Spoke to another client today who has been testing our Performance Manager software. We went through the usual questions on the first webinar:
How many users per server? Do you have slow downs or lockups? Do user complain about performance? How many servers etc. Then, we did the standard 30 minutes setup over the phone, put the product agents on a production box, gave him our normal advice on load balancing and a few days later his results looked like this:
Before AppSense, 15-20 average users per server, some slowdowns experienced during most days.
After AppSense, 26-30 users per server, no slow downs experienced, all users having noticed improvements. The CIO was on board and Purchase order in the works :-)
While I was on the phone, however, “PerfMan” storms into the office.
No shy and retiring petal our PerfMan, he’s always running around telling people, “You Must Test, You Must Test”. Normally he’s a nice friendly character who, unfortunately was born with a speech impediment, which means he says “WISTA” instead of “VISTA” and “HYPER WEE” instead of “HYPER V”, but on this day he was on a mission.
Seems a couple of techos tried to convince him the new Windows System Resource Manager in Windows 2008 R2 was going to take over the world and his product would be relegated to older servers only- yeah right!! I suppose they’re the same techos telling their clients to use NTBACKUP instead of buying a Third Party backup product :-)
True there is more base level functionality built into every new version of Windows and every new version of Citrix, but it’s all about what the clients need, and what the base level can deliver.
We’ve heard it all before, when Citrix introduced base level performance management into their PS3 product, some people told us our Performance Manager product would fade away, and that PerfMan would have to find a new job selling Knackwurst and beer to tourists.
Funny thing was exactly the opposite happened – because clients now had base functionality to test – so guess what – they tested it. So then they looked around at what else was on the market – AppSense Performance Manager of course – tested the product – saw amazing results – bought the product and started saving time and money.
Built-in, base level functionality for any feature will provide benefits to somebody, but usually only for small organizations who have very basic requirements. The reality is, most organizations will gain real benefits and real savings from Performance Manager – they just need to test and see the results.
So remember the chant from PerfMan, “You Must Test” “You Must Test” – test PM properly – see the results – save the money – it’s that simple.
PS – The new CPU/Memory management features don’t make it on Microsofts’ Top Ten reasons for going Win 2008R2, but the new version of NTBACKUP does :-) Better test that as well.
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