Hi Everyone,

We will be soon updating the m.iphone.citrix.com site with the latest documentation, in the meantime I would like to take a moment and introduce you to the Citrix Receiver for iPhone v1.0.3 Admin guide.

This document will come handy when planning for iPhone deployments in your company. Inside you can find:

• Product Requirements

• How to configure iPhone secure access via:
  • Access Gateway Strandard Edition
  • Access Gateway Advanced Edition
  • Access Gateway Enterprise Edtion
  • Citrix Secure Gateway

• How to provide access information to end users

• Basic troubleshooting steps

• Known Issues

Download the Citrix Receiver for iPhone Admin Guide

best,
Gus
twitter.com/guspinto

Intro: 

You've probably seen all my Mac and iPhone development activity and blog posts, but the RTM of Windows 7 was something I couldn't just ignore, Windows 7 is huge for Microsoft and it brought back some memories of my old Windows days, back then I created a little gadget called Remote Desktop; I had in mind allowing rapid access to my remote servers and desktops right from the Windows 7's sidebar.

It's been well over a year since version 2.1 of the Remote Desktop gadget was released on our former site Frameworkx.com, and this app summed up a bit over 1,000,000 downloads. It was built streamlined and simple as an extension to the Microsoft's Remote Desktop Client. Now on version 3.0 I simply added support for Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2

I decided to share it with our Citrix audience, since we are all about access, and I believe this is can be neat way to connect to your XenApp servers.

Installation:

Remote Desktop Gadget can be downloaded straight to your Windows 7's sidebar. No extra software or component is required.

Remote Desktop Feature Set

• Version 3.0:
  
  • Choose from 3 Themes
  • Dropdown list of server history
  • Favorites list
  • Manageable server history
  • Compact docked interface
  • Expandable docked interface
  • Support for Windows 7
  • Support for Windows Server 2008 R2

Download:  Remote Desktop Gadget 3.0



Enjoy this little app, and if you need support ping me on twitter: twitter/GusPinto

best,
Gus Pinto
Microsoft MVP

We've been working hard on the next major release of Citrix Receiver for iPhone, although our team is confident we did a good job implementing the first few releases, we decided to continue innovating. With that been said, our next major release will be focused on a highly improved user experience, and many innovative features!

During an usability study we have acknowledged 20 pixels of "waisted" space within the XenApp session, and 20px in a mobile device is like gold, specially when you only have a 320 x 480 viewable area.

I'm talking about the iPhone Status bar.

This bar indicates, time, carrier, signal strength, wireless mode, battery, bluetooth, etc... The status bar is visible most of the time, except in rare occasion, like when playing full screen movies, pictures, games, etc.

Today I would like to turn to you to help me make a decision on how to regain those 20px back, after all, we are designing this product for you, and getting your input this early is very valuable to us.

The question is pretty simple, we have 3 option, Solid (as is today), Translucent (see thru), Hidden. Which one do you like the most?

Best regards,
Gus pinto
twitter.com/guspinto

The long waited XenApp Plugin and Dazzle for Mac OS X has been released to the general public!

Mac users can access their hosted applications from their desktop or a web interface with the new XenApp Plugin for Mac.

You will find new in this release, Citrix Dazzle - an easy way to choose exactly which applications you need, when you need it - apps, your desktop, or any IT delivered service. Simply browse or search for the app or IT service you need. Users decide the folders that appear in their Applications folder. Simply click to create, then drag and drop any app or IT service.

Here's a list of new features:

• Dazzle - is provided to enable users to browse, select and launch applications from a native Mac UI.
• Improved Multi-monitor support.
• Browser plug-in - enables Web Interface to determine the plug-in installed in the system and offer to upgrade if appropriate. Also, no more .ica files in the downloads folder!
• System preferences - plug-in preferences are now set via a system preferences pane.
• Cleartype remoting.

Install instructions:

If you are currently running version 10 of the Mac ICA Client, you can upgrade to the latest build by just running the new installer.

Downloads:

XenApp Plugin 11.0

Admin Guide

Hi Everyone,

I'm glad to report that Apple has approved the release version 1.0.2 of the Citrix Receiver for iPhone. The app is now available to the general public via AppStore on your iPhone or iPod Touch.

If you have previously installed Citrix Receiver 1.0.0 or 1.0.1, an update request will be displayed next time you visit the AppStore on your device.

If you don't currently have the Citrix Receiver for iPhone installed on your device, you can download it here.

What's new on Citrix Receiver 1.0.2?

• Support for Netscaler v9.1 (AGEE)
• Enhanced support for NetScaler v9.0 (AGEE)
• Bug Fixes
  

For help setting up your XenApp Environment to support iPhone connections, download the Citrix Receiver for iPhone Admin Guide.

You can visit our Support Forums for help as well as the Citrix Receiver for iPhone Community Site for technical details.

best,
Gus

twitter.com/guspinto

Hi Everyone,

Just two days ago we released the Citrix Receiver 1.0.1 to AppStore, the rockstar feature for this release was the inclusion of Access Gateway Enterprise Support.

Today we were able to identify a bug on the Citrix Receiver app that affect users running NetScaler 9.1, causing the application to suddenly exit.

Gladly right after identifying the bug we were able to quickly fix it, so a new build (v1.0.2) has been produced, tested and will be submitted today to Apple. Expect an update to be available in the next few days.

In the meantime for admins and users attempting to deploy the Receiver with AGEEs, follow the steps provided in the Admin Guide. The Citrix Receiver for iPhone Admin Guide can be downloaded here. Setup steps in the document work perfectly for users running AGEE 8.x and AGEE 9.0.

For help and questions, don't hesitate to visit our support forums or feel free to send me a direct email

best,
Gus

twitter.com/guspinto

Hi Everyone,

I would like to take a moment and introduce you to the Citrix Receiver for iPhone Admin guide. This document will come handy when planning for iPhone deployments in your company. Inside you can find:

• Product Requirements

• How to configure iPhone secure access via:
  • Access Gateway Strandard Edtion
  • Access Gateway Enterprise Edtion
  • Citrix Secure Gateway

• How to provide access information to end users

• Basic troubleshooting steps

• Known Issues

Download the Citrix Receiver for iPhone Admin Guide

best,
Gus

twitter.com/guspinto

GoToMyPC is adding support for Mac OS X!

I've been been anxiously waiting for "GoToMyMac" since I converted to Macs, and recently Citrix Online made one of my "Mac-user wishes" come true, "GoToMyMac" err GoToMyPC for Mac beta was privately rolled out to some existing customers, aka beta testers.
The official GA date is not available yet, however the development team keeps cranking out awesome features, nearly matching the ones already available on the PC today. In the meantime allow me to share a brief demo video showcasing the new Mac support feature.

 
 
best,
Gus
 
twitter.com/guspinto

Platform support

• Added support for iPhone OS 3.0

• Support for Access Gateway Enterprise Edition  <-- Yay!
   

Usability Improvements

• 3x improvement in time for App list retrieval

• Visual feedback for mouse clicks

• When the keyboard is visible (during the session) the session can be scrolled up so that the keyboard does not obscure the session

• When a phone call arrives, the on screen icons are rearranged to appear in the correct locations
   

Security Improvements

• User's password is stored in the built-in iPhone keychain
  
  

---

Download Citrix Receiver 1.0.1 : AppStore (via iTunes)
For more Technical details visit : http://community.citrix.com/iphone

best,
Gus

twitter.com/guspinto

Pierre Marmignon, one of the most active and talented developers in the Citrix Community has recently written a great article about tuning up XenDesktop deployments. Influenced by a previous Citrix Community post from Paul Wilson, Pierre decided to write this article with a detailed coverage of the following topics:

- Operating System Tuning for XenDesktop
- XenDesktop Tuning
- User Profile Tuning
- Microsoft Office Tuning

Read it all here at CitrixTools.net, and don't forget to check out his XenApp tools.

Did you know that Citrix has a private Customer Advisory Community that enables global Citrix customers to serve as virtual advisors, providing their perspectives and opinions in an online forum? The Customer Advisory Community is comprised of 400 Citrix customers who span more than 30 countries and represent a broad cross-section of industries and organizations.

Customer Advisory Community members log in to the site each week, and provide Citrix with a wide range of feedback, including insight into their organization's IT direction, IT industry trends, and feedback on Citrix products, services and marketing, among other topics.

The Customer Advisory Community has a limited number of openings for new members this month, and we would like to offer Citrix customers the opportunity to be considered for membership!
As a member of the Citrix Customer Advisory Community, you would have the ability to:

• Provide insight into your organization's needs and challenges
• Share your thoughts on a variety of technology industry topics
• Learn early on about new Citrix initiatives and influence their direction
• Interact and network with your peers in a private, online forum
• Receive periodic rewards in exchange for your participation (if your organization's policies allow)

Those chosen to participate in the Citrix Customer Advisory Community will be asked to complete a click-through Non-Disclosure Agreement, create an account, and then log in and contribute their thoughts (via surveys, bulletin boards, etc.) an average of 5-15 minutes per week. Citrix partners with Communispace Corporation, a professional community management firm, to host and moderate the online advisory community.

To be considered for membership, please complete this brief, 10-minute questionnaire click here by March 6, 2009. Customers using one or more Citrix products are encouraged to apply.

Your responses will be kept confidential, and will be used only to determine your membership in the community. You will then be notified within the next few weeks about the status of your membership.

We hope to see you in the community!

As pointed out by Adam on his previous post, this site is the gateway for the community to get to know Project Braeburn's team as well as interact with us.

The site is now live and you can access it by clicking on the following link:

http://community.citrix.com/iphone

Happy Holidays.

best,
Gus

Lately main stream media picked up on the fact that we're building an ICA client for the iPhone. Several stories emerged, many pointing back to Al's blog as well as our most popular blog post ever by Chris Fleck.

Some have questioned if we were really working on a client or just some vaporware.

I can safely tell you that what you've heard is true, we're building an ICA client for the iPhone, but that's not all. We're not just building an ICA client for another mobile platform, we're redefining the mobile experience for Citrix users, we're building a Citrix Receiver for the iPhone.

iPhone is remarkable for its design and simplicity and we do not intend to change that, in fact, we find ourselves inspired by all its novelties.

Our goal in delivering a Citrix Receiver to an iPhone is to ensure a completely seamless transition from personal to enterprise, all in one device. Virtually millions business critical application run today on Citrix XenApp, and soon enough all of them will be at your fingertips in an iPhone near you.

We are following the very same guidelines every other native iPhone app follows, and to ensure that, we have teamed up with our friends at Apple to deliver nothing but the smoothest experience to our users.

The Citrix Receiver for iPhone will not only look and feel native to this platform but it will leverage many of the software and hardware advancements incorporated into this ingenious device. Expect a rich combination of multi-touch gestures, great usage of the iPhone's accelerometer and many more.

Our timeline can not yet be disclosed, however I can share with you that the first edition of the Citrix Receiver will be released to the App Store within the first half of 2009. In the meantime, we are building an iPhone community site within CDN, allowing us to contribute and share information with the industry as well as a mainline of communication between our development team and the community; this new site will be available soon, stay tuned.

The Project name is Braeburn (Project Braeburn), I'm the Product Architect, Al Grandville - Product Manager, and a highly skilled team of our finest Mac developers; we form the squad in charge of getting the Citrix Receiver released into the wild. On the new iPhone community site you will be able to chat, ask questions and exchange ideas with all of us.

Stay tuned, iPhone magic is coming soon!

best,
Gus

Citrix technologies have been around for almost 20 years, we have helped other companies to stay on their feet during time of economic crisis by implementing access and application virtualization technologies that not only helped them succeed with their business needs but also reduced their operational costs.

With the economy outlook looking so obscure, companies have begun seeking for new ways to reduce costs while challenged to provide their customers with unchanged level of services and products.

Understanding what technologies to invest in times like this can be crucial decision; while researching some market trends I stumbled upon a recent post on ZDNet by Dan Kusnetzky with the title "Can virtualization help when times get tough?"

After a brief analysis Dan pointed our six ways virtualization can help a company financially, here they are:

• Access virtualization, such as that offered by Citrix and Microsoft, can make it possible for administrative and operational cost reductions while still making needed applications available in a secure, reliable way.

• Application virtualization, such as that offered by Citrix, Microsoft and many others, can make it possible for applications to be made available to staff members in a reliable way and even make it easier to update these applications without having to visit each and every laptop or desktop computer.

• Processing virtualization, such as that offered by Citrix, IBM, HP, Microsoft, Oracle, Sun, Virtual Iron and many others can either allow many machines to work together to get tasks done more quickly to optimize staff member's time or consolidate tasks onto a smaller number of physical machines. This approach can result in hardware, software, operational and administrative cost reductions.

• Network virtualization can make it possible to reduce the costs of administrative and operating costs.

• Storage virtualization can do for storage what processing virtualization does for processing.

• Management and security software for virtualized environments may be the area having the biggest opportunity for cost reduction.
  

Citrix was mentioned not once or twice, but at least 3 times and shows how we've managed to grow exponentially our portfolio; Citrix is now more than ever the ONLY end-to-end virtualization company from Network (NetScaler, WanScaler), Server (XenServer, Provisioning Server), Application (XenApp) all the way to Desktop (XenDesktop).

To compliment the great work done by Dan pointing out the values of virtualization, I will list below some extra reading that can help you define the best strategy to save money while using virtualization technologies:

The Economic Impact of Provisioning Server Streaming Platform
This study describes the financial impact of moving from a traditional datacenter environment, where individual servers are dedicated to specific functions, to an environment where applications and content are streamed to an individual server that exists in a pool of shared servers dynamically using Provisioning Server.

Virtual Desktop ROI Calculator
Calculate your savings with a desktop delivery solution you can take to the bank!

Green IT: Reducing Your Carbon Footprint with Citrix
This white paper explains how Citrix solutions can help bring environmental and organizational objectives into alignment, by alleviating the energy impact of equipment needed to serve both the datacenter and the desktop.

For more, visit: Citrix.com/Solutions

Best,
Gus

PS. Sorry if some of the links require a sign up; I hate signing up for stuff, but these docs are totally worth it...

...And don't forget to check out Chris Fleck's posts about Cloud Economics:

Cloud Economics 101 - Part 1

Cloud Economics 101 - Part 2

XenServer 5 has just been released, and now we can talk about experiencing zero downtime with live migration. With XenMotion, virtual machines can be moved from server to server without service interruption for zero-downtime server maintenance or to seamlessly balance available compute power within a pool of physical servers.

Here's a cool demo of this new XenServer 5 Feature:

Get your weekends back by managing and maintaining your physical hardware during business hours...

For more on XenServer 5 check out XenServer5.com

You can also download a copy of XenServer 5 right here.

This tip shows you how to connect remotely to XenServer Configuration Console GUI from XenCenter and save a trip to the Datacenter.

UPDATE

Adding the command line to be typed for Copy & Paste purposes...

/usr/bin/xsconsole

best,
Gus

Citrix Delivery Center Live! is a series of premier worldwide virtual events that will provide a look at how Citrix is making the next generation of virtualization a reality.  Join us for these live online events where you will get an in-depth view of Citrix products and how you can transform your datacenter into a dynamic delivery center.

Transform your datacenter to a delivery center...with XenApp
Join us for the first event of the series for a look at the next generation of Presentation Server: XenApp.  Attend sessions throughout the day to learn about how application delivery is driving businesses forward and why Citrix XenApp is the only end-to-end solution in the market.

This virtual event will explore key topics:

• Deliver All Windows Applications To All Users
• Introduction to XenApp 5
• XenApp and Windows Server 2008
• Combat Top IT Challenges with XenApp
• Create the Best Desktop Virtualization Solution
• Virtualize XenApp Servers
• Deliver 100% Availability for XenApp Deployments with Citrix NetScaler.
  
  

Throughout the day, you can:

• Attend keynote sessions with live Q&A
• Chat live with Citrix product experts
• Participate in forums and network with other attendees
• View content online and download information
• Visit the expo hall to learn about key Citrix products and joint partner solutions
• Connect with Citrix Partners to learn about solutions to enhance your virtualization experience
  
  

Event Schedule:

Register for Citrix Delivery Center Live!
Transform your datacenter to a delivery center...with XenApp

Now that XenApp 5 has been released to web, you will be probably looking to migrate your current farm or just create a test one. Jo Harder did an amazing job of putting together an all-you-need-to-know document that will help you understand all the technical aspects and requirements for installing XenApp 5 as well as step-by-step procedures on how you can migrate to XenApp 5.

XenApp Migration Reference Table

XenApp 5 Operating System and Platform Support

Farm and Server Interoperability Scenarios

 
 
Download the full document here

Hello Mac Users

First I would like to thank all of you for downloading version 1.0 of our blogs widget. We currently have 1400+ downloads, and this goes to show that the Citrix community has indeed a large number of Mac users.

I also would like to thank those users who sent us their feedback, this version of the widget is here because of you, so keep sending your feedback and comments.

 Meet the Citrix Blogs Widget

 Version 1.0:

• The latest 30 Citrix Blog posts
• Adjust view from Full to Summary
• Collaborate with your comments
• Open posts on Safari or Firefox
• Spotlight Search (Instant search)
• Push updates (no refresh required)
• Watch blogged videos
• Check for updates
• Send feedback

 Version 1.2:

• Widget Resizing
• Bug Fixes

Requirements:

• Mac OS X 10.4 or greater

Download:

Citrix Blogs Widget

In the age where Agua or Aero-glass interfaces are somewhat as important as the underlining kernel, same rules have been applying to Scripts and utilities, after all not everyone wants to be using complex scripts and endless command-line combinations.

For those who are not so keen on Scripts and CLI, our French friend Pierre Marmignon created an app that doesn't solve a new problem, but tackles it more elegantly. Pierre has created an GUI app that (bulk) imports/exports all your published applications.

If you have an useful Citrix app or utility that you would like to share with the world by showcasing it here on the Citrix communities, feel free to send an email to: gus.pinto@citirx.com with the title Community App.