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Volume 4, Issue 2 - February, 2009 - © 2009 by Moose Logic, All Rights Reserved
Cover Story: How About 50% Off the TCO?
Exclusive Interview with Shelley Riley, Director of Sales, UltraBac Software
Tech Toy of the Month: Celio's RedFly
Need Financing? Maybe We Can Help!
Valentine's Humor
Moose Logic Coming Events
February Recommended Reading
(Moose Views is a monthly newsletter prepared by Moose Logic to bring you information and tips on maintaining a trouble-free network)
How About 50% Off the TCO?
As we’ve observed in the past, it’s impossible to be in business and not spend any money. So, as promised, we’re going to be talking about how to spend your IT dollars wisely, on things that will make your business better.A couple of weeks ago, I ran across a blog entry entitled “ 10 Reasons to Purchase New Hardware During a Recession.” Since we, and the writer of the blog, are all in the technology business, you’re forgiven for wondering if this is a little self-serving. Still, some of the points made are worth thinking about.
For one thing, your existing equipment doesn’t stop aging just because times are bad. Stuff still wears out and needs to be replaced. Generally speaking, the longer you keep running that old hardware, the more it’s going to cost you to support it—and the farther behind the curve you’ll be when you finally start trying to catch up on your replacement cycle.
Another consideration is that if you’re trying to do more work with fewer staff members, the productivity of those remaining staff members becomes critical, and anything that impacts that productivity has a magnified effect, for better or for worse, on your business.
Still, there are several things you can do to stretch those dollars.
First, if it’s time to replace some servers, it’s time to invest in virtualization. There is no question that it has become a mainstream technology: we have reached the point where, across the industry, more than half of all new Windows servers placed in service are virtual. It can clearly take cost out of a computing infrastructure by letting a single piece of server hardware handle multiple server workloads. Hardware costs are reduced. Power and associated cooling costs are reduced. Agility is increased. Management is simplified.
Second, it may be time to take another look at that venerable old technology we used to call “Server Based Computing,” in its latest incarnation: Citrix XenApp running on Windows Server 2008. According to a Gartner research paper published last August, the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) of an SBC deployment is about 50% lower than that of an unmanaged desktop deployment, and 11% to 18% lower than a locked-down and well-managed PC deployment.
Now, not everyone is going to be happy with a shared execution environment. Some of your users are used to an XP or Vista desktop, and they want the desktop interface they’re used to and the flexibility of having their children’s picture as their wallpaper. They may even have special requirements like needing more memory or processing power dedicated to their applications. That’s where a Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) can start saving you money.
There are several approaches to VDI out there in the marketplace. Here’s why we believe Citrix XenDesktop is by far the best.
With most other approaches, you’re just moving the PC from the desktop into the datacenter, either onto a blade PC or onto some kind of virtualization platform, but you still have a unique disk image for each PC. So if your standard PC desktop image is 20 Gb (and that’s pretty conservative—I got a new Tablet PC over Christmas, and I’ve already got 44 Gb in use!), and you’ve got 100 PCs, you’ve just used up 2 Terabytes of fairly expensive SAN storage to hold your PC images.
XenDesktop allows you to separate the delivery of the Operating System from the delivery of user-specific customizations and from the delivery of applications (by leveraging the Application Streaming functionality of XenApp). So you could conceivably boot and run those 100 PCs from a single, shared image—that consumes only 20 Gb of SAN storage.
I ran two fictional company test cases through the Citrix on-line ROI analyzer. The ROI analyzer output is linked here so you can see exactly how the numbers line up. The first test case assumed an engineering and construction company with 100 PCs. It further assumed that, like many companies, they had a 3-year replacement cycle for desktop PCs, so one-third of the PCs would typically be replaced each year. I then assumed that 75 of the PCs would be replaced with a XenDesktop virtual deployment.
The result? Although first year capital expenditures were higher, the 3-year TCO was 23% lower. ROI (using a discount rate of 9.5%) was 184%, and the payback period was 9 months.
The second test case assumed a high-tech company with 1,000 desktops. It again assumed a 3-year PC replacement cycle, and assumed that 75% of the PCs would be replaced with XenDesktop.
The results were even more striking: 3-year TCO was 27% lower, ROI was 336%, and the payback period was 5 months.
Finally, here’s a reminder to all of our existing XenApp (formerly Presentation Server) customers: If you’re running XenApp Enterprise or Platinum, you already own Application Streaming! (Note: As of March, 2009, Application Streaming is now included in the Advanced Edition as well. -ed.)
You owe it to yourself to start learning how to use it so you can break the cycle of explicitly installing applications on your XenApp servers and desktop PCs. Instead, you can package the application once and stream it on demand to a XenApp server, or to a desktop OS, or to both.
Need to update the app? Just update the package, and the next time someone runs it, they get the new version...without you having to run around and explicitly install it everywhere. Problems with the new version? Roll back to the old package.
If you want more information on the latest flavor of XenApp, or you’d like to know what your organization looks like when we run your numbers through the XenDesktop ROI calculator, or you want to know more about server virtualization, or more about Application Streaming, we’re just a phone call away!
Interview: Shelly Riley, Director of Sales, UltraBac Software
Moose Views (MV):Hello and welcome to another edition of Moose Views interviews. Today we have Shelley Riley from UltraBac, she is the Director of Sales over there. Hello and welcome.Shelly Riley (SR:) Thank you.
MV: All right Shelley, so Moose Logic has actually been working with Ultrabac for quite some time now. Can you just kind of tell our audience: What exactly is Ultrabac? Who are you folks, and what do you do?
SR: Excellent, thank you. Ultrabac Software, we’re headquartered here in Bellevue Washington, just minutes away from the Microsoft main campus. Ultrabac is a privately held corporation. The company has been self funded and profitable for 27 consecutive years. What we do, is we provide a complete solution for windows backup and disaster recovery. Our first release was delivered to market back in 1995, and the company now has over 20,000 customers worldwide.
MV: Ok. Well what makes Ultrabac so different in this marketplace? When obviously you have your competitors, what takes you to that next step above them?
SR: Well I think two things could cover that. Number one, our innovative technology - talking specifically about some industry firsts-to-market that we have delivered in my 12 year tenure at the company. And secondly, our quality boutique style customer care model.
In talking about those ever so briefly: A company’s data is the life blood of their business. Without a reliable, easy-to-use system recovery solution, companies may not be prepared for their next system outage, or worst yet the next natural disaster. I don’t know if you recall, but back in December 2007 there was a big wind storm. Our company, specifically over here in Bellevue, we had 8 trees land on the second story of our building. So as you make plans to protect yourself from that, you need solutions to make sure that you can A) protect the data, and B) make sure that you can quickly and easily recover those systems. So I think the biggest thing under the technology point is Ultrabac Software has a software solution called UBDR Gold. Which allows system administrators the ability to recover from system loss and disasters in minutes, not hours or days.
MV: So this UBDR Gold, this is kind of your flagship product correct?
SR: Exactly
MV: Alright, and it allows someone to do system restores in a matter of minutes. Could you go into a little bit of detail about that?
SR: Yeah excellent, let’s talk about that. First of all it simply doesn’t get any easier to remotely recover systems. Say for example a customer of Moose Logic might have some remote locations— maybe a doctors office with 4 or 5 locations and they might be limited to having system administrators at their headquarter office or their main location.
When those systems at those remote sites go off line you need to be able to equip those folks at those locations to be able to quickly and easily recover those systems so they can get those servers back into production and people back to work. In reference to UBDR Gold, and just how easy that can be, you can fully automate the recovery process. So that step one involves putting the UBDR gold recovery media in the CD drive. Step two…
(To listen to the full interview, please go to our Interview and Webinar Archive page.)
Tech Toy of the Month: Celio's RedFly
I love my AT&T “Tilt” phone. Windows Mobile 6 is great. Outlook synch is supported natively by Exchange. It’s got GPS navigation built in. But the screen is still tiny, and I tend to fat-finger those little buttons on the QWERTY keyboard.
Enter the Celio RedflyTM device. I spotted it at the last Citrix partner conference in October, and knew I had to have one. It’s got a 4” x 7” screen, and a keyboard I can actually type on.
No, it’s not a “netbook,” in fact, it’s not a PC at all. It’s just a keyboard and display that connects wirelessly (via Bluetooth) to my Windows Mobile phone.
The picture above is actually a little misleading, because, with my device at least, when I press the Bluetooth button on the RedflyTM, it blanks the display on my phone, and just moves it over to the Redfly. Which is actually good, because it makes my phone battery last longer.
The “Pocket” versions of the Office Suite are actually usable now. Even better, there is a Citrix ICA client for my Windows Mobile phone, so I can connect wirelessly to our XenApp server and run full-blown apps.
I’ve got an “aircard” for my Tablet PC, but I haven’t used it since I got this. Why would I need to — I’ve already got a 3G Internet connection in my phone, and now I can really use it!
The cost? I got mine for $299 from Amazon.com. Heck, I think I paid almost that much for my aircard.
Need Financing? Maybe We Can Help!
Need to invest in some upgrades but don’t have the cash laying around? Believe it or not, financing is still available, and some packages are pretty creative.Microsoft has a financing program that will bundle hardware, software, and services into a single, competitive package, and they frequently have special promotions. At the moment, qualified buyers can get six months of deferred payments on a 36-month package. They do require that the project contain some Microsoft license content, and be at least $5,000.00. We can help you get the application going.
Our larger customers may want to talk with Winmark Leasing. (They generally deal with clients whose annual revenues are $10 million or more.) They specialize in technology leases, will also fund hardware, software, and services, they have very competitive rates, and will allow you to add, replace, or upgrade equipment at any time during the term of the lease. They’ve even been known to do purchase/lease-back deals if you have equipment that’s less than a year old (in case you made a capital purchase and now wish you had that cash back!). We would be happy to make introductions here as well.
Valentine's Humor
A woman walks into a post office and notices a well-dressed man standing at the counter placing “Love” stamps on a huge stack of bright pink envelopes. As he seals each envelope, he sprays it with a puff of perfume. The woman’s curiosity gets the better of her, so she goes up to the man and asks what he is doing. The man replies, “I’m sending out 1,000 Valentine cards signed, ‘Guess Who?’”“But why?” she asks.
“Because I’m a divorce lawyer,” the man replies.
A woman awoke and told her husband she had dreamed that he had given her a diamond necklace for Valentine’s Day. “What do you think it means?” she asked.
“You’ll know tonight,” he replied.
Later that evening, the man came home with a small package and gave it to his wife. Delighted, she opened it — to find a book entitled The Meaning of Dreams.
At a cocktail party, a woman was having a conversation with an old friend. She said, “It is I who made my husband a millionaire.”
“What was he before you married him?” asked the friend.
The woman replied, “A multi-millionaire.”
