We have a lot of exciting plans for Geek Speak Live! in the coming year which I wanted to give you all a heads up on. For those of you who haven't heard of Geek Speak, it's a program of informal and unfiltered discussions on technical topics, usually led by a CTP or other industry thought leader. We kicked off at Synergy in Houston, followed up at Summit in Orlando, then held a virtual version in early December as part of the Turbocharge your Datacenter virtual event. As well, a local version of Geek Speak was held in Des Moines by Michael Keen.

Encouraged by the enthusiasm and support we've received since launching Geek Speak, we are amping up the program in 2009, with larger and more frequent Geek Speaks. The main event will still be at Synergy 09, but we will be also running many more local and virtual Geek Speaks both before and after Synergy. Over the next few weeks I'll be publishing a schedule of events.

One of the objectives of Geek Speak is to have the audience determine what topics should be covered in the Geek Speak sessions. As such, we will be looking to you to propose and vote on what topics should be covered in upcoming Geek Speaks. You can also propose yourself as a speaker if you feel confident enough to lead the discussion (and take the heat from the audience ). Those topics with the most votes will be included in the agenda.

To get the discussion going on topics for Geek Speak Live! in 09, I have started a thread in our forums. If you have no idea of what a Geek Speak sessions looks like, check out some recordings from earlier events here and here.

Are you interested in joining a Citrix User Group? Do you want to start a Citrix User Group up in your area? Are you already running a Citrix User Group and want to let people know about it?

We're planning to launch a tool soon on citrix.com that will allow you to find a user group, start a new user group or promote your own existing user group. It would contain forums for each group, newsletters and a place to announce upcoming events. I have already been talking to some User Group administrators who have been giving me ideas for what tools are needed, and I'm interested in any other ideas you would have. This would be a truly community effort, with Citrix just providing the tools to enable each group to recruit, promote and communicate. If a User Group already has their own web site, they could link of this one if they wish.

In the interim, I will create a page that will list details of any User Groups I am made aware of, so at least there is one central list. So,  if you run or a part of an existing Citrix User Group, let me know about it by posting a comment or emailing me directly at james.rabey@citrix.com. I'll get the directory published in the next few days, adding to it as I find out additional groups.

I'm starting to get a feeling of deja-vu every time I read or hear an argument about what is a better way to deliver desktops - desktop OS virtualization (aka "VDI") or server side app virtualization (aka "SBC").

I'm starting to get a feeling of deja-vu every time I read or hear an argument about what is a better way..... OK, lets CTRL-C the deja-vu loop and get to the point - I am reminded of all those technology arguments like PC vs MAC, IE vs Firefox, Windows vs Linux etc. etc.

I can't fault the proponents of either approach for their ....er... passion but I do wonder if this passion clouds objectivity somewhat. This occurs more in written arguments such as blogs and comments. When the discussion is  face-to-face such as a Geek Speak, it appears to be more pragmatic and objective, with an understanding that it really all depends on applicability. The consensus when Rick Dehlinger led a discussion at our Summit Geek Speak was that either approach will be successful or not depending on the use case.

For much of the last decade and a bit, there has really been only two options - fully installed desktops or what we used to refer (in Citrix, it's still widely used out there ) as "Server Based Computing", whether that was vanilla TS or winfr...metafra..presentatio...XenApp. With desktop virtualization technologies maturing to the point where they can be deployed beyond edge cases within an enterprise or Gov't environment, there is now a third alternative. Accepting that VDI related technologies have had less time to mature than SBC, the fact that Citrix and other vendors desktop virtualization products are being successfully implemented shows that they are mature enough to be used.

Whenever a new technology has reached a certain level of maturity, the proponents (sometimes called "Zealots") will declare it to be the solution for every use case. Others (sometimes called "Neanderthals") reject it out of hand. This is now happening with VDI. I'm not complaining as I think the debate is useful in identifying the benefits and drawbacks of either approach depending on the use case.

I'll try to distill the debate down to a few words, remembering that these are not necessarily my own opinions:

• VDI technologies are still immature - especially remoting protocols and management tools.
• SBC leaves a lot of apps on the table - those that are either completely incompatable or do not run well
• Either approach does not completely suit mobile workers - due to the need for "offline" operation
• Provisioning is cool - this seems to be the consensus and one with which I totally agree. I'm a great fan of Citrix Provisioning Server both for datacenters and desktops and think its a real game changer - and no, I am not in that product group .
• Neither approach has completely cracked personalization or profile management
• For knowledge/office workers, the ability to install personal apps is important but not yet available.

Forgive the simplicity in this list, and I'm sure I've missed some important points which will no doubt be pointed out in the comments. And, to be honest, that is what I am hoping for. I'd like to see some true, experienced based, dialogue on which use cases have been solved by VDI or SBC, or both or neither. As such, I am hosting a live discussion during Geek Speak Virtual which we are holding as part of the "Turbocharge your Datacenter" virtual event this Thursday December 4. I've uploaded a video of the Summit Geek Speak session that Rick did, and you can chat live with others, including some of our CTPs.

To take part, register at http://www.citrix.com/cdclive and then navigate to the "Exhibition Hall" where you will find the "Geek Speak Lounge".

You may have heard that we just had another successful Geek Speak Live! at Summit. Rick Dehlinger once again got things started with a debate on VDI vs TS, Charles Aunger had everyone rolling in the isles with his informative and entertaining Green IT talk, and Doug Brown went head to head with our CTO Simon Crosby on the whole Cloud thing.

One of the things I have been struggling with is how do we take this concept to a wider audience? I've had numerous suggestions from both folks in Citrix and our community on running local Geek Speaks. Michael Keen ran a very successful event in Des Moines after the first Geek Speak Live and is putting together another one in December. Now I know that being in Des Moines in December is  something all of you would want anyway , but it's not feasible for most of us.

So the good news is that everyone can take part in the next Geek Speak Live, as we are going virtual. We are running a "Geek Speak Virtual" as part of our upcoming Turbocharge your Datacenter - Citrix Delivery Center Live virtual event on December 4. There will be a mix of pre-recorded and live discussions via webcasts, chat sessions and forums.

While as usual we will be headlining a number of speakers on topics that follow some items on the "official" agenda to keep them real, the use of a virtual platform will remove the real-time limitations and allow us to cover a whole bunch of additional topics over  a 24 hour period. So, if you want to take a more active part in this Geek Speak, register and let me know what you want to discuss - better still if you are willing to lead the discussion yourself.

To take part in this first ever on-line Geek Speak Live, you just need to register at www.citrix.com/cdclive/.

Cloud Computing - a new paradigm or just a pile of vapor? This is the topic for our first ever "CTO v CTP Debate" being held during Summit Geek Speak next Monday 27 which starts at 5:30pm

In the CTO corner we have our own Simon Crosby, who will be arguing the pro-side of Cloud. Facing off in the CTP corner is Doug Brown of DABCC.COM. Both Simon and Doug have voiced their opinions on cloud - read an interview of Simon here and Doug's blog here.

Whether you are interested or skeptical about the whole Cloud thing, this is a topic that is getting some airtime. For those of you unable to be at Summit I will film the debate and post it so that we can keep the discussion going online.

I got some great suggestions in response to my previous blog about the Summit Geek Speak event. For those of you attending, here is a chance to cast your vote for what you would like to see discussed. For those unable to attend, don't worry as I will be announcing some new Geek Speak events soon.

With all these additional topics, I plan to keep Geek Speak running past the 7pm ""official" end time for as long as the discussion, as well as the food and drink, keeps flowing.

If you want more detail on each of these topics, check out the comments on [my previous Summit Geek Speak blog].

Do you want this topic added to Geek Speak?	Choose
Real life experiences of Provisioning Server, Xen Server or Xen Desktop
The profile challenge - managing unmanageable data
Windows x64 - it's here yet far away
Pros and Cons of Homogenous or Heterogeneous Server Virtualization Strategy

Those of you who attended Synergy this year may have taken part in our first ever Geek Speak Live, where we ran an "unconference" in parallel with the main event. Folks like Shawn Bass, Doug Brown and Rick Dehlinger got up and spoke about the technical topics on their minds and yours. We also had some open mike sessions as well as Q&A.

Well, the good news is that we will be repeating Geek Speak at our upcoming Citrix Summit that is being held in Orlando on October 26 - 29. A number of the Synergy Geek Speakers have kindly agreed to speak again, and we have agreed on the following topics:

• VDI vs TS: Rick Dehlinger
• Pros and Cons of Virtualizing XenApp : Doug Brown
• The reality of implementing "Green IT": Charles Aunger
• Best Practice implementations for Tele-commuters, Home Workers and other "Virtual Workers" - Steve Greenberg

In the true spirit of Geek Speak, I and the speakers would like to hear from you on what you think of these topics, and are there other topics you would want to hear in an unfiltered way? Even if we cannot fit them into the Summit schedule, or you can't attend Summit because you aren't a Citrix Partner, they could be added to some upcoming live and virtual Geek Speaks that I am planning. But I'll keep you in suspense by leaving more on those in an upcoming blog .

So please let me know what you think of the topics we could discuss by posting a reply to this blog.

I've been encouraged lately by a noticeable rise in interest in Green IT. For some time I have been talking and blogging about the need to reduce the somewhat significant ecological footprint of IT operations, and I can tell you that even little over a year ago the reaction was mostly one of indifference. At some presentations, I could almost hear the whispers of "go back to Berkeley hippy", even though I have never been there and my hair is quite short .Fellow Green advocates  reported similar results, so it wasn't just my presenting skills. Lately though, the questions I get at presentations show not only more interest, but more engagement and a wider understanding of the issue. Mostly this engagement comes from people in Government IT roles, where there are departmental Green directives with real targets  on  a wide range of operational activities, including  IT.

Increasingly it is also businesses that are starting to understand that there can be financial benefits to reducing the amount of electricity being used to power IT, a fairly major factor in ITs environmental impact (the other main factors are hardware making its way into landfills and the hazardous materials used in manufacturing hardware). With average commercial electricity prices rising 12% since 2005 (a figure I worked out from checking out the US Dept of Energy site), coupled with the fact that  we have been throwing more and more servers (each increasingly power hungry due to their increased performance) into our data centers, the cost of powering these data centers must surely becoming more noticeable.

However, when I mention rising power costs to an audience, I like to ask for a show of hands on how many of them, being IT professionals, actually see their power bill let alone are held accountable. Usually the response is about 10% who do. This may go partly to explain the still low adoption of Green IT plans in businesses as the pain points are not being felt by CIOs, and maybe even the CFO/CBCs ("Chief Bean Counters") who get the corporate power bill have not yet put 2 and 2 together.

So, this leads me to my the question I'd like to throw out there - with most of the economic outlooks forecasting a downturn over the next year or so, will the resultant close look at costs be an opportunity to promote Green IT strategies that are goaled on measured on reducing operating and capital costs?

If you are looking for an opportunity to get approval for a Green IT project at work, this may be your chance. Even if you aren't that motivated by the need to reduce ITs carbon footprint, wouldn't you rather have your companies reduce costs by using virtualization to reduce the power bill and hardware costs than having to do something else such as layoffs?

Either way, your Green IT proposal needs to be sold to the CFO as well as the CIO. As such, your plan will need to include real and measurable financial targets  on the amount of electricity cost savings as well as the usual ROI.

I'm planning on creating a calculator that can demonstrate the ROI of Green server consolidation and thin client projects. If you have any ideas or know of similar calculators, please let me know.

Also, if you are in a Government department and want to raise awareness of Green IT with your CIO, we are holding a Virtual Roundtable on Green It in Government on August 12.   A panel of experts from Federal, State and Local Government agencies, as well as Simon Crosby from Citrix will be there to discuss ROI models, existing mandates and what the future may hold. This will be a low time investment opportunity for your CIO to learn more about Green IT. If you are a CIO yourself, I'm glad to see you are choosing to use some of your valuable time to read my blog and please register for the Roundtable  .

You can register for the Virtual CIO Roundtable here.  

In my previous blog entry, I described the Green benefits of telecommuting and my plan to "road test" telecommuting technologies and experience. For my first test, I have chosen voice communications.

My reasons for choosing this over something more obvious such as remote application access, is that most telecommuting scenarios that I have seen or experienced were based on the telecommuter being able to use a mobile phone for making and receiving calls business calls. This is not always the case, and not in my current temporary scenario where I am overseas from my Silicon Valley office. And if my mobile phone did work here, it would be extremely expensive to use for the number and length of calls I normally make. Generally, I also find this reliance on mobile phone a hassle due to the cost when compared to business or even home landlines, and the knowledge that people who want to call me need to know a. that I am not currently in the office and, b. what my cell phone number is.

Here's something else, I strongly believe that talking is still the most efficient and effective form of communication between two people and sometimes more. I have seen way too much misunderstanding, delays, unnecessary stress or conflict through even best written email, as the written word often lacks the nuances you get in verbal communications. While talking on the phone is still less effective than true face to face talking, it still is a big advancement on email or even IM. I'm sorry, but emoticons just don't match body language ?.

So, as I start this particular evaluation, I have three criteria that I want to test:

1. As many of us work in a highly mobile manner, with the "office" now including when working from home, business travel and other mobile scenarios, how do we maintain a consistent way to be contacted by voice as well as email?

2. We all have a single work email address that is constant wherever we are, but what about our phone number? Why is it that we have to guess whether the best phone number to use is the desk or cell phone?

3. How often do you have to be the manual link between two electronic systems when you have to enter a phone number from an email or customer record into a phone keypad? How often do you type the wrong number because of this? I know I have.

4. How expensive is it to use mobile, home or hotel phones to maintain a consistent amount of voice communication? I believe that the frequency of calls to staff, management, colleagues and customers should not diminish just because you are not in the office.

Now the last 2 of these criteria I can test by using one of Citrix's own products, EasyCall. By installing EasyCall, I can make calls from my PC either by entering the number, or using the click to call feature to dial directly from, say, an email footer. Rather than being a VoIP solution, EasyCall connects a call by first calling my own phone (could be my home line or mobile) before establishing the connection to the number I have dialed. It also has a pretty cool corporate directory function, allowing me to search for colleagues by their name in a similar manner to the deskphone I have in the office.

Now before you think I am just using this blog just to promote EasyCall, there are still the other 2 telecommuting phone criteria that it seems I cannot use EasyCall to evaluate. This means that I still have not re-routed inbound calls so that people calling me, especially from outside Citrix, need not to know that I am in the office or out. In previous telecommuting scenarios I have had to set up, I achieved this by using softphone products such as Avaya IP Agent. In my personal life, I am a heavy user of Skype, so will also be looking at it and other VoIP solutions for inbound calls as well as possibly outbound. The only issue I can foresee with this is that my current connection to the internet has nowhere near the performance I have become used to in California, which may mean the call quality is not to flash. I'll keep you posted on what I try for inbound calls and how it works (or not).

Now back to EasyCall. To use it, I need to install an agent as well as have a EasyCall Gateway installed between the LAN and PBX. Fortunately, the good folks at Citrix IT Services have installed the gateway, allowing me to worry only about the agent. Installing the EasyCall agent is pretty straight forward, the only things I really need to know is where to find the installation files and the host name of my EasyCall Gateway. To see what the installation process was like, check it out at http://www.utipu.com/app/tip/id/2955.

As with all my blogs on Telecommuting, I am eager to hear from you your own views on this topic, or any criteria or scenarios you think I have missed for my evaluations. Just post a comment to this entry.

Most of what is written on Green IT concentrates on how the IT Department can reduce the carbon footprint of its operations, primarily through reducing Data Center power consumption. While this is important as IT operations makes up 2-3% of global power consumption, our efforts to reduce our environmental impact should not end with the data-center. As well as including the end-point into Green IT planning (something I covered in a previous entry), IT can have a role in enabling Green business practices such as the paper-less office, Remote Collaboration (thus reducing the need for business travel) and Telecommuting.

Its this last practice, Telecommuting, which I want to discuss in more detail. For one thing, its something that we can do as individuals (work and management permitting, of course) as well as on a cross-company, cross-industry and even national basis. It fits in with the "think globally, act locally" mantra, with the emphasis on "local".

The Telecommuting trend has for some time been more tied to employee satisfaction, work-life balance and increasingly recruitment strategies (such as "homesourcing"). However, the rapid increase in the price of oil has made the cost of commuting to work a much larger percentage of household budgets, and therefore more noticeable to the average Joe or Jane. While many of us may wish that people would find other motivations to reduce their carbon footprint other than the hip-pocket nerve, rising costs will probably have the most realistic chance of effecting widespread change.

Increasing the number of employees that telecommute rather than drive to the office can cause a significant reduction in the fuel consumption, and therefore carbon emissions, of those individual employees. While this may seem obvious, you can read a detailed study conducted by the University of California....back in 1988! As well, more recent EPA studies have shown that even a 10% reduction of cars during peak hours can reduce the fuel consumption of those vehicles still traveling to the office, as the improved traffic flow results in less time burning fuel in gridlock. To get an idea of how this works, think about how much better your own commute is during school vacation periods.

While this shows there there would be significant benefits to the environment if a greater proportion of the workforce spent at least some time of the working week telecommuting, how practical is this generally, and in specific job roles? If your job does not involve "face time" with customers, telecommuting is probably a more practical option for you than those involved in regular customer interaction. That being said,  there are a number of organizations allowing call-center agents to work from home, such as Cox Communications.

While I have regularly telecommuted over the last decade or so, as well as introduced telecommuting programs for employees doing Tech Support and Customer Care, I have decided to use a period where I need to work remotely to try to measure (at least to qualify if not to quantify) the effectiveness of the technologies used to enable telecommuting. Over the next few weeks, I will blog on my experience based on the following criteria:

• Voice: How can I remain in verbal contact with staff, colleagues and customers? How do they get in contact with me without having to know whether I am in the office or not?
• Applications: How does my app performance vary when not in the office? What impact does occasional offline access make to this?
• Security: What would happen if my laptop or home PC was stolen or otherwise compromised? How do I set up my physical facilities to minimize security risks?
• Collaboration: How important are those "water-cooler" discussions and other face-to-face formal and informal interactions? If they are important, how do you replicate this when remote?

I have experienced challenges with each of these criterion in my own experiences as well as those relayed to me be customers.
While most of the technologies I will be using come from Citrix (partly because we like to eat our own dog food but mainly because we have been a long-time enabler remote work practices such as telecommuting), I will be also looking at other products and technologies to fill any gaps or compare.

I mentioned earlier that I want to use this as an opportunity to discuss telecommuting. As such, I would really appreciate your comments and suggestions on what I should be testing (technologies, criteria and scenarios), what your own experiences have been, and whether you think an increased proportion of your work time as telecommuting would have a benefit to you, your employer, customers/partners and the environment. Please contribute to this discussion by posting comments to this entry. In a later entry I will add a forum address if there is sufficient interest in this topic.

I was fortunate enough to recently meet Christian Knermann from the Fraunhofer Umsicht Institute in Germany. Christian and some of his colleagues conducted a study on the positive environmental impact of replacing PCs with thin clients, using XenApp to deliver their desktops and applications. Having very precise  calculations combined with a detailed explanation of how these calculations were made is significant.

I've been promoting the concept of Green IT within and outside of Citrix for some time now,  motivated by the desire to do something for this world we live in at work as well as in my personal life. While I haven't converted to solar power yet, I have replaced all my commuting and most of my personal traveling from car to bike. I know this isn't something everyone can do (and I can't lug my family of 5 behind me on a bike), I believe we all can do something to reduce the environmental impact of IT operations.

I won't get into the argument of the causes or even the existence of global warming, but it is obvious to anyone that the more electricity we use to power Data Centers and end-points, the more pollution is released into the air. As well, the frequency in which we replace our hardware (and I have been a culprit here) in turn increases the amount of landfill, including some hazardous materials, into the environment.

In my efforts to raise Green IT awareness, I have seen a lot of calculations of the benefits of one technology over another. Sometimes its difficult to verify or even understand the math involved - which has been noticed and noted by others. Particularly when these calculations are on the power consumed or saved, and the costs involved. In many of the cases, I can see the logic behind them and therefore give the results some credence, but I would not have the same level of confidence if I had to relay these figures to an audience, especially one comprised of geeks who tend to, like me, question figures that are stated.

And that is where the Fraunhofer study becomes useful. Their study takes into consideration criteria such as the entire life-cycle of hardware from manufacturing to disposal, the different profiles of user from light to power users and even the effect of powering off at night. Impact was measured not only in power consumption, but also emissions, hazardous waste and even water consumed. The report is very detailed and includes a lot of graphs and tables to support their findings.

I recommend that anyone interested in implementing Green IT take a look at the report which can be found here. While the primary focus of the report is on replacing PCs with Thin Clients, it also covers in summary additional approaches such using 64 bit processors as well as virtualization.

If you speak german, you can also see and hear Christian talk about his work at the Synergy Underground site(http://community.citrix.com/underground/). The badly mangled german questions are from me .

I have been blown away by the great response we got to our first ever Geek Speak Live event at Synergy. From the speakers who were willing to get up in front of a 500+ crowd and be controversial and confronting, to those in the 500+ crowd who asked thoughtful and sometimes confronting questions, and to those who came up to me during breakfast with support and encouragement and ideas. Rather than spend too much time reviewing what was said during the event (which you can view here on Synergy Underground - look for the "Geek Speak" section), I'd like to hear feedback from both those who attended as well as anyone who has seen the videos on what we would like to do next.

Untill we can host another Geek Speak at the next Citrix event,  we could run a regular series of webinars where once again the topic could be anything technical. Speakers could come from Citrix, our CTPs, other IT bloggers/commentators or any of you out there in the community. Another (additional) option is that both the sessions and questions/comments could be via pre-recorded video, allowing anyone in any time-zone to participate. We will also be using our new ADI Forums to keep the discussions going for how ever long people are interested in them (or they stay technically relevant ).

As we work out the next steps, I'd appreciate any comments and suggestions you may have by commenting to this blog or, even better, posting them to the forum at http://forums.citrix.com/thread.jspa?threadID=150000&tstart=0.

Well, we getting really close to the start of Synergy, and for me in particular, our first ever Geek Speak Live! Everything is coming together, though there are a bunch of us desperately organizing the last minute details.  

We have a great lineup of "headline" speakers from across the industry, who will be speaking on our center stage from 5:30pm - 6:30pm Tuesday through Thursday. In no particular order they are:

The Barcamp schedule is now completely full of a wide range of interesting topics that are being run mostly by members of the Citrix Community as well as a few Citrites. You can see the full schedule in Barry Flanagan's latest blog post.

Speaking of community generated content, we are also running a competition for the best 5 minute or less videos  made at Synergy. You can learn more about it in Vishal's latest blog.I'd encourage anyone planning to take part to include filming at Geek Speak Live! Most of the real fun stuff will be there, and you may even get me to put on an act or 2 to get the extra publicity .

You can also see some videos and other media being shown using some of the latest App Delivery Infrastructure technologies. Get a sneak preview in Adam's blog.

Anyway, I'm signing off now to get ready for the flight over to Houston. I hope to see you all next week.

There has been a lot of work going on over the last few weeks to pull together the different activities that will make up our first ever Geek Speak Live! un-conference at Synergy. Seeing as it has been weeks since my last post, I thought it was a good time to give you all a sneak preview of what you'll see when you get there....

Center stage, we'll be headlining with quite a "brains trust" of around 12 speakers from across our industry, such as Doug Brown, Rick Dehlinger, Intel's Jun Nakajima and Russ Daniels from HP. Each of these speakers will be given 10 minutes to talk about the topic of their choice and then another 10 minutes to answer questions from the crowd. If the conversation seems to have legs, I'll direct anyone still interested in continuing it to move over to one of three corners to do so; conversely, if I see a few tumbleweeds blowing across the stage, I'll wind up that session and move us onto the next speaker.

In the fourth corner you will find our lounge which, apart from having food and beverages, will also be packed full of gadgets, which you can get a run down from reading Adam Marano's blog on the lounge. Now I don't want to steal any thunder from Adam, but you can also expect to see a setup that any true geek will want to have in their living room. Expect to read more about this soon.

On Wednesday the 21st, we'll be running late into the evening with our series of barcamps. We've had a fantastic response to Barry Flanagan's call for presenters and he will shortly be posting an updated list of sessions.

While we have done a lot of work to make this a cool event, it won't be truly cool unless you join us there in Houston. So if you haven't done so already, register for Synergy which will get you an overload of geeks speaking tech on top of the great technical content you will receive at the iForum and ADI tracks.

You may have heard by now that iForum is now called Synergy, and will be held May 20 - 23 in Houston. I'm working on a new track called "Geek Speak", which will be the most truly techie part of the whole event.

But before I go any more into what we are planning, I just wanted to emphasize that Synergy is replacing the usual iForum event - meaning there will be no iForum in October. So, if you head down to Orlando in October expecting the usual iForum activity, all you might be seeing there is Goofy (and maybe feeling a little goofy yourself).

Our objective for Geek Speak is for it to be an informal event in which you can meet with like minded people to discuss (and even argue) about the technical aspects of App Delivery. We'll have a number of recognized SMEs from outside as well as inside Citrix leading some of the discussions, but there will also be the opportunity for attendees to suggest and even lead additional discussion topics which will voted on before and during the event.

We are going to be a bit more relaxed than previously about the topics that can be discussed at this event. You can expect to see quite a few of our CTPs there talking about the topics dearest to them, as well as a few of our Citrite technical superstars. There will be no powerpoint allowed, with each topic being started by a short discussion followed by open Q&A. If a particular discussion goes over time, everybody still interested in keeping it going will move over to a corner of the room to continue while we allow for the next speaker to start.

I've decided that the theme for this years inaugural Geek Speak  will be "tips, techniques, tools and toys". While the discussions can fall outside of this theme, we will have an area set aside to show off tools and gadgets that the community thinks are cool.

I'll keep you posted with how it all develops, and also keep an eye out for blogs from Gus Pinto & Barry Flanagan who are working with me on this event.  Let me know if you have any ideas for topics or the event in general by posting a comment.

I'm currently working on a new Web site project that aims to shed some light on Application Delivery Infrastructure (ADI) and provides best practices for using ADI technologies to deliver applications and desktops. In short, the site will have sections on:

• Introduction to ADI:  Content explaining the technologies, products, and approaches used to deliver applications to users.
• ADI Best Practices:  Content generated by Citrix and the ADI community about the best way to deliver applications for specific scenarios and use cases.
• Citrix Product Architecture:  Content describing how the products that make up the CitrixDeliveryCenter work from an architectural perspective.

First of all, let me explain that ADI is the category of technologies that most of you reading this blog will already be familiar with. They include Server Virtualization, Application Virtualization, WAN Optimization, End User Experience Monitoring, Application Acceleration, and Application Traffic Control. These technologies have one thing in common:  they can be used to deliver applications, both Windows and Web, and desktops to users in a multitude of access scenarios. The Web site I am working on will contain content that explains these different technologies that make up an ADI, as well as descriptions of Citrix product architectures that are part of the ADI.

Over the years, these technologies and their applications (I'm talking about how they are applied, not software apps J) have developed largely in isolation from each other. Vendors of these technologies, and their communities, have been applying them individually as solutions to virtually every type of use case scenario. In most cases, they have been very successful in addressing the scenarios encountered; however, they don't meet all of the requirements for all of the scenarios. Some scenarios in which all of the requirements are not met would be considered "edge cases," but others are pretty common.

Once organizations realize that the technologies can be combined into one infrastructure category, they can then apply the technologies in combinations that can address the requirements of every scenario. The challenge then becomes what technologies to use for what scenarios. I have read some good commentary on this subject (an article from Brian Madden, for example) that has roused some passionate discussions. Another function of this new site will be to provide a place for the community to discuss what technologies can or should be applied in what circumstances. To help this discussion along, the site will contain a number of best practices for using ADI as solutions to deliver applications in specific scenarios---scenarios that include the type of application, location of users, business need (such as business continuity), and other factors. The community will be welcome to add their own best practices based on their experiences.

I'll keep you posted on our progress with this effort. In the meantime, if you have any suggestions for additional features and information that you would like to see on this site, please let me know by posting your comments on this blog entry.