The blog..

I am getting a lot of questions about whether or not RDS(Remote Desktop Services in 2008 R2, previously known as Terminal Services) is ready to kill the need for XenApp in our modern server based, centralized computing environments.

The truth is i get this question every time there is a new release of Windows Server with improvements to Terminal Services/RDS or whatever it will be called next time

The truth is.. and be ready for a shock, as this is even new to me ….. Windows Server 2008 R2 RDS is truly a great product, and i do believe that many customers could benefit from taking the features and functionality of the new release into consideration.. That said i still think Microsoft has a lot of potential in the area of improving the management capabilities and tools for RDS to compete with the level of management we receive with the Citrix offerings..

To me, small installations, one, two or three servers might be able to live with the management features that are available today in RDS to deliver basic applications like ERP, CRM or similar to the company users. However it has to be kept in mind that the Citrix fundamentals offering is quite cheap and fills most of the gaps we see in the management infrastructure in Terminal Services/RDS.

But again it all depends, and deciding between one or the other based only on the comparison matrix available online is not the right way to go about it.. That said, doing a fair comparison is also a bit of a challenge.. so we need to evaluate our use cases, needs and then choose the product that covers our needs at the best possible price.

To get more information i have gathered a few links here to blogs about the features and technologies:

Jason Conger has done a great post here: http://blog.xcentric.com/2009/08/04/is-windows-server-2008-r2-terminal-services-a-citrix-killer/

Michel Roth explained the new features here: http://www.thincomputing.net/articles/specifics-of-what-is-new-in-windows-server-2008-r2-rds.html

And hopefully we will have a XenApp version available for 2008 R2 soon, so we can do a fair comparison of the products available The signup for the techpreview is available here: http://deliver.citrix.com/go/citrix/xar2techpreview

Rene Vester