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.

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 ..  )

Since the dawn of time (in Personal Computer time at least) there has been a clear separation, or should that be chasm?, between PC users and Apple users.  The differences are not only philosophical there are practical differences.

Each of the O/S's has it its own quirks and usability paradigms.  The classic example has always been the mouse.  Apple users have always been happy with a single button, while PC users have always wanted more buttons...

The iPhone has introduced yet another paradigm, with its all touch screen design.

The Citrix Receiver for iPhone is being created to allow access to windows applications, through an Apple device which uses this new user experience.  As the designers and builders of this software we need to "Bridge the gap" between all three interaction methods.

I have to say this has led to some "vigorous" debates on the various suggestions to build this bridge.  Currently we have a few gestures and we think we can do almost everything a windows user would want to do.

However, I see scope for improvement.  I would like to hear you ideas on how a Windows user would like to interact, how a Mac user would like to interact and even how a Linux user would like to interact.

Now I don't want to start an OS war.

What I am looking for are real suggestions and ideas.

To kick things off:-

Question 1
Does the Citrix Receiver for iPhone need to have "extra" keyboard keys?  For example would Alt, Ctrl, Tab, Delete etc be useful?

Question 2
If these keys are useful, what keys are needed?

I look forward to your responses.

Colin Warren
Lead Strategic Services Analyst
Advanced Products, Sydney

One of the exciting parts of being able to work on this project is the fresh and innovative approach we are taking to get the software in your hands as soon as we can so we can shape future releases.  It's fair to say that the Braeburn team is working schedules like never before and using a much more agile approach to the project's release.
We are aiming to be very transparent (through the use of this site) so that you know what's going on with current and future releases of the project.

The way we are approaching the initial release is that we will be getting our version one on to the AppStore as soon as we can so we can get feedback from all of you... our plan is that it will have the core technology which will allow you to manage and make connections to the Citrix Delivery Center and as I mentioned, we are working on a very aggressive schedule and we will be having many regular updates to the project available on the AppStore as we add additional feature after feature.

But it's not all about features that you have grown to expect from other the other App Receivers available to connect to Citrix infrastructure, we also have a few tricks up our sleeve that we think you'll love on your iPhone... let's just say we are thinking differently about ways to access and interact with your information whilst going mobile with the iPhone.

Each release will also incorporate suggestions from you guys as well (and of course the odd bug fix as well!), so please - make sure you contribute to the forums on this site (they will be up and running really soon).

Adam