Why ISVs Shouldn’t Rely on RDS in 2025

Many Windows® ISVs using Microsoft® Remote Desktop Services (RDS) to deliver applications to customers are looking for an RDS replacement.

Why? ISVs are tired of dealing with RDS-induced issues that affect their customers’ user experience, like slow application performance, high computing resource utilization, printing issues, and inability for customers to reset their passwords. They’re tired of using Microsoft Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP), the network communications protocol used with RDS, which leaves their systems vulnerable to attack because RDP is open source. And they’re tired of paying Microsoft for named user licenses but charging customers using concurrent user pricing as per SaaS industry standards.

We get it. But bear in mind that, like all technology, Microsoft RDS is best applied to the challenge that it was designed to solve. To understand that, a history lesson is in order.

In the Beginning…

Remote Desktop Services was introduced in 1998 as Terminal Server in Windows® NT 4.0 Terminal Server Edition (RDP was also introduced in Windows NT 4.0). In that time period, according to the 2000 U.S. census, only 3.2% of American workers worked from home. White collar employees worked in the office, using desktop computers to run their applications locally on their desktop machine. Internet commercialization was three years old—in 1998, approximately 3.7% of the U.S. population had access.

Terminal Server was invented to allow IT to set up on-premises servers to simultaneously host multiple user sessions that users accessed via the office network. Since users no longer needed to use local applications to do their job, Terminal Server freed IT from the challenge of loading, updating, and patching the software on each desktop machine. As more jobs were automated by the availability of new software, Terminal Server also made it easier and cheaper to support the increasing number of employees using computers to do their job.

Terminal Services was revolutionary for its time, but it had limitations. First, it didn’t scale well for over 5,000 users, which led to performance issues. Additionally, the user experience would vary based on network conditions and the complexity of the applications the employee used.

Then, in 2006, the first public cloud, Amazon Web Services® (AWS®), was launched, making the internet a viable platform for corporate computing. That year Microsoft started working on its own cloud platform, which it introduced in October 2008 as “Project Red Dog” at the Microsoft Professional Developers Conference. During this period, Microsoft started shifting its focus away from supporting traditional on-premises corporate infrastructure to optimizing its cloud infrastructure for business customers.

Terminal Services is Renamed Remote Desktop Services

In 2009, with the release of Windows Server® 2008 R2, Terminal Services was renamed Remote Desktop Services (RDS). RDS was a significant improvement over Terminal Services and considered true remote application technology. It allowed IT to better manage the employees connecting to a server farm, and improved multi-session management, sharing of server resources, and instance isolation, all of which improved employees’ on-premises computing experience (in 2009, according to the National Council on Compensation Insurance, only 6% of US workers worked remotely).

In February 2010, Microsoft launched Windows Azure® (renamed Microsoft Azure® in 2014) and the race to be the leading business cloud platform was on. Initially, businesses could move their Windows Server remote desktop infrastructure to Azure, but moving to the cloud did little to improve the issues with RDS described at the beginning of this post.

Remote Desktop Modern Infrastructure

Seeing that RDS on Azure continued to plague business customers and their employees with the same issues as it did on a corporate network, Microsoft began working on a significant RDS update, Remote Desktop Modern Infrastructure (RDmi), which previewed in late 2017. However, at some point after the technology was previewed, Microsoft decided to use RDmi as the basis for Azure Virtual Desktop rather than use it to update Windows Server.

Since that decision, as Microsoft moved its focus to Azure, for all intents and purposes, RDS has remained—and will remain—essentially unchanged.

Is it any wonder that ISVs are looking for an RDS replacement?

RDS was Built for Employers, Not ISVs

Remote Desktop Services and Remote Desktop Protocol were built for businesses operating at a time when most employees worked onsite and companies’ computing systems were run in-house.

RDS was designed to enable employers to deliver desktops to their employees. It was optimized to solve employers’ challenges related to delivering, managing, updating, and patching a computing desktop containing multiple applications that enable employees to be more productive—for which employers are willing to pay a premium price for each named employee.

RDS was not optimized to provide employees with a great experience.

Why?

Simply put, it’s because employers pay for RDS—not the employees that use the desktops—so it’s built to primarily address employer needs.

For Windows ISVs, the poles are reversed. Your users are your paying customers. They expect your software align with their needs, including fast and easy logins, responsive application performance, and security that protects their data but doesn’t weigh them down.

One of our long-time ISV customers, who uses Citrix to deliver desktops to employees, summed it up best:

“Employees are willing to wait. Customers are not.”

Purpose-Built for Windows ISVs

From its very beginning, GO-Global was purpose-built for Windows ISVs who want to deliver their applications from the cloud as a service to customers located anywhere.

GO-Global enables Windows application access by any device with a web browser, giving your customer the freedom to use their device of choice when utilizing your application.
GO-Global works with any cloud, enabling you to fully leverage the scalability, load balancing, and security capabilities of whatever cloud you choose without buying additional security software that slows logins and application performance.
GO-Global’s concurrent user pricing model aligns with standard SaaS pricing models, saving you money over named user pricing models, so you can offer your customers an industry-standard subscription model and maintain your profitability.
GO-Global’s proprietary RXP communications protocol replaces RDP, eliminating RDP’s vulnerabilities to cyber-attacks and delivering a consistently great user experience on any web browser, even on low-bandwidth networks—so your customers don’t have to wait—ever.
GO-Global encrypts all client sessions, provides multi-factor authentication capabilities, and allows you to integrate your Windows app with identity providers to enable SSO, protecting your customers’ data without weighing down their user experience.
Despite its low price, GO-Global delivers enterprise-level scalability and easy, granular management of user sessions via GO-Global’s Admin Console to further ensure a great user experience.
Here at GO-Global, we’ve focused for over 20 years on providing Windows ISVs with a low-cost, high quality solution that enables them to deliver applications—and a great user experience—to customers located anywhere. Simply put, your priorities are our priorities, and when you succeed, so do we.