Many companies IT departments approach the cloud with some suspicion. A cloud needs to be approached differently than a traditional IT shop. Fundamental assumptions, such as security for instance, also change. I don't want to go on about cloud security, but I do want to draw your attention to a worked out practical example of using XenApp on EC2 while your precious data remains on the corporate network behind the corporate firewall.

The Citrix Labs team developed a detailed "blueprint" to cover this. The blueprint contains detailed instructions on how you can set up a system and experience the cloud in relative safety. It has been published on the Citrix Developer Network under Citrix Cloud Center - C3 Solutions for the cloud.

Citrix XenApp, the Citrix Access Gateway client and the Citrix Repeater client are provided in a single Amazon Machine Image (AMI) running in Amazon EC2. Customers and prospects can benefit from the ability to configure and test applications in a cloud environment without having to migrate or replicate their sensitive corporate files in the cloud. Instead, the application accesses the corporate data on-demand via the Citrix Repeater and secured via Citrix Access Gateway. The WAN acceleration benefit of the Citrix Repeater can also be easily demonstrated with this configuration. Users authenticate once, using their enterprise credentials, and are then given access to applications on EC2 and data held in the enterprise.

The detailed instructions to help you set up your lab to do this can be found here

The Economist of October 2^nd 2009, had a special report on mobile telecommunications. Here are a few interesting facts and predictions from this article:

-         Adding 10 mobile phones per 100 inhabitants increases GDP per person by 0.8%

-         Mobile phone growth has been the largest in the developing world. In 2000 the developing world accounted for around one quarter of a total of some 700 million mobile phones. By the beginning of 2009, this share has grown to three quarters of the now 4 billion phones.

-         India, Africa, and then China lead the growth statistics with 125%, 95%, and 90% growth respectively in the year to end March 2009.

-         Deregulation, or the absence of regulation in the developing world, is stimulating growth.

-         Innovation in technology, network sharing, charging methods, outsourcing, etc. are producing huge cost reductions (needed to deliver mobile phone services in poorer countries).

-         Voice is only just the first wave in bringing efficiency and productivity gains.

-         Banking services are emerging as a fresh wave.

-         The next wave is information services, initially delivered via text messages (e.g. weather forecasts, farming help desk services, fish market data)

-         More extensive internet access from phones will be the next logical step. For this, the phones need to become a little smarter and more complex.

-         After that, internet access from netbooks may take off: the first village netbooks are already getting established.

The consequence of the above is that by 2020, the vast majority of internet users will have come to information technology from a radically different angle than most of us working with computers and the internet today. The new users come from the mobile phone, text, then netbook, browser and very little else. No desktop, no Windows applications, just the web. It is interesting that Google's Chrome OS plays directly in this space and appears to address emerging markets. Incidentally, where the biggest internet growth is expected to be.

Here is a three minute (or less) pitch building the story of Citrix technology. It doesn't capture everything, but it gives a fair flavour. Intended for technology audiences, potentially with little exposure to Citrix, I think it's is "as simple as possible, but no simpler".

As always, I'd love to hear what you think.

Michael

Citrix technology ranges from point to point desktop sharing like GoToMyPC and GoToMeeting (1) ...

... through to sophisticated enterprise delivery of Windows desktops and applications, including remote sessions from Windows Server farms (2) ...

... and full desktop images, hosted on a shared server and delivered over the internet (3).

The desktop technologies are complemented by application acceleration appliances, delivering web apps for dot com and the enterprise (4).

All can run "virtually" to enable the promise of cloud computing (5). Indeed, the Citrix hypervisor is at the heart of the largest (IaaS) clouds.

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