Have You Outgrown Microsoft RDS?

How one Windows ISV Found a Better Way

• A Windows® ISV had outgrown Microsoft® Remote Desktop Services (RDS) and needed a new remote access solution to accelerate company growth and profitability.
• The company recognized that GO-Global® provided key features that would deliver cost savings, better scalability, and reductions in customer service calls versus RDS.
• The Windows ISV managed its transition to GO-Global by engaging all internal stakeholders to ensure technical and business buy-in prior to implementation and drive a hugely successful roll-out.
• Learn the steps the company took to build and implement a new application delivery infrastructure—where the only thing that customers noticed was that the application suddenly became “really, really fast”.

Finding a cost-effective and scalable solution for application delivery is a critical decision for Windows ISVs.

For one Windows ISV, relying on Microsoft RDS became unsustainable as the company grew. The company needed a solution that could accommodate an expanding user base with new market needs — but without sacrificing performance or breaking the bank. 

The company evaluated many application delivery solutions to replace RDS, but ultimately determined that GO-Global was the perfect fit. Read on to learn more about the company’s decision to convert to GO-Global and the steps taken to ensure a successful transition. 

The Company Outgrows its App Delivery Platform

Over a decade ago, this Windows ISV decided to move to a SaaS model for application delivery. To enable remote access, the company utilized Microsoft Windows Server® Remote Desktop Services (RDS) to enable customers to remotely access the software. At the time, there were few technologies available to do the job, and RDS seemed to have the capabilities best suited to meet market needs and expectations.

A decade later, the company was experiencing significant licensing, technical, and business challenges due to that long-ago decision.

The first issue was licensing. The company uses a concurrent user licensing model while Microsoft utilizes a named user licensing model. As the Windows ISV grew, the licensing disparity escalated the company’s operating costs to the point where, for every concurrent license the company sold, the company paid Microsoft for three named user licenses.

In parallel, the company saw an increase in customer service calls related to connection stability and application performance caused by the way that Microsoft RDS handles client connections.

However, connection stability and application performance were not the most significant support issues. That dubious honor belonged to a limitation with Window’s native capabilities that didn’t allow customers to reset their own passwords. The company’s customer service team was spending 40,000 hours per year solely on password reset calls.

The final straw was Windows’ inability to support multi-factor authentication (MFA), which was rapidly becoming a must-have for an increasing number of customers in order to comply with industry regulations related to their accounting data. 

After a decade of standardization on Microsoft Remote Desktop Services for application delivery, the company’s challenges with RDS proliferated to the point where the organization realized that RDS was hampering growth rather than helping the company grow.

They had to find an application delivery solution that rewarded their hard work and commitment to their customers.

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Building a New Solution Requirements List

The Windows ISV realized that RDS limitations were actively hindering growth and impacting its ability to provide a positive customer experience. 

What, then, did the company want from a new application delivery solution? Here’s the wish list in order by priority:

1. A great user experience, including fast application performance and minimal downtime
2. Ability for customers to reset their own passwords
3. MFA capability
4. Economic use of computing resources
5. Concurrent user licensing

If the company could find a solution that did everything on the list, it could:

1. Give customers a great user experience—and make fewer support calls
2. Allow customers to reset their own passwords—and virtually eliminate password reset support calls
3. Respond to the emerging market need for regulatory compliance related to securing accounting data
4. Improve the return on investment (ROI) on their IT infrastructure and reduce tedious IT tasks
5. Align licensing models to reduce operational costs

The search for a new application delivery solution began with the ISV’s infrastructure manager starting a Google search and finding GO-Global.

Under Consideration: GO-Global

Visiting the GO-Global website for the first time, the infrastructure manager began to think that he might have found his solution. He immediately saw that GO-Global’s concurrent licensing model aligned exactly with their licensing model.

One wish list item checked off.

Then he saw that GO-Global offered MFA.

Two wish list items checked off.

The infrastructure manager decided to download GO-Global’s 30-day free trial to take a closer look. After an initial review, he saw that the GO-Global AppController® was designed to give end users a better experience on mobile devices—which RDS does not do.

Additionally, instead of Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP), GO-Global uses RapidX Protocol (RXP), a proprietary, low-bandwidth protocol, for connectivity over serial lines. RXP is adaptive, uses multiple layers of compression, and is optimized to ensure the lowest possible bandwidth utilization—which would improve application speed and reduce customer service calls.

Three wish list items checked off.

The infrastructure manager moved on to testing the GO-Global Admin Console. He saw that it responded quickly and allowed him to see exactly where clients were connected and what app server they were connected to, which made management of existing sessions much easier and faster than Microsoft RDS. Overall, it delivered a much better administrative experience for the company’s system engineers. It seemed that GO-Global could improve users’ and IT admins’ experience.

Most of another wish list item checked off, plus benefits he didn’t know were possible!

At this point, the infrastructure manager realized that there was enough evidence to indicate that GO-Global might be able to solve the company’s issues with RDS. But now he needed to prove his case strongly enough to justify the technical and operational changes required to make a switch to GO-Global.

Proof of Concept

The infrastructure manager decided to move forward with a Proof of Concept (POC) project to see how many items on the corporate wish list GO-Global could address. He knew from experience that for the POC to be successful, he needed to include executive management and the Application Development, Quality Assurance, Infrastructure, and Cybersecurity teams. 

Why? 

Change is hard. Switching from Microsoft RDS to GO-Global would change the application, their infrastructure, their process—everything! But replacing RDS with GO-Global could solve a lot of problems, too. If the extended team saw how the customer experience—and their experience—would improve by switching to GO-Global, they would commit to the project knowing that the effort was well worth their time.

And he wanted GO-Global involved, too, to help the ISV team accelerate the POC and test GO-Global’s commitment to its customers.

The POC project began by recruiting an internal project manager to manage communications and activities to keep the POC on schedule—and to objectively track GO-Global’s ability to knock off items on the wish list. He then gathered a prioritized and detailed wish list from each team, with each team committing personnel and hours to perform the tasks needed to execute the POC.

Several months after starting the POC, during a status meeting, it became clear that a switch to GO-Global would be far less painful than first thought. After each team reported their status, the project manager checked results against the list of outstanding issues, noting that GO-Global had solved those issues—and was actually going to work for them.

The infrastructure manager, aided by the extended POC team, began planning for implementation.

Implementing GO-Global

The POC allowed the ISV to make a substantial start on developing and testing a prototype. Before implementation, the infrastructure manager also wanted to introduce the GO-Global-powered application to the ISV’s customer-facing teams—Customer Service, Product Training, and Sales—so they could provide feedback and then prepare to support the roll-out from a customer perspective while the technical teams finalized the updated application and readied the physical and software infrastructure. 

With those meetings completed, feedback incorporated in the plan, and customer-facing materials prepared, the company decided to take a phased approach to implementation to limit risk.

Phase One: New Customer Onboarding

In the first phase, the team onboarded net-new clients directly to the GO-Global environment to get user feedback without the context of past experiences with password resets, slow application performance, and dropped sessions. This approach also allowed the company to implement robust MFA from the start, enhancing security, meeting market needs, and streamlining the user experience.

The customer service team reached out to these new users to get feedback regarding their onboarding and initial experiences with the software—and received positive feedback, which helped them to build training materials and FAQs for migrating existing customers.

After several weeks of consistently good new customer experiences, the company defaulted to starting all new customers on the GO-Global platform.

Phase Two: Phasing in Existing Customers

With the new system successfully handling new users, the ISV began migrating existing users to GO-Global. This phase was meticulously executed—migrating groups of five customers, getting their feedback, then five more customers, etc. This approach allowed the support team to test their newly-developed training materials and iterate training and processes to minimize disruptions for existing users.

One customer’s feedback tickled the migration team. “I’m not sure what you did, but the application speed became really, really fast.” 

Gradually, the company increased the volume of customers migrated as their comfort and confidence in the system grew. In the final phase, the infrastructure team was migrating entire servers at one time.

Phase Three: Full Implementation

In just over six months after starting implementation, the company successfully migrated its entire user base of customer accounts to GO-Global. Their methodical, phased approach ensured a smooth transition for both the company and its customers.

Results: Decreased Call Volume, More Up Time

Throughout the entire process, the company was pleasantly surprised by the GO-Global team’s commitment to and participation in the POC, development, and implementation of the GO-Global platform. The company was also pleasantly surprised by GO-Global’s innate understanding of its needs as an ISV—a quality it hasn’t encountered with any other vendor.

Was it worth it? The decision to transition to GO-Global yielded significant benefits for the ISV, exceeding their initial expectations, significantly improving their customers’ user experience, streamlining the company’s operations, and improving the corporate bottom line.

One of the most immediate and impactful improvements was the dramatic reduction in customer service calls. Specifically, password reset requests were reduced by 98%, eliminating thousands of hours once devoted annually to resetting passwords. Disconnect support calls was reduced by 72%. Uptime was 99.999%. 

With GO-Global, customer service reps had the time and bandwidth to address more complex customer inquiries and provide more value-added support versus simply resetting a customer’s password or apologizing for a dropped session. 

Thanks to GO-Global’s concurrent licensing model, the company was able to substantially improve their bottom line. Additionally, GO-Global saved the infrastructure team time and money by enabling them to support 20% more users per app server without any additional resources. The infrastructure manager also saw IT admin tasks like patching, application deployment, and Windows license management require less time and attention due to GO-Global’s ability to scale up versus RDS’ tendency to scale out.

Unlock Your Company’s Potential with a Better Application Delivery Solution

This Windows ISV’s journey demonstrates the transformative impact of choosing the right application delivery solution. By prioritizing customers’ experience, scalability, cost-effectiveness, and enhanced security, the company found a partner in GO-Global that empowered them to deliver an exceptional customer experience and supported their growth trajectory. 

This Windows ISV’s impressive results underscore the tangible benefits of making the switch. If your business is facing similar application delivery challenges and seeking a more robust and efficient application delivery solution, consider GO-Global. It could be the strategic move that unlocks your company's full potential.

Is your application delivery technology inhibiting your growth? Make GO-Global your go-to. To learn more, request a demo here or download a free 30-day trial.