Quoting from official announcement:
Surgient, a leading provider of on-demand applications for software sales, marketing, training, and testing processes, today announced that Microsoft TechNet is the latest customer to implement Surgient’s Virtual Demo Management System (VDMS) to deliver self- guided, hands-on software evaluations of Windows Server 2003 to Microsoft’s TechNet community, eliminating the cost and hassle of CD Trial Kits.
Leveraging Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 technologies, Surgient VDMS enables Microsoft to provide a “sandbox” for TechNet community users to try out a full-featured version of Windows Server 2003 including Active Directory, Group Policy Management Console and IIS 6.0 via a single web interface, in a totally secure environment that requires no software downloads, installation or configuration.
“Using the system running on Microsoft Virtual Server 2005, Surgient allows us to reach more customers, with a more compelling user experience, at a lower cost per user trial,” said Anthony Tsim, program manager, Microsoft US E-Marketing. “In just one month since our launch, Microsoft has delivered over 10,000 TechNet Virtual Lab experiences using the Surgient VDMS system. Surgient allows our customers to experience, learn, and evaluate Microsoft products and technologies through self-guided, hands-on tutorials and labs using the actual software. Because customers can access the labs with just a web browser, we eliminate the excessive amount of time customers would spend setting up and installing trial software on one or more test systems in order to evaluate our solutions.”
Surgient’s Virtual Demo Management System enables live, full-featured software evaluations to be delivered to anyone, anytime, anywhere. Surgient’s centralized control of virtual resources and applications, brought together through automated scheduling and workflow, enables the delivery of cost- effective evaluations regardless of product complexity or the number of users. With Surgient VDMS, hands-on software evaluations can be developed, managed, and deployed to customers in an automated fashion, without the need for manual set-up and tear-down of physical hardware and software environments. In addition, for customers that don’t have IT resources available, Surgient offers a hosted solution enabling rapid deployment and faster time-to-results.
“With Surgient VDMS software, organizations can greatly expand the reach of their trial programs, accelerate the sales process, and actually lower the overall cost per evaluation,” said Erik Josowitz, Surgient vice president of marketing. “Surgient VDMS allows software organizations to deliver hands-on product evaluations, of even complex multi-tier applications, via a web browser. We obviate the need for trial CDs and lengthy software downloads by eliminating the installation process in the evaluation experience.”