Blog posts tagged with 'xenapp'
Companies are under intense pressure to reduce costs, streamline processes and quickly add new capabilities. But outsourcing brings unique challenges, including control and security issues. On October 21, join Forrester Research Vice President and Principal Analyst Stephanie Moore for a discussion of the current outsourcing landscape and best practices for building, implementing and maintaining an effective sourcing strategy. You'll also hear from a Senior System Engineer at Dell Inc. who worked on a Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) and how they handled the many challenges associated with this model.
Webinar Information & Highlights:
Title: Secrets of Successful Outsourcing and Offshoring
Date: Tuesday, October 21, 2008
Time: 11:00am PACIFIC / 2:00pm EASTERN
Duration: 1 hour
At this free webinar, you'll receive invaluable tips and insight on lowering risks and increasing rewards of outsourcing. Learn about the:
- Fundamentals of Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) vs. Information Technology Outsourcing (ITO)
- Five Keys to Successful Outsourcing: Proven techniques for optimizing your outsourcing results and your relationship with outsourcing services providers
- Lessons from the Field: A detailed case study on the ups and downs of outsourcing
The first 25 attendees will receive a complimentary copy of The Black Book of Outsourcing: How to Manage the Changes, Challenges, and Opportunities
If you want to hear directly from leading experts in Healthcare IT and learn more about their experiences and expertise around successful implementations of EMR solutions, then I encourage you to view on demand this 60-minute webcast.
Speaking Panel:
Mike Davis, Executive Vice President for HIMSS Analytics
Cleveland Stewart, Systems Network Engineer, The Children's Hospital of Denver
Cris Lau, Senior Product Manager for Citrix Systems
Learn about:
- EMR implementation lessons learned from hospitals that have achieved Stage 6 in HIMSS Analytics EMR Adoption ModelSM
- Strategies for improving physician and staff EMR adoption
- Overcoming common obstacles around EMR adoption - such as cost, security, and deployment time
CPHIMS Credit:
Additionally, this program has been approved by HIMSS for up to 1.2 contact hours of continuing education credit towards renewal of the CPHIMS credential.
How can you submit your topic of choice for a Citrix technical webcast? It's very simple. Just reply to this blog post. We are requesting input from you to understand what XenApp (the new name for Presentation Server) technical topics you want Citrix to discuss with you via our TechTalk webcast series.
While you think about some topics, let me point you to some of our most popular technical webcasts for Presentation Server. These might spark some ideas. I encourage you to watch these, but you also have the option to skip to the end of this post and submit your favorite topics.
Best Practices for Upgrading/Migrating to Citrix Presentation Server 4.5
Thinking about upgrading to Citrix Presentation Server 4.5? Learn directly from our expert the necessary steps for a successful implementation.
Tuning Citrix Presentation Server to Get More Users per Server
Do you want to get more users on your Citrix Presentation Server? Are you ready to learn how 64-bit architecture can remove performance bottlenecks from application delivery? Then learn from Citrix and Microsoft engineers on how to leverage 64-bit technology to increase the number of users per server.
Using Citrix Apps Offline: Understanding Application Streaming in Citrix Presentation Server 4.5
Hear directly from the architect how Application Streaming provides you with the flexibility to stream applications to remote users who need local CPU resources, require local peripherals or need to work offline.
Discover What's New in Citrix Presentation Server 4.5 Feature Pack 1
Get an in depth technical overview of the latest features of Citrix Presentation Server 4.5 including SmartAuditor & EasyCall technologies.
Designing Citrix Presentation Server Farms for Maximum Scalability
Find out from our experts the critical design considerations needed for any Citrix Presentation Server environment. Learn how to design your server farm zones for high scalability. Also, find out about data store sizing, architecture & operation and how to plan for future deployments based on farm growth.
Using the Citrix Presentation Server 4 Universal Printer Driver
Go 'under the hood' with Gary Barton as he discusses new printing architecture that addresses real-world printing dilemmas.
Graphics Acceleration & ICA Client Enhancements
Learn how Citrix Presentation Server 4.5 can help increase the performance and usability of graphics-intensive applications. Also, learn about some of the ICA client enhancements in this release.
Health Assistant Automated Server Recovery and Configuration Logging
Hear directly from the engineers about the new server health checks and recovery actions in Presentation Server, how to increase application availability with Independent Management Architecture (IMA) Thread Pooling, and how to resolve the on ramp black hole situation with Load Throttling. Also, learn about the Configuration Logging design and security features and how to filter and generate reports.
Web Interface & Active Directory Federated Services (ADFS)
Find out from our experts about the Web Interface support for advanced application delivery, the architecture behind web-based application delivery, the architecture and benefits of ADFS integration in Citrix Web Interface, and how to configure ADFS integration in Citrix Web Interface.
What XenApp technical topics do you want to hear about?
In my previous SmartAuditor blog post, I described how SmartAuditor works and its benefits for improving security and regulatory compliance. Well, guess what? Recently, a major healthcare company (obviously highly regulated by HIPAA) with tens of thousands of employees shared with me their thoughts, experiences, and main use cases regarding our SmartAuditor technology. In addition to providing care and services, this healthcare company partners with numerous nursing homes, hospitals and other healthcare organizations in the United States. The interesting part is that the more I talk to customers about SmartAuditor for recording ICA sessions, the more interesting the use cases get. So here's their success story.
Background
This customer offshore most of their development to India, had employees and non-employees accessing production systems remotely on a daily basis and wanted to monitor what they were doing, and needed to deliver custom applications in a faster way. They started using the SmartAuditor technology since it was released as a beta a little over two years ago.
The Challenges
The main challenges for this customer were:
- How to track and monitor IT change control?
- How to ensure employees comply with company policies?
- How to allow offshore developers to see user interaction with custom applications in QA and test environments?
Use Case #1: IT change control management
The customer had a lot of employees and non-employees logging in remotely to production systems on a daily basis and wanted to monitor them and ensure they were compliant (especially tracking the activity of users offshore). In order to improve security and compliance, they set up a secure portal using Citrix Access Gateway and turned on the SmartAuditor capabilities of Citrix XenApp. So by using SmartAuditor, any time a developer, employee or non-employee access the production system, all the ICA sessions are being recorded, making sure that they are keeping up with company policies.
Use Case #2: Rapid application delivery
Like most businesses, this customer has some fragile and complex applications and users that just don't get it. So instead of releasing an application into production and having users call the help desk trying to diagnose problems, this customer put SmartAuditor ahead of the process. The customer turned SmartAuditor on before the application was fully delivered into production. They took the application and released it only to their test users and generated a list with issues. Then, with the rapid playback and bookmarking capabilities of SmartAuditor, the developers very quickly diagnosed what was wrong with the application and made the changes. The main benefits the customer got out of this were that they were able to deliver the application to market quicker and that the application was clean. By doing this, they have minimized the number of help desk calls and problem resolution for this application.
The Benefits
The main benefits for this customer were:
- Enhanced auditing for improving compliance
- Encouraged employees to comply with company policies. The customer is watching and recording. People log in, get out, and stick to the script.
- Improved the quality of the application development process by visually seeing problems and accelerating time-to-resolution
- The rapid playback and bookmarking capabilities saved time. Experts were able to find the issues and solved them right away.
The Results
- Low storage requirements
- With SmartAuditor, compression over a period of time was very good. The customer has been using SmartAuditor for over 2 years. In that period of time, they recorded 8,222 sessions which only required 43GB of storage space. On average, that's a 5.2MB file size per recorded session. Wow!
- Excellent performance when recording and reviewing sessions
- Faster application delivery and better user acceptance
How are you using SmartAuditor? What has been your experience with this feature of XenApp?
At Citrix, we know that improving security and compliance are two of the main challenges for businesses today, especially in highly regulated industries. Well, recently we released a technology in Citrix XenApp (the new name for Citrix Presentation Server) Platinum Edition that helps businesses monitor, record and play back ICA sessions as part of their ongoing risk management and regulatory compliance measures. The technology is called SmartAuditor (check out the demo to see how it works).
If you have a TiVo or a digital video recorder at home and love it (like I do), then you'll love SmartAuditor because its functionality is very similar in concept. The same way TiVo allows you to record all the shows that you want to watch, whenever you want, and play back those shows, SmartAuditor allows you to record and play back XenApp ICA sessions.
The great value of this technology is that it enables IT to monitor and examine user activity of applications demonstrating internal control, and ensuring regulatory compliance and successful security audits. Its monitoring capabilities can aid in monitoring user activity involving sensitive data, such as in financial operations and healthcare patient information systems. Additionally, there are many other use cases where SmartAuditor can help, such as in litigation support, training and in technical support to help speed up problem identification and time-to-resolution.
How does it work?
SmartAuditor uses flexible policies to automatically trigger recordings of XenApp sessions and it works in 3 easy steps: Configure, Capture and Audit.
First, the administrator configures the tool and selects which users, applications and servers they want to monitor. Then, they capture the user activity by recording it to a video file that is digitally signed and stored in a central location. Finally, they can review the user activity by playing back the recorded ICA session in the SmartAuditor player.
Use Case Example
So now that you understand how SmartAuditor extends IT's ability to monitor and examine user activity of applications, let me give you an example. Let's say that the IT manager at a high-tech company, needs to monitor every employee planning to leave the company. Well, he can use SmartAuditor to record sessions for all employees who gave their two-week notice to leave the company. This type of user could potentially present a risk of data or intellectual property theft, but with SmartAuditor the IT manager can monitor all user sessions to capture suspicious activity. These recordings could be used as visual evidence if needed to prove criminal intent, but furthermore, with SmartAuditor he can notify the users that they are being recorded which, in itself, can help prevent theft or malicious activity in the first place.
If you are not using SmartAuditor or never heard about it before reading this blog, click here to watch the demo and learn more.
If you are already using SmartAuditor, please let me know your thoughts. Also, I encourage you to share your use cases and post any comments and/or suggestions you may have.
What other aspect of SmartAuditor would you like to see covered in this blog?
One of the most common questions I get from people who work with a UNIX environment is if Citrix can virtualize applications running on a UNIX platform. The answer is: "ABSOLUTELY!".
Citrix XenApp (the new name for Citrix Presentation Server) can virtualize applications running on UNIX platforms, including Sun Microsystems Solaris 8, 9, and 10, Hewlett-Packard's HP-UX 11 and 11i, and IBM AIX 5.1, 5.2, and 5.3. Additionally, Citrix supports over 30 operating systems with the ICA client including Windows, Macintosh, and Linux.
The Solaris edition of Citrix XenApp for UNIX requires:
- Solaris 8, SPARC version or
- Solaris 9, SPARC version or
- Solaris 10, x86/x64 or SPARC versions
Be aware that the Solaris x86/x64 edition of Citrix XenApp for UNIX is available only on Solaris 10.
The HP-UX edition of Citrix XenApp for UNIX requires:
- HP-UX 11 or
- HP-UX 11i
The AIX edition of Citrix XenApp for UNIX requires:
- AIX version 5.1 or
- AIX version 5.2 or
- AIX version 5.3
Then, the next question in everyone's mind is: "Where can I get more information regarding UNIX support?".
Since I know this specific information is not accessible just from one location in our website (action item for Citrix: improve this), below I'm pointing you to the main URLs where you can download documentation and the clients to get more familiar with our support for all of the UNIX platforms mentioned above. Notice that since we renamed the product line recently, we haven't had the opportunity to update the XenApp name on all of our documentation (another ongoing action item for Citrix). Happy reading!
Citrix Presentation Server for UNIX Administrator's Guide
Citrix SSL Relay for Citrix Presentation Server for UNIX Administrator's Guide
Clients for UNIX Administrator's Guide
Beyond the information provided in these documents, what questions do you have about XenApp for UNIX?
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