Microsoft SoftGrid and ZeroTouch

re: Microsoft SoftGrid and ZeroTouch

CameronFrasnelly — Wed, 14 Feb 2007 00:18:03 GMT

Please don't integrate with SMS! Or if you do, provide an additional option for your smaller (<2000 computers) companies. SMS is too much of a management burden on its own.

re: Microsoft SoftGrid and ZeroTouch

AlanDorward — Tue, 20 Feb 2007 13:41:21 GMT

What does "the decision was made to enhance the offering and better align it with other Microsoft products" mean enhancing Zerotouch or enhancing Softgrid?

We liked the idea of zero touch but it fell short of our ultimate goal which was:-

Clicking on an start menu program icon began an auto-assessment based on a set of dynamic criteria which determined whether to execute the local Softgrid app or else call the app from Terminal Services.

The types of criteria included all the standard ones e.g. subnet, were you at your home site, are you running disconnect on a laptop, speed of link etc.

The business rules were defined centrally to provided best performance regardless of where you logged on or on what model of PC.

Eventually we wrote out own version and demo'd it to softricity. Then you guys bought them.

SoftGrid ZeroTouch No Longer Available (for a while...)

Realtime Community | Windows Server — Thu, 22 Feb 2007 08:30:37 GMT

When Microsoft announced the purchase of Softricity last year, there was great rejoycing among many Windows administrators. Softricity had worked very closely with Microsoft throughout the development of their product, even going as far as including SMS

re: Microsoft SoftGrid and ZeroTouch

ixtc4233 — Thu, 22 Feb 2007 19:36:57 GMT

Cameron,

The SMS tie in is a separate componenent option for Enterprises with SMS in place. For small to medium size businesses, Softgrid is still a solid solution as a standalone server/s without SMS. Now without SMS, keep in mind that all of your application portfolio may not be able to be virtualized 100%, so some other means will be needed to install applications locally (manual, script, AD ect). But installing 5 out of maybe 100 applications locally...you can't go wrong! Especially since techs are typlically multihatted. For larger Enterprises with hundreds of apps, this ratio increases and that's where having SMS helps. Great TCO!!

For ZeroTouch, nice added feature but perhaps under utilized IMO. Down the road though, this may be worth keeping around for Small to Medium businesses since the MS product that will incorporate this capability is more Enterprise targeted.

Troy Wilch

re: Microsoft SoftGrid and ZeroTouch

dccompwiz — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 14:08:33 GMT

One of the biggest problems we have with our SoftGrid deployment is informing the users of what applications are actually available to them. Now that everything is group based, instead of locally installed, users tend to not know what is available to them. Zero Touch offered a great solution for this problem. We are anxiously awaiting the final product to deploy in our Enterprise.