Post date: Mar 5, 2020 3:15:21 AM
Here is some background on the differences between RDP and VRL methods of experiencing cloud-hosted Vista in Viewpoint One that should be very helpful:
There are a number of operations in Vista that require Microsoft Office to be present on the same workstation as the Vista rich client in order to function: create and send through Word, drag and drop of emails from Outlook, etc. In the past, when customers connected to our cloud using RDP Published Applications, or our older Viewpoint for Cloud (VFC) offering, customers would need to host the Microsoft Office rich client applications in their Viewpoint cloud environment. Remember, Vista and Office need to be running on the same client workstation in order to integrate together. When Vista is provided to end users over a virtualization technology like the RDP protocol (e.g. Published apps) or Citrix, the Vista client will not actually be running at the end user's local machine. Rather, Vista will be running on the Viewpoint hosted Terminal Server. In such a scenario, Microsoft Office would also need to be hosted in our Viewpoint cloud, running on the same Terminal Server as Vista.
Now, we get to the costly part. Microsoft has licensing requirements around running Office on a Terminal Server. Running Office on a terminal server is impacted by Microsoft's licensing standards, which require the purchase of Microsoft Office 365 E3 or higher to legally run Office in a virtualized mode. Office will fail to open properly and generate a licensing error if used with a perpetual or lower level (i.e. cheaper) Office 365 (Microsoft 365) license in a virtualized cloud. As such, customers who are using our RDP methods to experience hosted Vista must purchase Microsoft Office 365 E3 or higher for each user who needs to use the Office integration to Vista in the cloud. This license level of Office is expensive and can cost thousands of dollars every month.
Unfortunately again, it is difficult to know which users in an organization do and do not routinely use integrations between Office and Vista. As such, the best practice, for customers connecting over RDP, to avoid churn and difficulty is to setup Office 365 E3 or above for every user of Vista in our cloud.
NOTE: Customers who need Viewpoint to host the Microsoft Excel plug-in known as Spreadsheet Server, will need to use RDP Published Apps. This will require Office 365 E3 hosting.
Fortunately, with the release of Vista Remote Link (VRL) as a method to experience hosted Vista, this situation is completely changed. Released in December of 2019, with Vista 6.19, VRL enables the actual Vista rich client to run locally, on the end user's actual workstation. By no longer requiring Vista to run in a virtualized environment, the end user can once again install Microsoft Office on their local workstation and have it integrate to Vista seamlessly. Any licensed version of Office will work, from perpetual to Office 365 Business Premium (Standard), to ProPlus, to E3. This alone will often save considerable costs when moving to the cloud and is one of the reasons why VRL is now the default, and preferred method to experience cloud-hosted Vista.
tl;dr: If you DO NOT need Office integration to Vista, you don't need Office. If you DO need Office integration, then:
RDP Published Apps (VEC / RemoteApps / VFC) customers DO need to purchase Microsoft Office 365 E3 or higher
Customers using VRL in our cloud do NOT need to purchase Office 365 E3 or higher.