Surgient Success

Microsoft has engaged customers by providing access to Office 2007 for anyone to test drive [ http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/products/HA101687261033.aspx ] .   I assume the motivation is to promote ease of access so that persons can develop a fuller understanding of why they are being asked to shell out a hundred dollars (or more) for an upgrade.  MS uses a Citrix web client for this.

Infrastructure permitting, will potential VTMS customers be able to test drive the lab environment?  Furthermore, will it be possible for Saba Centra customers to have access to a demo server for the purpose of evaluating and demonstrating the virtual lab capabilities prior to purchase?  Are trial/ pilot programs available?

Saba Centra owns the integration, so you would need to work with them specifically to test drive that, as we do not have their product in house to allow for it.  However, if you wanted to test drive Surgient, we do have a demo center setup, and your sales rep is generally able to arrange some time on the system for you to play with it.

 Hope this helps!

Jackie

It does Jackie, immensely.

To provide further clarification; yes access to a demo of the Centra ver. 7.6 integration with Surgient Virtual Labs would be desirable.  I will contact Saba once Centra 7.6 is released in the new year. And access to a pure Surgient labs integration would also be very useful for the short term.  I look forward to touching base with sales to gain access. 

But in terms of maketing the product, I am thinking a demo link on the product home page would be visted quite often. Just an idea.

I think the issue of having a demo link is a bit difficult.  Think of your Microsoft example.  Users go there knowing exactly what product they are about to demo and what they'll get from it (a document, a presentation, calculations, compiled code, etc.).  We help manage and deliver virtual applications - we make your life easier - but that's a harder thing to show.  Surgient is all the things that go around ultimately presenting that image to the end user, from managing the VMs from a resource and scheduling allocation, to reporting on usage, to users management and access control, to image building, updates, and maintenance, to name a few.   What we do is all about convenience and assistance to get the customer to the ultimate goal - delivering training, testing, or demoing a piece of software - and those things won't be as interesting to the user without them understanding why they need to do it all.  On the flip side, if our demo was as simple as taking them to a Windows desktop in a VM, well, then we skip the importance of what Surgient is really about and the uneducated user may go "so, Windows....big deal". 

So, with all that said, it takes me to the question - if we were to put a demo link on the product home page, what would you, as a potential customer, expect to see there that would make you actually pay attention and want to play with it and learn more?

 Jackie,

I agree the significance of using Windows remotely is 'no big deal' to persons with a technical background.  However I beleive that enabling access to the very environment will foster a few things - first, potential customers can take that demo and show it as a proof of concept to their peers and decision makers. 

Though I have read a few product manuals and have viewed the Flash demo, I am sensing that access to a demonstration server would provide a number of benefits.  First off, the concept of virtualization is new and a large (very large I believe) segment of the decision makers have never seen it.  So seeing a portal through which one sees Windows, etc. function can decrease lack of understanding.

Perhaps a better thought is to enable access to a scheduling and reporting tool; perhaps the same (or similar tool) Surgient uses within the product set.  Maybe integrate a test lab enviroment for the purpose of showing just how easy it is to setup and tear down.  I see that in the FLash demo - how about providing that as an option after persons see the flash demo??

To me being able to touch is believing. 

Sincerely - HiEdTechie

You raise some good points.  I will forward your suggestions to the marketing team.  Thanks!

Thanks; I've also submitted a request to gain access to the demo server link that is at the VTMS product page.  Not sure if I missed that yesterday or not?

I hipe this demo will provide access to the scheduling interface as that is truly what I have most questions about.  For example, can remote attendees join a session a few minutes early; just 'how many click' does it take to set up a virtual labs?  Do the means exist to batch create a series of labs?  Or must each be created manually via point and clicking.  To be scalable I am hoping there is some means to have repeating labs much like we configure Outlook for repeated meetings.

Best, HiEdTechie

HiEdTechie -  

Remote attendees can join a session a few minutes early. Surgient provisions a lab by the scheduled time. Sometimes it can be ready and available early, but even if it isn't, a user an go to the "launch page" and see that the lab is still building. As soon as it becomes available for use, the link to enter the desktop will be present.

Regarding clicks - there is a workflow associated with creating a lab. You must choose a lab from your library, assign an instructor to it (if you are not to be the instructor), add students, and then schedule it. Once that is done, you may reuse the same lab as often as you like - if you are using "anonymous" students, you can simply change the password (or not!) and reschedule the lab. We do have the API set that I directed you to - in theory you can use those to batch your series of labs. Right now we do not have a feature that will allow a class to be "reoccurring" - I don't know that a request for this has come up before - but I can see the use of it and have entered in the feature request.

Thanks!

Jackie.