Six reasons your Microsoft Remote Desktop Services (RDS) data center business will die--and what to do about it

Remote Desktop Services (RDS) supports the steady growth of thousands of service providers, with both desktop and app/ISV RDS business models creating long term customer contracts and repeatable business. At the same time, a growing number of RDS providers are abandoning their data centers and choosing to migrate their RDS implementations to Azure.

Here are the top six reasons for this shift to the cloud, and how your business needs to respond to this growing trend.

Reason #1: moving away from 24/7 infrastructure supporting 8-to-5 apps

With some basic scripting or support from the RDS, ISVs and service providers can take advantage of the application and desktop usage patterns focused mostly on day time usage and peak usage around specific times of the day. This 8-to-5 optimization and infrastructure scaling is native to cloud and allows for 30%-70% ongoing infrastructure cost savings.

Reason #2: gaining flexibility for both capacity and scale

RDS on Azure comes with “zero cost” capacity contraction and expansion, automatic scaling, and the ability for immediate capacity changes with no setup costs.

Reason #3: supporting geo proximity

Service providers looking to serve customers outside of their primary DC location are choosing Azure as an expansion option--a simple and rapid alternative to provisioning RDS to services to customers in new geos. In many cases, local data and sovereignty concerns are making Azure’s local strategy the only way to address customer needs without a need for new co-lo contracts.

Reason #4: following customer preference

A growing number of customers are becoming aware of the cloud value and proactively ask for a choice of deployment in the hoster DC and Azure. Hosting customers are seeing the value of cloud-delivered services like Azure AD and recognizing that an RDS deployment on Azure will help them actively utilize the benefits.

Reason #5: low cost migration

Basic RDS on cloud/Azure savings and benefits are not negated by the cost of infrastructure migrations since RDS apps are single server and require basic VM migration skills to shift to the cloud. There is also no need for app modernization for the RDS ready application moving to Azure.

Reason #6: ISV support for RDS on Azure management

Over the last few years, a growing number of RDS ISVs have started to support both RDS to Azure migrations as well as RDS on Azure management. See this TechNet page for a current list of partners who have passed the RDS on Azure training and assessment, and click here for more information about partner opportunities using Remote Desktop Services.

Find out how you can be on the winning end of the RDS migration

Join us for a special live webcast on the RDS to Azure migration on March 15th. Be sure to register below for reminders and event information prior to the event.

Remote Desktop Services (RDS): Why run 24x7 infrastructure for applications that run from 8AM – 5PM?
Date: March 15th, 8:00 - 9:00 a.m. (Pacific Daylight Time)
Remote Desktop Services (RDS) supports the steady growth of thousands of service providers, with both desktop and app/ISV RDS business models creating long term customer contracts and repeatable business. At the same time, a growing number of RDS providers are abandoning their data centers and choosing to migrate their RDS implementations to Azure. In this session we will share with you reasons for this shift to the cloud, and why your business needs to respond to this growing trend. Register today!

Speaker:

[caption id="" align="alignleft" width="110"]Adam Bogobowicz, Director of Market Development Adam Bogobowicz, Director of Market Development[/caption]