Concurrent sessions in cost estimator

Good point, Martijn. I know we haven't had the need for a difference between named and concurrent users, yet, but I can see the use case. Microsoft is starting to do this with their W365 Frontline SKU.

Before I go into my rambling 🤣, I'll ask my question.
Are you seeing a lot of need to quote concurrent users vs. named users?
If so, have you looked into the W365 Frontline product?

Rambling time 🙂. 

I'm guessing the Nerdio Cost Estimator was designed with named users in-mind because that's how Nerdio bills (per named user).
From a pricing perspective, the per-named user makes the most sense because it will give a best representation of the burden (i.e. Storage Cost(s), Nerdio License(s), etc) for each user (whether they logon at the same time or not).

The concurrent user thing comes in to play when you're calculating the number of resources you need to have available.
However, with Nerdio Autoscale, it's less of an issue. Nerdio will only scale-out hosts that are needed. If you can sell the AVDs on the idea that all 300 users CAN login at the same time, but realistically, they never will, you will be prepared for it, but be able to make that much more profit because you won't need the resources available/online.
Kind of like a "plan for the worst but hope for the best" scenario.

After a few months of running, you can schedule an Azure Business Review with one of the Nerdio Sales Engineers (Tony, Jordan, Marcos, etc) and see if you're getting the most bang for the customer's buck. Likely, you could even take advantage of additional savings because there will be a number of resources not being used.

Thoughts?

Hi Dave,

Thank you for your response.
We don't see a difference between the concurrent and named licenses very often but there are some.
Haven't looked into W365 frontline as for this customer they have a number of 2680 named users and the highest concurrent number of users is 300.
Even with frontline a pooled AVD will be more costs efficiently.

I can follow you regarding the Autoscale as it will only scale-out the hosts needed but the cost estimator cannot take this into account even if you have this information at front. So the cost estimation will be much higher as the effective costs. Of course it's always better the costs are cheaper at the end ;-) but it doesn't sell easily if the customer asks to compare their on-prem Citrix setup which is designed for concurrent numbers towards to an AVD setup.

Kind regards

Great point!
I didn't even consider the Citrix vs AVD aspect.

Tony Cai/Jordan Wazwaz/Marcos Artiaga, do you have any recommendations on what we can do to be most competitive when going up against Citrix?

Hi Marijn,

The workaround for estimating for concurrent users is messing with the User to Core ratio. 

Tweak it to show you exactly the number of hosts needed.

For example: If you have 1000 users. and your normal User to Core ratio needed is 2. and only about 300 ppl concurrently logon. Then you can make your User to Core ratio like 6 to show the number of hosts needed for only 300 concurrent users.

Hi Dave and Tony,

Thank you for the feedback and the workaround.