CEO of TuCloud Dares Microsoft To Sue His New Company

Fluffeh writes "Word from Ars Technica is that OnLive, a service provider that seems to totally flout Microsoft licensing and offers iPad users a Microsoft Desktop for free (or a beefier one for $5) isn't being sued by Microsoft, as this blog quotes: 'We are actively engaged with OnLive with the hope of bringing them into a properly licensed scenario.' The people who are angry include Guise Bule, CEO of tuCloud. He accuses Microsoft of playing favorites with OnLive — whose CEO is a former Microsoft executive — while regularly auditing license compliance for companies like tuCloud that provide legitimate virtual desktop services. Bule is so mad that he says he is forming an entirely new company called DesktopsOnDemand to provide a service identical to OnLive's, complete with licensing violations, and dare Microsoft to take him to court. Bule hopes to force Microsoft into lifting restrictions on virtual desktop licensing that he says inhibit growth in the virtual desktop industry, and seem to apply to everyone except OnLive." One of the restrictions applied to licensed remote desktop providers is that each user must have his own dedicated machine (pretty onerous in the days of 16+ core servers costing a mere grand or two).

Comments

Okay, so I'm not completely informed here, but..

[Anonymous Coward]

while regularly auditing license compliance for companies like tuCloud that provide legitimate virtual desktop services.

If you own a volume license, yes, they can do that, and there's not a damn thing you can do about it.

Re:Okay, so I'm not completely informed here, but.

[Rockoon]

The reason OnLive gets a pass is because OnLive is a rapidly growing business dominating a completely different market (virtualized gaming) run by a veteran player in the industry, while toCloud is a rinky-dink outfit that has no real prospects for large growth that has to keep telling the world how they are "Virtual Desktop Superheroes" because its so easy to forget.

Re:Okay, so I'm not completely informed here, but.

[LordLucless]

That's one way to look at it. The other is that Microsoft's favouritism has allowed OnLive to grow rapidly and dominate a complete market, while tuCloud has been forced into being a rinky-dink outfit with no real prospects due to Microsoft's abuse of their OS monopoly.

Re:Okay, so I'm not completely informed here, but.

[afidel]

Exactly, the major problems are that the VDA license is *per device* instead of per user, that the license is only available to volume license customers, and that MS has told hosting providers that they must maintain separate physical servers and *storage* for each customer. Almost every other piece of MS software is available to service providers under reasonable rental terms so that they can provide their customers a convenient service, it's only the desktop license where MS has repeatedly refused to offer terms that their end users and service provider partners find reasonable.