back articles dealing with Microsoft Licensing ( here and here ), so this week we decided to ask Nathan Coutinho to join us as a guest. Nathan's official title is Enterprise Server, Storage & Virtualization...
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Gabe Knuth
on
November 22, 2011
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2
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3,979
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Last week I had a conversation with Leostream CEO Michael Palin about their new cloud-based desktop service called “ Leostream Mobile Desktops .” This service gives you a virtual machine hosted in Amazon’s EC2 cloud delivered by RDP...
by
Jack Madden
on
November 10, 2011
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6
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4,378
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Somehow, both Brian and I were on a licensing kick this week, and I was surprised to see his article yesterday about Windows Server 2008 as a way of skirting the SA/VDA requirement at the same time I was knee-deep in Microsoft licensing fun. For me, it...
by
Gabe Knuth
on
November 08, 2011
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16
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5,885
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One of the worst things about desktop virtualization is that Microsoft's licensing rules around it are complex and draconian. (Behold the power of a monopoly!) Even if you have a fully licensed copy of Windows 7, you need to have an additional license...
by
Brian Madden
on
November 07, 2011
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13
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8,997
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To quote Shawn Bass (when he joined Gabe & me on our radio show from BriForum two weeks ago), VMware has issued a CLA, "Corrective Licensing Action" to change the wildly unpopular licensing terms of their upcoming vSphere 5 product. If you're not...
by
Brian Madden
on
August 04, 2011
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3
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7,779
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As you know, on Tuesday VMware announced the details of vSphere 5, complete with a new license model. Yesterday we shared our full analysis of what the new licensing meant for VDI users, with the general feeling that vSphere 5 would be much more expensive...
by
Brian Madden
on
July 15, 2011
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10
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As you're well aware by now, VMware announced a new licensing model for vSphere 5. (Read our full analysis of all the gory details here .) I'm working on an article for tomorrow where I'm running a bunch of numbers to see just how VDI / datacenter-hosted...
by
Brian Madden
on
July 14, 2011
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0
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9,860
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Yesterday VMware announced Version 5 of their main product, vSphere. (In other words, they announced ESX 5.) While vSphere 5 has tons of new features, it also has a new licensing model. Early reactions from the community are that the change in licensing...
by
Brian Madden
on
July 14, 2011
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19
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13,716
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Lately I've been messing around with the idea of using Windows XP to connect to RemoteFX sessions. The official Microsoft line is that RFX is only supported on Windows Server 2008 SP1, Windows 7 SP1, and Windows Embedded Standard 7 at this point, but...
by
Gabe Knuth
on
April 06, 2011
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8
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10,591
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