Presentation - Remote full Access with Azure - is there any interest? (1 Viewer)

[Rx_]

April 2015 - Denver Area Access Users Group
http://www.daaug.org/

Key Point: In an era of increasing diversity of devices, there are some interesting options for providing full Access client access to all users, regardless of device or operating system.

George is an excellent presenter.
My intention is to attend the meeting and give a follow up.
If other members are interested use the poll, or add a THANKS or just add a follow up post or combinations of these.
If there is enough interest, I could ask George to make an amateur screen capture video with voice over to share. (no promises, but he is generally someone who is willing to share).

George lives up at 7,000 feet altitude up the path from me in Denver (5,280 Ft or 1 Mile High). We call Denver the Mile High City, it is easier than saying the 1.2021 Kilometer High City.


Presenter: George Young

In an era of increasing diversity of devices, there are some interesting options for providing full Access client access to all users, regardless of device or operating system. Two of these, both available today on Microsoft Azure, are a Virtual Machine hosting Access 2013 with Remote Desktop Services used to access the shared resource; and, RemoteApp, a new offering on Azure that offers some interesting differences compared to a straight VM. We’ll take a look at both of these, setting up a fully-running instance of each, and evaluate pros and cons of each approach.

George first encountered Microsoft Access when using the thirty-plus floppy disk versions of Office to teach Statistics and MIS in the early 1990’s. It’s been true love ever since. George has worked as a software developer for the past twenty years, including twelve at Microsoft (in just about every group other than Office). He is currently an independent consultant living at 7000 feet in Larkspur, Colorado, working primarily on .NET applications. George still has a commercial site or two that is driven by an Access database sitting in the server file system.

 

[pbaldy]

I'm certainly interested in learning more. Don't know if you know Crystal, an Access MVP that lives in your area. She's done a lot of video creation and might be a good resource to help with that.

 

[Rx_]

Think I have heard of her. Will look into that and ask others tonight. Thanks.
Have to admit that to draw in people, the presentations are typically mid-level.
So, we see a lot of people at this level might make a meeting and not find it a good use of the time.


For me, I live about 30 city blocks from the Microsoft center. Yet I still complain about the commute.
Years ago, my kid asked me to take him to the World's Fair. I told him to wait until it came to our neighborhood.

George is just one of the top people in Access Web. He does it just to support a few clients while C# is his main business.
He presented the different ways to use Access Web from Outlook, hybrid (vba to maintain - web for users), and convert to web.
It seems to me that MS can just drop one method and pick up another plus how they just don't quite have a total end-to-end solution (a.k.a. its just not there yet).

I had told him after the presentation about my Citrix (intra-net) experience and asked him to consider this. I hope the presentation tonight meets my expectation.

In the mean time, I am in-between what to do next. I am too old to spend 5 years learning C# for all of its many uses. It has been two decades since I programmed in C language. I know SQL Server just well enough but not at expert level. Some of the Excel programming experts tell me I am in the top 20%
So, I am evaluating learning just enough C# to use on SQL Server to generate Excel via Object Model. Of course Microsoft is woefully behind in documenting this.
In my search on the Internet to put it all into a plan, Ken Getz has the best documentation from many years ago when he stopped Access Programming. He spent almost a year with MS Office Object Model, heavy into Excel programming in C#.

I emailed Ken Getz to thank him for his now dated post and ask if he knew of any more recent training / documentation for C# to Excel Object Model.
He was nice enough to respond. This is his response:

I don't really have any recommendations, sorry, other than the series of articles I did years ago. I'm sure there must be something, but I'm not sure where to look even...
-- Ken

 

[Rx_]

This will be the "quick" report as my workload and final Tax Day efforts are consuming my time.

The presentation was just great thanks to the presenter's knowledge and experience.
There are basically two Microsoft Subscription Models.
What they both have in common is a required Azure subscription to Office 365 ProPlus.
The first model is using Access 2013 in a (Azure) VM.
The Microsoft documentation is horrid to say it nicely.
That said, it might be worth learning how to get through the modified xml custom scripting and other non-documented features. My estimate would be that a technical person could charge between $2,000 to $10,000 USD per customer for the setup. That most likely eliminates the small and medium business. Microsoft is focused on the larger companies by virtue of removing the first technical rungs of the stepladder.
Once in place, the cost of using MS Office on the Cloud with all the automatic backups, automatic upgrades, and typical maintenance looks good.
Cost of VM ($67/Month) plus ProPlus/user/month($12).
Not horrible for an office of 3 usres, more cost effective for an office of 100 users.
Still, Access is basically using the Macro language not VBA.

The Second model is using Access 2013 using (Azure) RemoteApp.
This runs Access VBA in a sandbox. Your PC, Mac, Android, Linux, or other platforms don't have Office actually installed.
The RemoteApp is just .... wonderful! My eyes watered with excitement watching the setup. Then, users have a RemoteApp screen with all the accounts for office including Access 2013 with full power of VBA running on a powerful server! Being a Citrix user, it was like being at home.
Again, the lack of technical documentation for setup is horrid. (more details later).
Key points:
Using a RemoteApp is much simpler than using a VM (for users).
User experience is a "normal" application window (reducing training).
Much simpler single authentication from anywhere, any device.
Users State is preserved between logins
The plug and play translate to your local printers, mouse, monitor, USB, ...
Access DB can be stored in several places (OneDrive, RemoteApp folders, Networked Computer (for VPN users), local machine (using power script to redirect), ...

The cost model again doesn't support single developers or small business.
The model is set for a minimum of 20 users!
Cost of RemoteApp is about $20 per month (times 20 user minimum) or $400 per month. Then add ProPlus/user/month at $12.
Now ProPlus does include Visio, Project and other applications.
Add a SQL Server back end to this for your data needs.
If I was the new CEO of a company with a 1,000 users, this would be my choice. As the President of a company with 3 users.... I think I might just buy my own server, get a MSDN Subcription and set it up at the home office.

Due to my schedule, I have missed the new Citrix small business seminars. It is my suspicion that Citrix has a new 5 user license that uses drag/drop and wizards for a more simple setup and administration.
One almost wonders (outloud) if MS 20 license is to allow Citrix to support the smaller companies? I will make a bigger effort to learn about the new Citrix product this summer. Look at the Citrix stock since 2002 vs Microsoft stock since 2002. The charts indicate that Citrix is around and doing fine.