A couple of stories on the Citrix/Microsoft saga for old timers, make of them what you will.
This week's Spencer the Katt column has a little interesting bit on the upcoming (someday, it's an NT5 thing) Hydra server:
What better venue for last week's Comdex/Windows World Hydra customer party than the Chicago House of Blues? Especially for Citrix, since Microsoft explained in a nondisclosure briefing at the event how it plans to enhance and position the multiuser software in such a way as to make Citrix's rival products irrelevant. Hydra, aka Windows Terminal Server, will become a free, embedded component of NT Server 5.0. And Microsoft plans to rev Hydra's capabilities to eliminate the need for any complementary technologies or products by the time NT 5.0 ships. Spencer wonders if the handful of Citrix employees in attendance choked on their cigars. (from zdnet.com
I don't know about that, but price-wise, this is a pretty drastic about face. The line from Microsoft as long as I can remember was that multiuser NT wasn't going to save you any money, Microsoft-wise, you'd pay as much for licensing that way as you would buying per-machine software for an equivalent # of PC seats. Most recent ref from a quick search:
Microsoft, Citrix beta terminal server news.com
Microsoft executives also divulged plans to offer WTS on a per-seat licensing basis that will compare to the price users pay to run Windows 95 or NT Workstation on their desktop. Echoing a policy recently implemented for Office, Microsoft will likely not offer a concurrent licensing option, according to John Frederiksen, Microsoft group product manager for server OS marketing.
Is there some strange new Embrace?/Demolish? dance going on here? Me, coming from the Unix/X world, I'd say it ought to be a standard feature of NT workstation, heck, Windows too, give you transparent remote access to your machine like the Unix world has had, oh, since X took over 10-15 years ago. Maybe there's some new business plan at work, or maybe Spencer just messed up the story.
Cheers, Dan. |
