We use WebEx Support Center in the IT department to support users as well as work with vendors remotely. This applies to physical desktops, laptops, and Virtual Desktops. We have around 200 employees. Most employees work in one of our offices, but we do have at least 5-10 users who are more frequently remote than they are in the office. It helps us remotely access machines we wouldn't otherwise have access to, due to lack of physical access. It's excellent for troubleshooting access problems from users' personal machines, as well.
Remote Desktop services are well suited for people looking to connect to Local computers/Servers after connecting to VPN or Local Area Network. It is easy to use and performs superbly without any issues. However, it does not have support for connecting to Non-Windows-based Devices and Applications like Teamviewer beat RDP when it comes to connecting to machines outside one's network.
Simple Remote Access - WebEx Support Center works with either a permanent install or temporary executable, so you don't have to worry about users being particularly comfortable or knowledgeable about software installation. It also doesn't matter if the user is on an account without admin rights, you can still connect and see what's going on using the temporary executable.
Robust Access Options - You can take see the user's screen, take control of their screen, send files, and retrieve files. It's a great tool for troubleshooting issues that users might be experiencing and doesn't depend on them being able to find the files that you need to properly troubleshoot their issues.
Great performance - Even when users don't have a particularly great internet connection, you can still typically get good results and help them quickly. You're not going to do it over dial-up (if that even still exists for anyone), but it works acceptably well even over very modest DSL or satellite internet connections.
When you connect with RDS, everything looks and feels (and is) exactly like you're sitting at that desktop. This is great for us and for users.
You can sign in with RDS and the desktop will be the same as when you left it (if you choose to set it up that way).
Although they take some setup, RemoteApps are a very handy way to let users access a program without requiring them to actually connect to a remote desktop on the server.
During initial setups it can be a little confusing.
The look and feel is a little rigid. It feels like it is in need of a smoother UI update.
When a new user is introduced to webex and they are asked to share their desktop, it maybe a little difficult for the user to navigate to the correct buttons.
Remote Desktop Services currently does not support multiple monitors on the terminal server. Unlike other applications such as Teamviewer, there's no feature to toggle between multiple screens even if they were connected to the terminal server.
Remote Desktop Services should provide an option to scale up or down the screen size after a connection is established. Currently you can only adjust the screen size prior to a connection is established. So you'll have to take a best guess at what display screen resolution will fit best on your screen.
Remote Desktop Services should offer some kind of menu to send special key strokes like Ctrl+Alt+Del to the terminal server. Currently the substitute for that particular combination is Ctrl+Alt+End. But I have yet to discover a replacement for other combination keystrokes such as Alt+PrintScrn.
The Enterprise package we purchased (Event Center, Remote Support, Meeting Center, and Training Center) for 100 users is the same annual price as GoToMeeting for 25 users. We will renew as it is a package deal. If it were just WebEx Remote Support, we would not renew at all.
Honestly, there are people available. But none of them will help you with your issues. They just keep assigning new service engineers who are often clueless.
The initial setup for Remote Desktop Services is complex, and licensing is costly. Each user connects to their virtual desktop hosted by a single server or group of servers, so a change or issue with servers quickly impacts every single user at the same time. Aside from that, users appreciate seeing their same personal desktop from any device or geographical location.
As with any Microsoft Server product, support for Remote Desktop Services requires a paid support package. These are license-based and very costly, on top of the already costly product licensing. Microsoft's licensing is complicated to begin with, so setting up licensing alone essentially requires a licensing expert's counsel. There is community documentation and support available on Microsoft websites, as well as community websites.
I would say that Cisco Webex Support stacks up pretty evenly in capability, but in some regards (video clarity, toll-free access, etc.) they were even better. Where they did provide a better solution for toll-free access on audio bridges, their audio quality was worse for those that wanted to use VoIP for the audio conference bridge.
We selected Remote Desktop Services based upon price alone. Other solutions on the market are significantly more expensive, but if your company can foot the bill you should seriously consider products that have been on the market for longer. The lack of an ability to easily upgrade farm servers has been a challenge for us - although it is still faster than updating an application on 2000+ machines. The lack of a centralized management console in 2008 R2 is also challenging, but you get by with the tools available to you. If you don't have the money to spend on Citrix or VMWare Horizon, Remote Desktop Services is a decent replacement.
WebEx Support Center works pretty excellently for us as we are a small shop. We are experienced and have pretty good skill sets. WebEx Support Center is an excellent product for our use cases with our users and client to troubleshoot issues.
WebEx Support Center is more expensive than our previous product MXIE or Logmein. It has a more user-friendly UI, and overall performance is better and reliable.
