The Citrix C3 Lab with Amazon AWS now hosts XenApp Fundamentals on Windows 2003 Server with no installation required. The C3 Blueprint describes how to set up the environment so you can be testing or demoing apps delivered from the Cloud in minutes. XenApp Fundamentals is the new name for Access Essentials which is an ideal solution for SMB's looking for a simple way to administer and deliver Windows apps to office PC's , Thin Clients, Desktop Appliances, home PC's, Mac's, Laptops or mobile devices. Only a Receiver client is required on the endpoint, the applications get installed on a single XenApp server and are simply published to the users you want to access the app. The Admin console is wizard driven and easy to use, with the option for advanced features only if required.
Putting XenApp Fundamentals in EC2 makes everything even easier, no servers to buy or configure, the image is pre-built and ready to run. The Amazon plus Windows cost is only 12.5 cents per hour while you are using it. Even if you leave it on 24 hours a day all month that only $93 /mo ( plus storage and bandwidth, which is nominal for testing ). We have also included 2 User XenApp evaluation Licenses, so there are no other downloads or registrations required. Once you set up an Amazon account and start the server you only need to install your own apps in the image and click to publish to any user with any device.

This video walks you through every step to get started in 15 minutes.

( thanks to Simon Waterhouse for building the image )

Let us know of any questions or idea's on your use case in the comments below.

http://twitter.com/chrisfleck

I presented this week at the iPhone Developer Summit iPhone Developer Summit an alternative option of app development for the iPhone or any mobile device. The basic premise is to use the Tools or Development platforms you allready know to modify or build applications that can optimized for viewing on the iPhone yet actually run on XenApp servers within the datacenter.
The concept was very well received by non-developer IT Pro's and developers that are experts in other platforms, now trying to get their head around Objective C and other iPhone specific considerations. For the existing iPhone Developers the concept was foriegn and they remained skeptical. Thats OK, there is lots of room for more native iPhone apps and reason's to go mobile. As soon as users get the taste of leaving their laptop home there will allways be all those other app's or docs they will want access to. For help on getting started go to our Page on CDN

Demonstrations of Apps using these concepts available on CitrixCloud.net

There are probably many scenarios that would benefit from the ability to separate XenApp servers from the data source. Unfortunately this has not been a recommended practice due to the latency incurred when moving data from one location to another. Now with the emerging availability of Private and Public Clouds and typically constrained premise space and power this capability could become even more interesting. The time to move data across the WAN securely has been the limiting factor but how about using the Citrix Repeater to accelerate the data and Access Gateway to secure it ? Yes this is possible and we wanted to provide a Proof of Concept, demo and C3 Blueprint that may be beneficial.  

This demonstration was included in the Synergy session on Citrix C3 Cloud Architecture. The client laptop located in Florida is connecting over ICA/HDX to a XenApp server hosted in the EC2 Cloud in Virginia, which is pulling data from a file server located in Santa Clara Ca. As indicated in the demo when the Repeater acceleration is enabled the time to open a 5 Megabit file is about 7 seconds. A usable experience for the document delivery example. However with the acceleration disabled the time to open the same 5 Mb file grows to about 2 minutes and unacceptable experience. A 10X+ improvement from acceleration.

Certainly this configuration has limitations and may or may not apply to your situation but it may open the possibilities to solving many app delivery and data location challenges. This example can be recreated easily following the C3 Blueprint and the AMI ( Amazon Machine Image ) template available as part of the C3 Lab in EC2. This does presume you have an available Branch Repeater and Access Gateway on premise to complete the PoC. Try it out and / or let us know what challenges this type of solution may help solve.

Also check out Craig Ellrod's Cloud Bridge post that utilizes Vyatta for a full Premise to Cloud VPN.

http://community.citrix.com/blogs/citrite/craigel/2009/06/08/Cloud Bridge

Follow me @ http://twitter.com/chrisfleck

A lot of Buzz is in the air about what Apple is going to release ( or not ) at WWDC next month. As usual Apple has done a great job of keeping people guessing about what will be announced and when it will be available. Since the release of the Citrix Receiver for iPhone there has also been an increased interest in the iPhone for business use and how it can be utilized to be more productive ( and have a little fun ). The interest has also increase the desire for more, lots of people want the iPhone to become the " NirvanaPhone " by adding video and Keyboard capability , but there are other requests as well. " This would be awesome if it only did X ... "

So let's make some predictions and put some numbers to the features and announcements we want at WWDC.

In the early days of virtualization most developers and IT Pro's would not trust deploying production workloads in Virtual Machines. However, as soon as it was apparent how easy it was to test apps and configurations plus prototype new environments prior to production, virtualization became a defacto standard for test and dev environments. Over time virtualization improved in performance, robustness and management to the point where IT is now comfortable deploying a significant portion of production workloads on Virtualized platforms.

Move the clock forward to today and Cloud based Infrastructure as a Service ( IaaS ). Most companies are not ready to deploy their production environments to the Cloud, however every company spends a significant amount of time and resources for testing , evaluation and PoC's prior to deployment in production on premise or at a Colo. It turns out that IaaS is a great platform for test, dev and evaluations even if it may be early for enterprise production environments. Zero capital, rapid deployment, temporary workloads and elastic capacity are all attributes of IaaS that map directly to test and dev environments.

Citrix has now established the Citrix C3 Lab with Amazon Web Services to enable; PoC's, evaluations, demonstrations, testing, training and more. Pre-built Virtual Appliances available as AMI ( Amazon Machine Image ) templates are now available for XenApp, Citrix Secure Gateway and Access Gateway. In addition we are providing C3 ( Citrix Cloud Center ) Blueprints and a community site dedicated to provide " How to " descriptions, configuration guides, videos and forums to support the Lab. The time to build XenApp environments  can literally change from days to hours or even minutes utilizing C3 Labs. The expense of buying test servers for every new test or evaluation is changed from $ thousands up front to as low as 12.5 cents per hour. The time for racking, cabling and powering is  gone. The time to install Windows OS, then patches, then XenApp, then configure, then redo ( because you didn't read the manual ) is eliminated. You can literally be up and running in a little as 15 minutes. More complex environments can also be built with multiple AMI's networked together in almost unlimited configurations.

Going forward expect to see more C3 Blueprints, more Citrix products in AMI templates, and more suggested solutions to evaluate. We may also utilize the lab for tech previews or hosting research projects to gain customer insight and feedback. Stay tuned for more and give us some suggestions.

Saving significant time and money for test and dev just may be a leading indicator for how Clouds aew adopted into IT production environments later.

The Citrix Receiver for iPhone 1.0 is now available in the App Store ! This is the product thousands of our users have been ( impatiently ) waiting for. The 1.0 release includes support for Access Gateway and RSA 2 Factor authentication enabling secure access over WiFi or 3G networks anywhere.

To provide some history on what influenced this new Citrix Receiver look back to last year when Apple released the iPhone SDK. We had lots of discussion inside Citrix about the priority and significance of developing a client for the iPhone. Although it was possible to access Citrix servers from mobile devices in the past, the user experience was poor due to screen size, slow networks and cumbersome input. The iPhone finally provided a platform that had a relatively large screen, a 3G network and the awesome gesture feature that made panning and zooming usable.

So we knew we could do it, the question was should we do it. Beyond the typical business case with projections of users/licenses and data points of individual customer requests we did an experiment by posting the question to the entire community. As you may have noticed this single blog post now has over 200,000 views and 200+ comments.

Interestingly the comments came not only from our common base of IT pro's but a surprising amount came from end users as well. These are just a few examples of what we heard..

" Hospitalists want to use this.  We have Cerner here, and I need Citrix working to connect to it.  I would use this 50 times a day.  Right now I have to repeatedly sign in to different terminals.  The iPhone is the right form factor for this.  Laptops / tablets are too bulky for doctors to carry around -- we often do not have a surface to put them on. ..David"

"It's not just the medical community.  I'm Director of IT for a large chemical company. I have a highly mobile user base - engineers visiting the production facilities, etc.  Currently they are all armed with Blackberry devices.  That's great for email only..... but forget attachments or getting into some of the apps we currently host in a Citrix environment (such as our production scheduling tool).  An iPhone client solves these problems.  We'd be off the Blackberry platform and onto the iPhone with Citrix very quickly. By the way, we have a huge investment in the Citrix platform, and it's getting larger - more and more of our users are moving away from laptops to thin clients.  A Citrix client on the iPhone will come close to eliminating the need for any laptops at all from most users. Do it, and do it fast ! "

"It's not just the medical or chemical companies, I am the CIO for a logistics company, and we do all of our global operations using MetaFrame, and having it on my iPhone really helps."

Regarding the use cases, the blog comments describe many of them. I think it's mostly a matter of how mobile the users are as to how often this client will be used. For office based workers that have an iPhone it may be a just another cool app helps out in a pinch. But for the increasing mobile workforce that absolutely needs access to apps & data anywhere ... it's priceless... ( just like when you need to get to a server and you only have your phone with you) It seems that most everyone would like to be able to leave their laptop home, myself included.

 So let us know what you think, do you agree with the rest of the Citrix Community? Does it live up to your expectations ? Download the Citrix Receiver from the App Store and try it out. If you are not ready to put it in your production environment yet, register for the free demo at CitrixCloud.net and test the sample apps plus the great new App we built called Doc Finder. If you want to build your own environment to test your own apps try the C3 Lab in Amazon EC2.

For more information, news, questions and suggestions go to;

Community.Citrix.com/iPhone

Citrix.com/iPhone

From your iPhone, check out;

m.iphone.citrix.com

It's still not official .... but the Tech Preview of the long awaited Citrix Receiver for the iPhone is now available in the AppStore.  Anyone with a properly configured Citrix XenApp  environment can download the Citrix Receiver and access authorized company apps from their iPhone today ! Now is the time to start testing the iPhone in your environment, look for ways to increase productivity, and have some fun.

There are some restrictions in this Tech Preview so be sure to check out the iPhone Community pages we have set up for requirements, tips and forum discussions. If you want to set up a separate test environment to test your apps over 3G we have a preconfigured XenApp Virtual Appliance in Amazon EC2 that you can copy and set up in 15 minutes.

As part of Citrix Receiver we are also providing a new feature called Doc Finder that runs on XenApp but provides an iPhone experience to allow users to easily find, view, edit and send documents. Because the Documents are hosted securely in the data center nothing is downloaded and Doc Finder provides fast one click access to all of your important files.

For more information, news, questions and suggestions go to;

Community.Citrix.com/iPhone

Citrix.com/iPhone

From your iPhone, check out;

m.iphone.citrix.com

To get the real scoop on Citrix Receiver, talk to the experts, plus get some official news, I recommend you attend Citrix Synergy in May... and bring your iPhone... Learn more at www.CitrixSynergy.com

And finally, a big thanks and shout out to the Braeburn project team  .. Well Done !  ( actually .. they're not done ..  )

Things are changing fast in the world of Cloud Computing, however one question remains the same. Will it save me money and how much? To follow up on a previous post on Cloud Economics 101 Part 1, I looked at a fairly simple example of 5 Servers for a dev/test environment and identified the incremental costs of buying 5 servers and running them on premise or a Colo and then compared that to Amazon EC2. The analysis did not include many variables such as real estate costs and labor savings which may or may not apply to the particular situation. The results indicated that a Premise based deployment could provide the lowest "incremental" cost when compared to EC2 if the servers were running continuously. On the other hand EC2 provided significant savings for short term workloads with no upfront costs.

What has changed recently at Amazon is a new pricing model that provides the option for "Reserved Instances" http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/#pricing which includes an upfront fee ( 1 year or 3 year term ) and a reduced per hour charge. The analysis below reflects the new pricing model applied to the same 5 server scenario as above. As indicated the new model results in a significant savings compared to EC2 standard pricing; 31% for the 1 year term and 48% for the 3 year term assuming the servers are running 24/7. However, when compared to the 40 hour per week scenario the cost at $16,146 ( or $10,229 3 year ) is higher than the EC2 Standard price of $8,320 or the Premise cost of $7,800.

So will the Cloud save money? the answer remains the same ... it depends. The new " Reserved Instance" pricing model provides substantial savings over standard pricing when used continuously but the standard pricing still is more effective for short time periods such as a 40 hour week load. As noted in the earlier posts there are many other variable cost savings by putting workloads in the cloud such as real estate costs, facility upgrades plus the intangible but real benefit of reduced time to develop/test/deploy.

The "Reserved Instance" pricing will also impact the variable workload analyzed in Cloud Economics Part 2 - Premise Plus Cloud scenario, this should provide more content for an upcoming post.    

Cloud Economics Part 1

Cloud Economics Part 2

If your thinking about attending Synergy 2009 you may want to check out some of the "underground" videos taken at Synergy 2008 on a new Synergy Underground Channel on YouTube at: 

http://www.youtube.com/synergyunderground

Citrix Synergy 2009

Where Virtualization, Networking and Application Delivery Meet

MGM Grand Hotel, Las Vegas (May 4-7, 2009)

For more information: www.citrixsynergy.com

Many of us in the IT industry recall the old adage  "you'll never get fired for buying IBM" this held true for quite some time while IBM provided a comprehensive albeit expensive set of products that got the job done and provided the safe bet vendor selection. As the PC era took hold and the introduction of credible alternatives became available, the pendulum began to swing the other way. IT started being challenged about the "safe bet" choice and in many cases the assumption became if you were only buying IBM you were probably paying too much. This phenomena also translated into many purchasing processes that forced spec & price comparisons, in other cases it came about by users inside and outside of IT making departmental decisions to purchase PC's and other IT solutions from alternative vendors.

Wind the clock forward to today's situation in the server virtualization industry. The so called "safe bet" is to keep buying VMware regardless of the alternatives. And it's probably true today, you won't get fired just for buying VMware, however in today's economic climate this may not be the best alternative for your company or for your career. No doubt, VMware does offer a comprehensive server virtualization solution that gets the job done, albeit at a premium cost. You can continue to build your experience and expertise solely on VMware and be recognized as the company's "VMware guy/expert/fanboy/bigot/etc". Or, you can expand your horizon and expertise by carving out some time to install and evaluate XenServer and Hyper-V. The great news is you can now test and even deploy in production without spending the companies money, only your time which is valuable but so is the experience. As you drill into the capabilities of each virtualization platform you can develop your own first hand knowledge of the features, capabilities, and limitations of each. Equipped with this information you can build your own pro's and con's list as well as cost comparisons.

So before your management asks you if you have considered the alternatives, or the finance department cuts your budget again, you can now proactively develop your own proposal for a virtualization solution that gets the job done and saves the company significant money. Even if the decision is to stay with the status-quo, chances are you will be recognized as someone that takes initiative and looks for new ways to benefit the company. If you do start to carve out some area's to deploy XenServer or Hyper-V you will also be building your experience and resume as a "Virtualization guy/expert/guru/etc" that also knows how to save money. That has to be a good thing for your career in this economy.

Download XenServer for free here.
 

OK, actually it's 12.5 cents and it might take you a few minutes longer, but compared to the traditional methods of building/configuring servers the cost and time savings is dramatic. It is now possible to launch a pre-built XenApp image in the Amazon Web Service offering called EC2. The image includes XenApp 5.0 on Windows 2003 Server ready to run and is accessible as an Admin or user. Also included is the Citrix 2 CCU Developer license bundled into the image so you can be ready for test, dev, and demo's in minutes. In this demo image we have NOT included Secure Gateway or Access Gateway so we do not recommend this image for production environments. The actual minimum cost for EC2 with Windows Server is 12.5 cents per hour with no minimum or commitment, so you can actually run it for an hour, terminate the image and that's all you owe. In reality you will likely want to install apps, customize your image and run it for some length of time.  It is also very easy to save your image after you have customized it and terminate the image so the EC2 charges stop. The associated S3 Storage cost is only 15 cents per Gig per month, again very cheap and easy. New VM instances can then be started from saved images at anytime. As you may know the magic that powers this service is based on the Xen Hypervisor and the business model that Amazon has put together makes this a very attractive solution for many scenario's, in this case starting with demos, test, dev, PoC's etc. Many thanks to Vishal Ganeriwala for putting this image together and leading the way for more to come.
Here is a VideoTip to walk you through every step ( also available at our VideoTip site http://citrix.utipu.com/app/tip/id/6236/ )

Step 1.
Go to http://aws.amazon.com and get an account with EC2
Step 2.
Go to http://console.aws.amazon.com to access the AWS management console

Step 3.
Setup Security Groups per the video

Step 4.
Find the publicly listed XenApp Amazon Image, Right click and Launch

Step 5.
Enter the IP address provided into your browser http://xx.yy.zz.tt; and you are ready to go !
( ID: administrator, PW: citrix123, Domain: amazonxenapp )

 

Tip : When saving " Bundling " your AMI image remember to register it so you can relaunch it.  
       

Besides demoing the Citrix Receiver for iPhone at MacWorld, I got a chance to check out the exhibit hall to look for other interesting products, here is what I found:

Video for the Nirvana Phone ? The MicroVision projector looked really promising, right now works well for movies in the right lighting conditions, the text clarity is not ready for applications though. Rev 2 maybe ?

The latest MyVu looked really good including text. This is ready when we get application Video out from the iPhone.

How about a Keyboard Dock for the iPhone ... I was hopeful but no luck. I did find a developer who has a keyboard working with a hacked iPhone , couldn't get him on camera though..

The "InYourFace" clamp to hold your iPhone anywhere, I liked this a lot !

xDock another desktop stand, looks cool and works pretty well.

iRecorder rips any video right to your iPhone

Play tunes on your iPhone

For those looking for some new news from MacWorld, plus may want to hear from random attendees what they thought of delivering Windows apps to the iPhone. We took to the floor and asked, here is what they said :

I am really impressed .. I see this for remote sales reps

I can use this for document access ?   ... check

Holy ... is that real windows office 2007 ? that's awsome !

That's the only beef I have with the iPhone is I can't do my Microsoft stuff .. great job !

Yes there were those purists that we scared away at the thought of Windows on the iPhone ... plus some others that said "why would you ever need that ? "  For those with real jobs, they got it right away...

There is a lot of discussion in the industry about IT's resistance to supporting the iPhone. This is largely due to security concerns and application availability. As readers of this blog know, Citrix app delivery goes a long way to address these concerns. More and more we are now hearing from IT Pro's that want the iPhone to improve their own productivity, this shows up on our blogs as well as some recent impromptu reviews from the floor at MacWorld.

Since there was not many new exciting iPhone demo's at the MacWorld Keynote, we decided to release some of our own. Check out Cut & Paste from a real PowerPoint doc to Word. It works with Citrix ! Let us know what you think of the file navigation application as well.

Nothing to announce regarding release date ... but we are making good progress...
In the mean time chat with the developers over in the iPhone project site at
Http://community.citrix.com/iphone

Prediction #1: The iPhone goes Enterprise

- The iPhone will gain rapid adoption in the Enterprise driven by user demands including executives, road warriors, and knowledge workers asking for access to the apps they need ( including windows apps ) from anywhere. IT will increasingly support the effort based on new improved security capabilities and productivity gains ( including for themselves ).

..	Choose
We already are saving significant $$ by enabling safe access from home PC's
We are planning to allow controlled access ( via Citrix ) from home PC's in 2009
Status quo, corporate laptop access or none at all.

Prediction #3: Virtual Desktops grow beyond a niche

- Improvements in user experience capabilities of VDI solutions combined with the reduced support cost model will drive increased adoption of VDI beyond the initial niche deployments.

..	Choose
We are moving from VDI pilots and special use cases to broader deployment
VDI is not ready for the masses, we will wait and see

Prediction #4: IaaS Cloud Providers are no longer just for web startups

- The recent Windows offering by Amazon will validate the IaaS ( Infrastructure as a Service ) model as a viable platform for companies small and large looking to add test and targeted production capacity without capital and facility costs.

..	Choose
We have started to use Cloud VM's or Storage for test and plan broader use in '09
What is IaaS ? No way are we putting anything in the cloud...
Not sure, need to try it first

Prediction #5: Netbooks drive Servers, Clouds and Linux clients

- The rapid adoption of Netbooks based on low cost and light weight convenience will increase the desire to run server hosted apps ( Web and Windows ). A significant number of the new mini laptops will be used for occasional use vs a primary PC which makes maintaining local apps and synchronizing data problematic. This in turn will help break the traditional model of running Windows apps installed on PCs and laptops.

..	Choose
We are getting more and more requests for access from Netbooks, all they need is Citrix and a browser.
Netbooks are just toys for kids ...  ( small & big )

Agree / disagree ? what are your predictions ? 

Also seen at Sys-Con Cloud Computing Computing Journal

As we have announced here on the Citrix Blog ( still no Press Release though ...  ) we are actively developing a Citrix Receiver for the iPhone that will bring the world of millions of Windows apps and developers to the iPhone. As part of our testing and demonstrations we are looking for examples of compelling applications that will not run natively on the iPhone, however if the app was hosted on XenApp and delivered to the iPhone it would provide a great visual example of the power of Citrix and the iPhone.

Some things that come to mind are;

• Web sites that require flash
• Medical Apps
• Web apps that need IE
• Cut & Paste ( within Citrix sessions )
• ?

We have received great feedback and use case descriptions on the original post ( keep that coming ) now we are looking for specific apps or new ideas that would really open eyes to the possibilities.

Thanks !

We are always looking for idea's to improve our Citrix events. Some of the past feedback we have received is to step-up the technical content and include more unscripted and unfiltered opinions and dialog. At Synergy 2008 we introduced GeekSpeak which was very well received as indicated by the feedback and standing room only crowds. At Synergy 2009 you can expect even more technical content plus more GeekSpeak sessions. In addition as many iForum/Summit/Synergy attendees know. Citrix usually includes a concluding session that could be a brand name comedian ( Dana Carvey - Synergy 2008) or an Athlete with a story ( Lance Armstrong - Summit 2008 ) or other memorable entertainer.
 
In keeping with listening to the community and even better engaging with some of the innovators of social media we thought it might be interesting to have Kevin Rose and Alex Albright host an episode of Diggnation at Synergy 2009. As you may know Kevin is the founder of Digg and an expert at developing a community. If you're not familiar with the show check it out at Diggnation.com ( it's about as unscripted and unfiltered you can get ...  ). If you are a fan of Digg this might be your chance to watch an episode first hand and maybe hang out with Kevin and Alex afterwards with some beers at our closing party. If you're not a fan of Diggnation and would rather we look for other entertainment we would like to hear that as well. As always, suggestions and comments welcome.
 

Do you Digg the idea of Diggnation at Synergy ?	Choose
2 Thumbs up, I want to see Kevin and Alex at Synergy in Vegas !
Keep looking ...

I often talk with Citrix customers who are interested in virtualizing XenApp ( Presentation Server  ) based on the potential to consolidate servers, increase flexibility or enable new HA/DR capabilities. However, a frequent comment I hear is that we tried this before with ESX but the overhead penatly was to high so we are still running XenApp fully installed. This may have been the case before but things have changed, now it is possble to get the benefits of Virtualization by runing XenApp on XenServer 5 without the downside you may be concerned about.

If you would like learn more and engage with the experts without traveling to an event, make sure you register for the Citrix Delivery Center Live event on Devember 4th. You can register here and check out the other topics that may be of interest as well.