We have clients using our VFP9 SP2 app in the cloud with RDP access. In fact, our company uses a modified version of our software for some of our bookkeeping and tracking clients. It works very well. My only regret is that we did not do it long ago. I am pretty sure we do not have any installations as large as Fred described. Ours are more like 4-15 users and so were very easy. Everyone already knew how to use our software so there was almost no training at all. We have quite a few clients that have Windows 2003, 2010, etc with terminal services and so they already knew how to use RDP. It is much faster than accessing with a network and is the only acceptable solution for remote access. We have experience with 2 vendors and both work well.
I checked with RackSpace and they are competitve. The only reason we did not go with Rackspace is that they do not provide the client RDP license so you are limited to 2 users unless you purchase client licenses somewhere. With Windows 2010 R2 server you can only access with 2 simultaneous users without purchasing licenses. We did not want to get in the middle of that. We prefer to 'rent' the license. If you search for 'terminal server' outsourcing, you will find vendors that 'rent' the license month to month. The really great thing about outsourcing is that it is very easy to grow if needed. We had some clients who had local hardware maintenance people who always said every issue was ours when it was obviously a hardware issue. That problem is eliminated. Of course, the client may still need some local hardware help with printing and similar issues. The RDP client works full speed with older, limited hardware. It will seem expensive when you first check it out, however, if you add up the cost of the hardware, maintenance, licenses, floor space and hassle it may be cheap. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Fred Taylor" <[email protected]> To: "ProFox Email List" <[email protected]> Sent: Tuesday, July 31, 2012 2:38 PM Subject: Re: Any one put an app in a cloud? Not so that it's noticeable. We had a sever problem with generating/printing large reports early on (10-1 slower) but I'm pretty sure that's not as big a problem as it used to be. At least I don't hear the complaints as often, anyways. ;) The printing was local, and what was a 3 minute report generation time, was around 30 minutes. I think it's 3-5 minutes now. Generating emails (via Outlook) had a similar problem that's since been resolved, too. (And just for Ed, RackSpace hosts our email Exchange server). Fred On Tue, Jul 31, 2012 at 2:17 PM, MB Software Solutions, LLC < [email protected]> wrote: > On 7/31/2012 4:50 PM, Fred Taylor wrote: > > Really depends on the number of users. We moved several VFP apps to the > > cloud with about 125-150 users. Not quite sure how many servers that's > > spread across on the cloud, but I think it's at least 6 servers (4 for > user > > logins and 2 for data). Everything accessed from RDP (remote desktop). > > So each user RDP's into a location and runs the app that way? It's > using VFP tables for it's backend? Any performance lag with the RDP > approach? > > > -- > Mike Babcock, MCP > MB Software Solutions, LLC > President, Chief Software Architect > http://mbsoftwaresolutions.com > http://fabmate.com > http://twitter.com/mbabcock16 > [excessive quoting removed by server] _______________________________________________ Post Messages to: [email protected] Subscription Maintenance: http://leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox OT-free version of this list: http://leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech Searchable Archive: http://leafe.com/archives/search/profox This message: http://leafe.com/archives/byMID/profox/018d01cd6f69$61de24d0$7a00a8c0@w2k3s02 ** All postings, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are the opinions of the author, and do not constitute legal or medical advice. This statement is added to the messages for those lawyers who are too stupid to see the obvious.
