Last week I attended the Distributor Conference for RES Software, one of the multitude of Citrix/VMWare eco-system vendors. If you haven't heard about RES, you should really take a look - it's one of the software makers that doesn't get half the respect it deserves. And I don't say that just because COMPUTERLINKS works with them as a distributor, but because I know what a great product they offer.
RES are a Dutch company based in the south of the Netherlands, not too far from Eindhoven. They actually have an enormous feature list but only (currently) two products: Powerfuse and Wisdom. Oddly, the huge list of capabilities represents as much of a challenge as it does an opportunity. Whilst a particular feature may prove a deal-clincher for one company, it may be totally irrelevant for the next. On the other hand, with the software capable of solving so many problems, it is highly unlikely there won't be one killer feature in there for everyone, thus pretty much any company that uses IT is a potential target.
In the same way as Citrix XenDesktop releases the operating system from its dependence on the device (as XenApp does with applications), Powerfuse essentially gives the "user workspace" independence from the operating system. By a workspace, RES mean all the personal settings that a user has, everything from the background picture of their kids to mapped drives and printers and email signatures. This is a very powerful ideology, particularly with the advent of virtual desktops, or VDI, and, as such, it is no surprise that RES count VMWare just about as important a partner as Citrix. Having said that, RES doesn't actually care how you deliver/deploy/install your apps, it works for every way.
Personally, I believe Citrix should have bought RES rather than the Sepago technology they did acquire to solve the problem of roaming profiles, they would have got an awful lot more functionality in RES. Brian Madden counts user workspace management as one of the 5 things he thinks need to happen before VDI can really take off. I have no idea why they didn't buy them, but then I am not privy to that sort of information. I can only presume they would've been too expensive, I would be surprised if the reason had had anything to do with the actual product.
The 2nd product, Wisdom, is a runbook automation product that relieves administrators of many painful and laborious tasks, such as setting up new user accounts, automating provisioning of resources, turning off devices overnight etc. Some of the techies here at COMPUTERLINKS worked out you could save the cost of Wisdom licenses in 6-9 months, just by turning off a few PCs at night and saving the energy they sap. Software that pays for itself in 9 months on one single feature is pretty good in anyone's book.
To be honest, some of what RES offers can be done in other ways, for example with group policies and Active Directory, however the simplicity of RES, added to the sheer amount of functionalities available, are certainly the major buying factors. Security is another one. A good example might be giving a user (doctor perhaps) a specific USB key (by registering the serial number of the USB to that person) and only allowing access to the system when the key is plugged into the device. As I say: possible with other products of course, but there really aren't any other vendors out there who can do so much for so little money.
RES is not without its challenges, not least in terms of awareness. Many have simply not heard of them. AppSense is RES' main competitor, particularly in their home market of the UK, however RES do offer one big advantage for British resellers and distributors and that is that, somewhat refreshingly, they refuse to take end user deals direct. AppSense are famous, or perhaps infamous, within the channel for betraying their partners when they feel like it.
I can't do RES any real justice on a short blog, except to recommend a trial. See for yourself. As regular readers will know, my blogs are fiercely independent and I wouldn't laud a product so openly if I didn't genuinely believe it myself.
No comments:
Post a Comment