Summary of announcement

Today Citrix announced XenDesktop 4 - a complete desktop virtualization solution to address the needs of all users across an enterprise. XenDesktop 4 includes on-demand apps by XenApp as well as FlexCast delivery technology offering different methods to deliver desktops tailored to meet the performance, security and flexibility requirements of each user. In the future we will also see XenClient to further extend our desktop virtualization strategy to include local VM-based desktops. XenDesktop 4 will be available under a new simpler per user license model more in line to support desktop deployments. XenApp will continue to be available standalone with today's CCU model. We are also providing incentives to move to a XenDesktop license. Since XenApp application virtualization is a critical component of our desktop virtualization strategy we will continue to invest in it with additional capabilities on the horizon as early as the first half of 2010. 

Wham! There you have it, finally a single product option.  Something that I have wanted for a long time to address a far broader range of use cases and truly enable desktop virtualization that goes beyond a simplistic one dimensional VDI view of the world.

So what are those use cases and drivers?

I've written in a past blog the time is now! about why I feel WIndows 7 is a long awaited stimulus to drive the next desktop refresh. In addition, the analyst data I have seen strongly indicates that 2010 will be the year of the PC refresh after years of skipped upgrades. This I believe will lead to many more people seeking to understand how desktop virtualization fits into to their strategic plans to ensure that they make the right investments in 2010 for their IT infrastructure as the economy begins to recover.

When I talk about drivers for desktop and application virtualization to customers from CIO to hardcore techie, I generally find that everything fits into three buckets. Here are some common perspectives that I have shared that resonate with our real world customers who are implementing at scale today.

Business Perspective

• Simplify business continuity and build it into the core architecture.
• Enable quicker and easier office moves and enable mobility from any connection from a broad device set.
• Invest in M & A and global expansion.
• Enforce stronger data standards and security through centralization.
• Drive increased consistency, more efficient staff based on location.
• Enable outsourcing.

User Experience Perspective

• Ensure consistency of user experience across any network. WAN and bandwidth matter.
• Improves performance when latencies are managed down by moving apps closer to the desktop.
• Enable telecommuting and access from any device/connection.
• Recover faster from faults to increase productivity.
• Introduce new productivity models like BYOPC.

Technology Perspective

• Leverage power and cooling efficiencies in the data center to reduce costs.
• Consolidate data centers and extend reach of existing data centers.
• Build greener user buildings in metropolitan areas and reduce carbon foot print.
• Reduce complexity in workplace and datacenter management OpEx by reducing the # of instances to manage.
• Ensure reliability of simple clients to reduce helpdesk calls and end user break fix visits.
• Reduce management costs and risk for infrequently connected devices such as laptops.

Once people start to understand the potential from their respective points of view, it usually boils down to desktop virtualization is a way to drive costs down over time and increase productivity very quickly.

To solve for the above use cases with the current distributed computing model is very difficult. Primarily this is because at scale distributed computing is complex to manage with a lot of overhead and many moving parts. This then leads to many points of control to make a change - flexibility is next to impossible. All this adds up to slow time to value for anything that needs to get done quickly, and hence the model is not very agile.

When it comes down to picking the right technology option to enable a new desktop model, the predictability and performance over a diverse network infrastructure become key considerations. Many customers realize that to reduce support complexity and achieve service delivery consistency it is better to use a technology that addresses the majority of your use cases.  If you truly understand the above use cases, it becomes obvious that to truly leverage your investment, WAN and smart utilization of bandwidth is a must. I'd argue it is the lowest common denominator, and  it takes more than a protocol to deliver the best possible user experience. For example, working in the office you may be on a LAN or MAN depending on the location of your data center, but when you travel or go home network latency and bandwidth matter. If you have to switch display protocols with varying bandwidth requirements from site to site then the complexity of supporting this when a user calls just erodes the cost benefits. In addition, some customers simply reject the idea of implementing solutions that lock them into proprietary client hardware solutions, or hypervisors as they lose price leverage. Many customers have told me that they want technologies that let them choose what type of client device to run on and hypervisor choice. That could be a Thinclient or simply a repurposed commodity PC, but with a mature protocol that is proven to run over diverse networks and uses bandwidth intelligently. Similarly these customers understand that hypervisor diversity is inevitable and so want to invest in management layers that support this coming trend.

Today Citrix has a range of HDX technologies to address a plethora of user experience use cases. We also run our solutions on multiple hypervisors and on physical hardware. This is why we are winning large XenDesktop customers including a 100,000 seat deal that we recently closed.

Is XenDesktop needed since XenApp also enables desktop and application delivery?

Not having XenDesktop 4 resulted in an artificial TS vs. VDI debate thanks to Citrix that has just continued to brew. Yes it's true, XenApp can host desktops and apps on a server operating system, so this leads to the logical question why do I need XenDesktop? In a blog last week on Brian Madden's site this sentiment was highlighted once again. I believe this is now a moot debate. With XenDesktop 4, it really does not matter which model you choose.  What's more important to understand is that you choose the right model to address your business need that fits the right economics and time to market for you.

Despite my pre-XenDesktop implementation experience and choices due to technology availability, I've always wanted and believed in a move towards a desktop OS. Why? It was largely driven by:

• It's a desktop.  It makes the most sense to deliver it with a desktop OS and avoid any issues or optimizations that may come up in the future that I may not have been aware of.
• App compatibility is not a problem on a single session desktop OS. Yes you can use 1-1 XenApp, but for reason 1 I still prefer a desktop OS.
• 3rd party vendor support is not an issue on a desktop operating system.
• Consistent service delivery of running a desktop OS across all use cases. This includes users being familiar with their Laptop OS - corporate or personal.
• Reason 3 above makes it easier for in house developers to adopt.

Now that said, I've lived through large scale XenApp desktop and application deployments and seen that the app compatibility issue is marginal after 20 years of Citrix pioneering the Server Based Computing model. Most vendors support their software on multi user operating systems like Window 2003 and 2008 and XenApp 5 Feature Pack 2 now addresses those edge cases by enabling VM hosted applications delivered from a desktop OS.

However there is a twist. In my opinion this is the advent of Windows 2008 R2 - only available as a x64 operating system. This presents several additional considerations.

First, how fast is the world going to move all their desktop applications to a x64 operating system and have the hardware on the backend to host x64 desktops and apps? Note I did not say application compatibility, because based on my experience most x32 applications run just fine on a x64 Windows operating system. There is some repackaging and testing to be done, and there are of course exceptions like apps with 16 bit installers etc. but in general I have not seen compelling evidence to suggest that this will not work for the vast majority of apps.

Second, Windows 2008 R2 and Windows 7 share the same code base. At the technical level their kernels are the same version. Thank you Microsoft for finally pulling this off! This will vastly improve application compatibility. At a very high level of assurance I can be confident that applications re-packaged for Windows 7 will run just fine on Windows 2008 R2. Now customers can choose what is most comfortable based on their requirements (well they will once we release XenApp for x64 which is slated for beta towards the end of 2009) because it really does not matter - their investment moving to either operating system is well protected from an application compatibility perspective.

Finally, for users on XP or Vista, I don't know of anybody new who at this point will adopt desktop virtualization by migrating to Windows 2003 given the effort to get all your applications re-certified and then do it again when Windows 2003 will reach end of life in a few years. It's just not worth it. Windows 2008 x32 is certainly an option, but again to ease the application migration effort it seems more prudent to me to get your applications ready for Windows 7 and Windows 2008 R2 to future proof yourself and have application portability between the operating systems.

Now I fully expect many people reading this to say, but I want to do X with operating system Y for reason Z. That's ok, and clearly as I elude to above, given the world is so diverse it's foolish to assume a single prescription and proclaim this is how you do it. As I illustrate below, XenDesktop 4 let's you choose the best model for solving real world business problems. I like to think of it as a sliding scale that is a pragmatic realization by Citrix that customers want many ways to skin a cat. I believe this flexibility will enable our products to be more easily consumed now that every use case can be addressed irrespective of your OS choice, application compatibility concerns or x32 vs x64 belief system - all with the most predictable user experience powered by HDX.

Key considerations and takeaways

Virtualization is already forcing a datacenter re-architecture. I would argue that those who do not believe virtualization is a force driving consolidation in the data center that has past the hype and inertia stage are in the minority. As this shift happens it is very important to design your virtual infrastructure and organization to handle desktop scale and service levels. I've blogged about this in the past desktop virtualization is not server virtualization. And I can't begin to emphasize enough how important this point is. It's a mistake to think desktop virtualization is a simple extension of your existing server virtual infrastructure.

The forces of globalization, offshoring, teleworking, mobility, and green are causing more users to be mobile. Forces such as consolidation, data security, business continuity, and green are driving us towards centralization. Business are becoming more complex and diverse, and the distributed computing model will only get more expensive to manage and is not designed to handle the needs of an agile organization that requires a lot of flexibility.

As a result, XenDesktop 4 is a landmark release in our history. It brings together the best technologies and reaffirms our commitment to enable customers to deliver IT as a service with desktop and application virtualization. XenDesktop 4 demonstrates how at Citrix we understand that desktop virtualization is so much more than just VDI. This is at the very heart of where we have come from as an organization over the last 20 years. It's in our DNA how to deliver user experience over diverse infrastructure, and this is just the beginning. We continue to innovate and expand our reach through diverse devices, HDX, new delivery models such as Dazzle, continued investment in application delivery and so much more to come. It's an incredibly exciting time for us at Citrix, now that we've stepped up to heal the broken hearts of TS vs. VDI and enable a new tomorrow that represents pragmatic choice.

I read this interesting report a few weeks ago regarding Virgina States Telework Day and lessons learned.

I've visited a number of customers since reading this report and it struck me how Telecommuting is so often overlooked or understated as a huge benefit of Desktop Virtualization and Application Virtualization. When I think about the majority of our customer base, who use XenApp. XenApp is often used as a point solution internally, or a remote access solution with our SSL products with access to a subset of applications. Many customers have used our technology as a disaster recovery option also. However when I ask are all your applications available to you? The majority of customers say no for a myriad of reasons some valid some not.

This get's me very excited about Desktop Virtualization. Since for most people that is the user interface you interact with to get to all of your applications, even if it's just access to web apps. Telecommuting all of a sudden becomes much more powerful. Whether you use XenApp or standard enterprise software distribution tools you get to those via your Desktop.

When this light bulb goes off in a customers head an ah-ha moment occurs and a far more interesting dialogue beings. We talk about how to increase work life balance, how to enable a qualified women's workforce who are juggling parental responsibilities and how to access talent wherever they may be. All of a sudden we are talking about what's stopping us getting there. When I look at the study data, it's interesting to note that 78% of people encountered no difficulties. Even more insightful is that 91% of participants say that they are more likely to telework in the future. Such is the power of flexible work lives.

When I was working in New York my commute was almost 4 hours a day. I hated it, it was draining. On the extreme end I know, but long commutes are common in New York. Now that I work remotely the majority of the time, it's great to have the hours back to myself. I get to choose to use these reclaimed hours for greater productivity or spend time with family and friends. It's also really cool to collaborate with colleagues all over the world not in our hub offices. We can be anywhere and simply fire up GoToMeeting sessions share ideas, have access to our data securely from our data centers with Desktop and Application virtualization. Sure there is no substitute for face time, but that's just not possible with such a diverse workforce. This flexibility makes connections to a global set of colleagues possible, and simplifies my life. I really am living our vision to work and play from anywhere. Now can I translate that to a raise as the report found? They say the money you keep is what counts. I know my gas prices are lower, car mileage is lower and expensive New York tolls and parking are gone. I'm also greener I guess and even save on dry cleaning How about you?

Today we announced another key addition to our portfolio of HDX technologies within XenDesktop, enabling high definition virtual desktops - HDX 3D.

Before we get into too much detail, in my experience it's always sensible and logical to consider the broader context to gain perspective and not get lost in the marketing. For me this is about extending our leadership position in delivering user experience that we have built with HDX technologies over the last 20 years.

HDX offers several other capabilities such as multimedia, USB, voice collaboration, etc that users for virtual desktops can use wherever they are. Michael Harris produced a really nice short video that explains the HDX areas of competence. What's key to understand is that to deliver the best experience for many rich content types, on diverse devices that may be accessed from a myriad of locations, one must leverage the existing environment in an optimal manner. HDX with adaptive orchestration leverages the client, network and server to optimize the experience of users based on the content and infrastructure that is available.

This inherent flexibility in the architecture of HDX technology is key to delivering a more efficient and predictable user experience. For example if you send multimedia content directly to the client in it's original format for optimal playback when the bandwidth is good, and render on the server when bandwidth is poor you leverage your bandwidth efficiently allowing other applications to also consume bandwidth. Similarly if your technology can identify repetitive patterns within multiple bitmaps on a screen you can avoid retransmitting bits saving network bandwidth. Additionally if your technology can dynamically adapt to changing network conditions, you remain efficient as parameters that you can't control change. These unpredictable conditions become even more important as you traverse the internet to connect to clouds. So having an arsenal of technologies to handle so many variables that have been matured over the years is critical to delivering a user experience that will allow IT to feel confident in the service levels they are delivering for Desktop Virtualization.

Extending HDX to graphical intensive applications over any kind of network- HDX 3D

HDX 3D is a new technology that addresses the needs of professional graphics users in industries such as Engineering, Manufacturing, Oil & Gas, Aerospace and Automotive. Professional graphics users requiring 3D graphics apps such as AutoCAD or Catia can now use virtual desktops to do all their work.

When we collaborated with our customers on the design of this technology, they reminded us that with the forces of globalization in play, more and more designers and engineers would be working offshore all over the world. This made it abundantly clear to us that in order to meet customer needs WAN performance was going to be a critical component. If WAN optimization was not a top priority from the outset, many of the cost benefits would be negated through poor performance and increased WAN circuit costs. So the mission for our engineers was very clear.

The results

Our test engineers reported back that they could deliver a great user experience on WAN connections with latency of up to 150ms. Even 3D graphics over 1 Mbps became possible! I was pleased, but wanted to understand how this compared to hardware based solutions that have generated a lot of excitement in the industry. Our engineers decided to contrast performance against the PCoIP protocol leveraging the proprietary Teradici hardware solution. Note that VMware has publically stated that they plan to offer a software only version of the PCoIP protocol. Logically speaking, the same technology without the benefit of hardware assist, one would expect this version to be of inferior performance. To be fair, we have not tested the software only version of PCoIP yet.

The methodology on the LAN was to auto-spin in Catia and measure bandwidth usage starting at full image quality for each product and incrementing down to the lowest quality. For the WAN, a WAN emulator was used to introduce latency and repeat the test to auto-spin Catia and observe which appeared to spin more smoothly. Manual rotation was also performed to see what it felt like from a user perspective.

In summary we found that PCoIP with the benefit of proprietary hardware consumed 10X more bandwidth than HDX 3D and HDX 3D produced a smoother user experience.

Based on our tests, PCoIP didn't handle latency and WAN conditions well. So, if you are a designer and need to design a 3D model, from our tests we don't see how you would be able to have a predictable work experience that is efficient and cost effective on a real world network with a distributed workforce. Once again, this was the proprietary Teradici hardware assisted version of PCoIP. This does not bode well for the software version, especially if compromises have been made in quality and predictability to mask bandwidth requirements.

So what should one make of all this?

Firstly, as a technologist, I think it's interesting to see VMware building (or OEM/partnering for) their own protocol; because as a former customer of VMware, I have never understood their position on recommending multiple protocols for different scenarios. They have mentioned extending Microsoft RDP, using Suns ALP for WAN, adopting the Net2Display standard and partnerships with hardware vendors such as Teradici etc. How is all the complexity of so many options and expecting customers to figure out how to integrate them as one predictable experience going to work? Now I wonder if VMware is still going to have multiple technologies to try and build a HDX like portfolio and expect customers to figure out how to interface it all? PCoIP is only a piece of a puzzle - just like a protocol is only a small part of the equation.

However as Citrix has learned over the last 20 years as one of it's core competencies working with 200,000 plus customers, it's so much more than just a protocol. Some of those key lessons are.

• HDX is an integrated set of technologies that are intended to offer the best possible user experience under any network circumstances.
• HDX does not rely on just one approach to graphics and multimedia remoting, because one size does not fit all.
• HDX has unique technologies that can leverage the client resources to offer a local like user experience at a fraction of the bandwidth and server cost.
• When HDX determines that server side rendering is the most appropriate method to deliver the content, it uses a number of technologies to optimize the bandwidth and server CPU usage.
• HDX also includes adaptive orchestration which is a system that makes smart decisions on what techniques to apply under different conditions. Adaptive orchestration sets HDX apart from the competition because it can offer the best possible user experience for the user.

Additionally, I think one of the most important points that is often overlooked is that HDX technologies are Hypervisor and hardware agnostic. Citrix does not lock you into a proprietary hardware solution or Hypervisor. We understand that customers want Hypervisor and hardware choice combined with mature and proven user experience delivery technologies that are being extended to further the reach of Desktop Virtualization. I believe that pragmatic IT decision makers and engineers understand those are critical elements to protect their existing and future investments.

Finally, we would have demonstrated HDX 3D at VMWorld, if we could - if we were allowed the space to do so...... However check out http://hdx.citrix.com

I've been talking to a number of people regarding their ideas with respect to delivering Desktop Virtualization and Application Virtualization from the cloud.

Yesterday Amazon announced Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) with support for Citrix C3. Check out Craig Ellrod's blog post

It's great to see people thinking about ways to extend the reach of the Citrix Delivery Infrastructure. Our very own Scott Swanburg has blogged about this for several months. Scott has some very interesting discussions on how to make money from the cloud and our Service Provider license program. The reality is there is a chasm between existing web apps to deliver SaaS and the tens of thousands of apps that are Windows based. There is a huge opportunity especially in the Small and Medium Business segment for these types of services.

It's also worth noting that some Service Providers are already taking advantage of the opportunity, U.K. based Nasstar, U.S. based nGenX, ClubDrive and Australia based Bluefire. These companies service hundreds of SMBs with thousands of end points.

Last week I spoke to Kenji Obata CEO from Xenocode regarding delivering applications from the cloud. Kenji was kind enough to give me access to a streamed Citrix client what we call our Receiver and we helped Kenji configure it to connect to a desktop in the Amazon cloud. In this case the destkop is delivered via XenApp. If you're not familiar with streaming, think of it as downloading only the bits you need to start an application as opposed to an entire application. A little bit like playing a streaming radio station. In this case 4.2MB is streamed for startup vs. the 23.9MB package size. You'll need to install the Spoon plug-in in the top right of the box the first time for the browser integration to work . After that it should be just a click on the Green button to start your virtual desktop session in the Amazon Cloud. So far i've tested successfully from my XP and Vista machines as a non admin user and plan to try from my Windows 7 machine later today. Note that we only created one account in Amazon for this so you may be stealing sessions..... Anyway it's a fun demo so give it a try. Many of our existing customers do something similar with the XenApp Web Plugin today. Nonetheless it's alway personally interesting for me to see how other people understand the value of connecting to a secure managed hosted application infrastructure.

As these models continue to evolve, leveraging Citrix Dazzle and Merchandsing Server we could enable SAAS in so many new ways. It's fascinating that potentially combined with some of the concepts mentioned in Chris Flecks recent blog how so many possibilities could be opened up.

So I see lot's of creative thinking going on amongst thought leaders and real execution already happening. Certainly an area that I will be watching with keen interest. As always interested to hear from our customers and partners on how they would like to see this evolve.

The Amazon Web Services (AWS) announcement of the Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) offering has just made Cloud Computing more attractive to the enterprise. Most companies I talk with are interested in the "Cloud", but beyond a few SaaS apps and perhaps some dev/test they are not ready for any big change to their corporate IT infrastructure. On the other hand many of those same companies are currently or projected to be capacity limited in their own data center based on space or power limitations.
Many companies will opt to move or expand into a Co-lo (Co-location) facility which provides dedicated space, power and bandwidth. This solves the space and power problem but most of the same costs of computing are just moved to a remote facility. The expensive data center facility cost is shared among other companies but the Server, Storage and Networking are all dedicated. The promise of the Cloud and particularly IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) like Amazon EC2 is sharing computing and facility costs, having capacity available on demand, and only paying for what is used.

The obstacles to IaaS offerings that I hear most often include security concerns and the desire keep the corporate data and or legacy infrastructure in place. Making a massive move from premise to Cloud is not desired or warranted.  On the other hand enabling a Premise Plus Cloud solution in a secure fashion and using it only for expansion or overflow capacity could be appealing for many companies. Essentially this is what Amazon is offering with VPC, a dedicated secure network extending from a company data center into the Amazon Cloud with isolated VM's available on demand.  
For Citrix Customers this could be particularly attractive for expanding XenApp farms or centralizing new applications on XenApp without the prerequisite facility and capital costs. Customers can bring their own XenApp licensees to VPC or point back to existing license server on premise. We have been collaborating with Amazon AWS to build and test XenApp servers in VPC to validate and number of scenarios and use cases. In addition we have made dedicated Amazon Machine Image ( AMI ) templates available with XenApp 5 preinstalled and ready to launch.  Citrix C3 Blueprints are also now available to assist companies that want to start to evaluate the new offering. ( Note: the service is currently in Beta )

For Citrix this announcement represents another progressive move as a leader and enabler of Cloud Computing. Amazon EC2 based on the Xen Hypervisor has already made EC2 ubiquitous with start-ups and the undisputed leader in Public Clouds, VPC with XenApp now represents a significant opportunity for Enterprise IT. The Citrix Cloud Center ( C3 ) portfolio will continue to enable IT and Cloud providers to exploit the promise of the Cloud, stay tuned..

http://twitter.com/chrisfleck

Cloud is still not well understood. Indeed the very name suggests fogginess. This is why we see such a profusion of "what is cloud" presentations, all, or most, providing a very vendor-centric view. In the presentation below, I've attempted instead to provide a general overview of how cloud is perceived by different players, and (surprise, surprise) to position Citrix technologies with respect to the most general views of 'cloud'.

Cloud computing (for the IT professional at least) includes notions of Software as a Service, Infrastructure as a Service, and Platform as a Service. These categories are well understood and largely accepted, but are imperfect. Very clearly, all can be applied to offerings from external providers as well as to operating models, or "patterns" within the enterprise. Furthermore, we're seeing a great deal of category leak at present, with SaaS offerings on IaaS, PaaS offerings that can be hosted as IaaS and offered as SaaS, etc, etc.

Citrix has various technologies that enable Infrastructure as a Service and this has been the focus of our C3 (Citrix Cloud Center) marketing to date. However Citrix has long been a leader in bringing the notions of Software as a Service to the enterprise. This is something we've been doing for over a decade with our WinFrame, MetaFrame and XenApp technology. It's the core notion of today's Citrix Delivery Center, now extended to desktop virtualization.

Here's an updated cloud computing deck, originally used at some of the Citrix iForum events (and posted here), that I recently presented as a keynote at the IT Architect Regional Conference in Malaysia (http://www.iasahome.org/web/malaysia/). Please let me know what you think.

Cheers, Michael

Some other links on Citrix C3:

• Citrix C3 Product page
• Citrix C3 Labs on Amazon Web Services (AWS)
• Cloud computing related posts on the Citrix Community blog
• http://community.citrix.com/blogs/citrite/scottsw/2009/07/24/Cloud+Computing+-+SMB+style

The question of VDI use cases, customer awareness, and Desktop Virtualization has been a hot topic lately at Citrix. Harry Labana's blog post did a great job describing the differences in Desktop Virtualization and Server Virtualization. In addition to the positive reviews a few commenter's have also brought up some scenarios we have been considering but have not made available to date. Specifically we have been discussing ways to make HDX more pervasive and useful to IT Pro's and users. HDX has significant benefits and we want the broader industry to try it out and get a taste of XenDesktop.

Many in the community may recall a Citrix project called PortICA which led to a component of XenDesktop providing a direct ICA connection from a Client OS ( XP or Vista ) to any endpoint with the ICA client. Outside of Citrix developers & testers ( and a few others ) who find this very useful, we have not opened up this stand alone capability to the world. If we did make this available, meaning an MSI including the enhanced HDX features that could be installed inside a client OS which could connect directly ( no broker ) to any device with the Citrix Receiver and proper network configuration. The question is what would you use it for ? Would this lead to increased XenDesktop adoption? Some of the XenDesktop product and demo scenarios we have considered or heard are listed below. Please let us know your vote and help describe some new use cases as well.

( Note that this is simply a survey and does not imply what plans we may or may not have )

Also check out Brian Madden's post on the topic and additional commenters views.

http://twitter.com/chrisfleck

Desktop Virtualization is about user experience and agility, Server Virtualization is about consolidation and cost savings. It's amazing to me how so many people still confuse and believe Desktop Virtualization is just a straight forward extension of Server Virtualization that will just naturally evolve from their existing Server Virtualization infrastructure, without realizing that these are two very different use cases requiring a different approach.

In my second month as CTO of our XenApp business at Citrix, I have been able to talk to a range of people about their desktop and application virtualization strategies. Some are brand new Citrix customers, some are not even aware that Citrix is so much more than thin client remote access and some are real thought leaders who challenge my thinking everyday. Having been a customer at numerous top tier Wall Street firms and implementing Citrix technologies for many use cases including Desktop Virtualization at scale. I've lived through the pain that this sort of thinking causes in the real world and feel it's time to share some experiences and to help my twitter followers decipher some of my cryptic Desktop Virtualization!=Server Virtualization tweets.

In the physical world, do your server administrators manage your desktop infrastructure?
Let's start with a basic question. If you are a very small shop, perhaps a single administrator does it all. However as you scale up, different teams start to form to address specialized use cases acquiring specialized skill sets along the way. Even at the smaller firms I've worked at, the backend operations folks very quickly separate themselves from the front office folks. The workflows and mindsets of these people are quite different. Let's diverge for a second and think about how security teams function in an enterprise vs. let's say the server team. Does the server team care about security? Sure. Would the server team let the security team design their server infrastructure? Of course not! Why? I'd hazard a guess that a super secure inflexible system would be developed by these folks that would be too slow to react to dynamic business needs. In other words overkill, despite the best intentions of a security focused person. This why desktop teams design desktop experiences........

The management workflow for desktops is different.
It has been my observation that even in large enterprises that have invested in server virtualization, they don't reboot thousands of servers at the same time. They usually schedule these events in small clusters during maintenance windows to avoid impacting many users who share servers. Desktops however are a different animal. After every patch Tuesday, I'd want to reboot all of my machines in large batches, just like I do today in the physical world as they impact only single/limited users. This type of reboot scale quickly puts a demand on the virtualization infrastructure that it is usually not designed for in a server world. In other words the Hypervisor workloads are very different and you have to worry more about many VM's performing the same operation at around the same time (e.g. OS/anti-virus updates).

Desktops require a different security model.
Taking the same example, desktops require a lot more flexibility with reboots. A lot more ad-hoc user driven reboots happen. This usually breaks the often rigid administrative and security permission model in the server virtualization world, which serves a different purpose. I recall many a debate as to why reboot permissions on the virtualization infrastructure needed to be allocated to the helpdesk to support Desktop Virtualization users. Something that was a struggle for Server Virtualization teams to accept as they were of a mind set that servers were highly controlled environments. Brut force did the trick in the end

Desktop scale means rethinking your virtualization infrastructure.
Think about the number of desktops you have in your organization vs. the number of servers. If you have 2000 server VMs one would most likely say that's a lot of servers, but would not say that for 2000 desktops. If you had 10,000 desktops that's a decent amount that is not uncommon at many customer sites. However 10,000 servers would be considered to be a very large server site. Therefore if you want to invest in Desktop Virtualization at scale, it's a totally different ball game when it comes to managing and scaling the virtual infrastructure. Regardless of Hypervisor choice, I found I had to split away from the core server team design and develop an infrastructure that would support a desktop experience at scale.

Optimize virtual infrastructure for user experience.
Delivering a desktop user experience requires you to focus on minimizing response time instead of maximizing throughput like server virtualization. There is also a greater burden to support virtual peripherals, and VM Management is far more critical. In my experience this was like talking alien to the server guys, and they just couldn't get their head around it or just couldn't be bothered accommodating this desktop thing in their server virtualization design, I still haven't figured that part out...........

Desktops management is different and does not require the high end features of Server Virtualization that add to cost.
As I was writing this I came across Brian Madden's blog today that touches upon this point. Based on what I have seen I agree most of the bells and whistles that people get excited about with server virtualization, just don't apply to Desktop Virtualization and add to costs and complexity. For example live migration on a desktop is such an edge case that I just don't buy the investment justifies the gain. To me this is a desktop use case. I remember many debates arguing how best to implement Desktop Virtualization. The best piece of advise I got from one of my mentors was to think of this as 'it's a desktop'. Be very clear this is a desktop, and understand that is what you are trying to implement. Don't overcomplicate things that you wouldn't normally do for a desktop. If you get your organization to understand this and behave accordingly I believe it will resolve many debates about how best to implement. Simply put your questions and actions in the context of it's a desktop.

So I hope many of you will now begin to develop an appreciation for why Desktop Virtualization is not Server Virtualization. You can't force a round peg into a square hole. They have different drivers. Desktop Virtualization is about user experience and agility. Server Virtualization is about consolidation and cost savings. With these very different goals in mind it will be no surprise to me that trying to implement Desktop Virtualization with a Server Virtualization mindset is highly likely to result in frustration. Desktop teams know what it takes to deliver a desktop experience. While it's true that there is overlap with traditional server roles, this is just an organizational evolution that will happen over time IMO. Desktops guys after so many years playing PC jockey are relevant again and will need to become empowered to create successful Desktop Virtualization implementations that are designed from the ground up to deliver a desktop experience. Don't forget it's a desktop!

In case you have ever needed to administer a XenApp server but were not near a PC, this app is for you. In the past this typically meant a drive to work or home, then boot-up the PC launch the AMC, you know the gig. Now there is a better way, if you haven't found it already there is a free Mobile Console app from Extentrix that allows an Admin to see who's logged on, log them off, reset the session, or send a message. All without leaving your chair or even booting a PC. The app UI is designed to work with the iPhone, but because it's actually a Windows app running on XenApp you can also access it from any device that has a Citrix Receiver ( or ICA Client ). You can download it free here .

Aside from solving your problem to administer XenApp servers, think about what other apps that could be built or modified to fit a mobile form factor and delivered to your users with the same infrastructure you already have. For more ideas check out the XenApp CDN pages for tips on building custom mobile apps for XenApp. What mobile app do your users need ?

Today we have added a new feature to the Citrix: Support, CDN, and Community Forums, that allows anyone making a forum entry to automatically post the question or answer as a Tweet to the Twitter universe. This means that anyone following the Citrix twitter accounts ( CitrixKCforums or CitrixCommunity ) or searching a keyword will get real time visibility to the latest forum discussions and a link back to the forum post. Now you won't be limited to forum surfers or RSS readers to get your question/answer out to the world. And hopefully those real time questions will get real time answers for everyone to view. Plus, if everyone in the Community starts using this feature the wealth of knowledge that goes back and forth in Twitter messages could be accumulated in the Citrix Forums for longevity and search-ability.
So the next time you have a technical or community question, don't just Tweet it, ForumTweet it from the Citrix Forums and let's see the replies fly in.
Also please follow :

@CitrixKCForums - The Citrix Support Forums ( http://forums.citrix.com/support )
@CitrixCommunity - The Community & CDN Forums ( http://forums.citrix.com/cdn )


http://twitter.com/chrisfleck

Today, we are pleased to announce the winners of the Citrix Ready XenDesktop challenge. We asked our Thin Client partners to submit videos representing the best Thin Client to use with XenDesktop. The videos were posted to CitrixTV to be viewed by ourselves and the community. The winners were decided by following judges; Doug Brown, Sumit Dhawan, and myself Chris Fleck, plus the community votes of ratings and view count.

1. Best User Experience - Wyse http://www.citrix.com/tv/#video/377
User experience has always been a key concern for IT planning to rollout XenDesktop to new users. Increasingly these users are knowledge workers with higher demands and expectations. This includes things like boot-up time, peripheral support and no compromise Multimedia.

Doug Brown : I loved how Wyse was able to show off not only video running through XenDesktop but also a real time video camera! This use case has become more and more needed in today's world! Nicely done!
Sumit Dhawan : The collaboration function demonstrated was impressive. Nicely done.
Chris Fleck : I liked the Wyse demonstration of full Webcam functionality, this is a growing requirement for knowledge workers moving from PC's.

2. Best Management - IGEL http://www.citrix.com/tv/#video/530
A key driver for desktop virtualization is the control it affords IT administrators and the cost savings it achieves. Thin clients form a key component of the broader value equation. Example of demonstrations to illustrate management and TCO can include Management console and functionality

Doug Brown : The video was short and sweat and in the short time IGEL was able to show how simple it is to use their management tools to make changes and rollout users. Impressive!
Sumit Dhawan : The best demonstration on management, and creatively shared.
Chris Fleck : IGEL gave a informative demonstration of their management console and capability that would be useful for Thin Client deployments with XenDesktop.

3. Best Security – HP http://www.citrix.com/tv/#video/688
Security is a key driver in the adoption of desktop virtualization. In a world where security concerns gains increasing importance, please demonstrate how your company's device complements the security associated with XenDesktop. Examples can include, but are not limited to, support for Smart Cards and the ability to harden, lock down and securely manage endpoint devices.

Doug Brown : I thought HP went above and beyond in their video detailing their security enhancements to XenDesktop. By far the best video detailing security along with being very well produced.
Sumit Dhawan : Solid videos showcasing security - no one came close in demonstrating the security capabilities
Chris Fleck : HP added features such as USB port control and Smart Card support are important to many customers considering XenDesktop as a more secure and controlled environment.

4. Best Form Factor 10ZiG http://www.citrix.com/tv/#video/672
Show how your company's device brings the ideals of form and function together to deliver a XenDesktop access device that is not only cool to look at gets users excited about getting their hands on, but is easy and useful, delivers a better user experience, can lower cost of ownership and is more secure.
Doug Brown : Not only are the 10ZiG clients small and pretty but I liked how 10ZiG showed how easy it is to hide them away behind a users monitor. Pretty cool stuff...
Sumit Dhawan : Small, good fit behind the monitor - and a great demo of form factor
Chris Fleck : The 10ZiG devices are small and look good.

5. Best Innovation HP http://www.citrix.com/tv/#video/677
Innovation is a key way for partners to differentiate their offerings to add value above and beyond that provide by XenDesktop. This category is for partners to highlight complementary hardware or software features that have been added to achieve greatest value add to XenDesktop customers.

Doug Brown : I was very impressed with everything HP packed in to their videos. They truly showed us the amazing innovations they are making with their thin clients.
Sumit Dhawan : The video was comprehensive showcasing the end to end approach - a hallmark for innovation
Chris Fleck : HP innovations around multi-monitors, device management and quick-release mounting feature are all great examples of how to enhance Thin Client deployments.

6. Support for Locally Streamed Desktop Devon IT http://www.citrix.com/tv/#video/676/
Citrix has recently highlighted the ability of XenDesktop to be used to stream the operating system to the endpoint for local execution. The submissions in this category will highlight how the partners' solutions are ideally suited to receive streamed desktops. Examples of ways to illustrate value are inclusion of the Operating System streaming client and the ability to include hardware resources (CPU, GPU) required for local execution.

Doug Brown : DevonIT did an amazing job showing us a streamed XenDesktop and they explained it all and showed it all in a really "cool" fashion. Good stuff!
Sumit Dhawan : DevonIT demonstrated this the best - showing the most challenging use case
Chris Fleck : DevonIT makes use of the Citrix Provisioning Server Streaming OS feature of XenDesktop yielding a great admin and user experience.

7. Best overall Video ( Expert Panel Vote ) Devon IT http://www.citrix.com/tv/#video/673

Doug Brown : DevonIT went above and beyond in this video. It was funny, explained their total value add and did I mention it was just downright funny? A must watch and many kudos to them. A stellar video! (Unless you try to steal one of their thin clients and get hit in the face with it!)
Sumit Dhawan : Creative, fun, informative - and excellent use of marketing. Great way to drive traffic by making the front screen of the video appealing for the target audience to click on
Chris Fleck : DevonIT's video presentation was a creative and informative way to highlight the benefits of Thin Clients including XenDesktop and the TC5. A sign of more to come ?

8. Best overall Video ( User Community Vote ) Devon IT http://www.citrix.com/tv/#video/673

The Community spoke with their views, votes and comments, the DevonIT views are at 1028 and counting, with an average of 4 stars.

Congratulations to DevonIT and all the category winners ! Well Done. Thank you for participating in the challenge and thanks to the Citrix community that voted with their views and rankings. ( and thanks Vishal Ganeriwala for putting this challenge together )

VM Hosted Apps will be introduced in Q3 2009 as part of Feature Pack 2 for XenApp. This brand new and unique application virtualization capability will extend our reach by delivering applications from a more diverse set of operating systems, further reducing application compatibility issues for our customer base and reducing time to value.

XenApp Enterprise and Platinum customers will be able to host Seamless applications from Windows XP, Vista or Windows 7 in addition to Windows 2003 and Windows 2008. Applications will be able to be delivered from hosted virtual machines running desktop OS's and/or physical and blade PCs

I'm pretty excited by this new capability as our customers can now deliver a broader set of applications leveraging their existing XenApp investment. There are applications that couldn't be delivered on Terminal Services due to license restrictions. There are applications that consume too many resources on Terminal Services that make them a poor choice for a multi user operating system. There are applications that require devices like USB, biometric keyboards etc. Now there is a complimentary way to deliver these troublesome applications with XenApp.

It has been my experience, that sometimes you just want to get an application deployed quickly into the field. It could be business critical or something you just need to test briefly. Managing these one offs in distributed environment leads to inefficiencies over time even in organizations who have invested in lots of tools and processes. This is why centralized management has been an ability that has really resonated with customers and driven adoption of our application delivery model. However, application validation for a multi user environment can lead to a longer time to value, and depending on the use case this could mean going back to the distributed model when you need it quickly. So now with VM hosted apps the benefits of a centralized XenApp infrastructure can be realized much faster for a broader set of applications.

Here are some more details. Each user will have a 1-1 mapping to their VM Hosted Apps in the initial release. However in subsequent releases we will enable multiple published apps per user. The management experience will allow you to manage your traditional farms side by side. The infrastructure required to deploy this leverages our desktop virtualization technology. More details will be released as we get closer to the release date, and a number of information sessions are being planned, so stay tuned and check out Vinny Sosa's upcoming blog "TYPE TITLE HERE", pressures on Vinny to get it done.......

At Citrix we want to enable our customers to deliver all their hosted applications with us, and added this to round out the application delivery system.So what do you think? How would you like to see this evolve?

With everybody I speak to and in everything I read it is obvious to me that Windows 7 is the next major Windows desktop OS uplift that is around the corner. Good, bad or indifferent, I don't think most people will argue that many people have skipped Vista, but clearly the sentiment is different with Windows 7. For years investments in desktop uplifts have been put off, and I believe that will change sooner than we expect. I've spoken to a number of key decision makers and ground floor engineers and consistently hear that many are actively planning how to adopt Windows 7 to replace what is now an old but good XP operating system. I hear talk of PC uplifts, application virtualization, compatibility, repackaging, systems management upgrades, the list goes on. I think great! Finally we are on the verge of an uplift that will allow us to move forward. Then I think back to my previous experiences with the realities of migrations and the debate over desktop virtualization.

It's fascinating to see so much debate evolve over whether to adopt desktop virtualization or not. I wonder if the binary debate over desktop virtualization is causing artificial confusion as budgets for 2010 and early Windows 7 adoption start to be planned over the coming months. Does the broad desktop community really understand why some people are implementing desktop virtualization today? Are uninformed myths and legends being created? I believe so. Having lived through this, I thought I'd share some of my experiences.

Back in 2004 is when I began my desktop virtualization journey. I already practiced and knew that remote desktops and applications with XenApp had been around for years, but I had some new use cases to solve for. I wanted to get around many of the constraints of a multi user operating system to enable better 'session isolation'. With this capability my users would be able to connect to their remote desktop sessions from anywhere with a Desktop-like experience. I found that this 'session mobility' coupled with session isolation was well received by mobile users who wanted to travel and were frustrated with the old way due to the time it would take to log into desktops due to roaming profiles and login scripts. Session mobility enabled these users to be more agile so they could travel and make fast, light-weight connections back to their desktops. As this evolved, more light bulbs started to go off. What if large, high power desktops could be removed to enable more user density per floor and lower cooling costs? What if thinner greener buildings could be constructed? What if disaster recovery sites could become easier to maintain? Could central management of desktops enable more efficient support models? Could PC lifecycles be extended? Could this capability enable faster and cheaper expansion into new global markets? So much was possible with this new desktop capability, and really it was not that different from the traditional way of remote apps and desktops, just different in that session isolation was key to deliver a desktop like experience. In addition, the benefits far out weighed the constraints when thinking about the business opportunity, and knowing that things would continue to evolve.  

So heads spinning, ideas buzzing, all the what-if constraints started to be thought through. Very quickly when looking at how to solve this problem, the key issue at stake was what's the best and most mature way to deliver the user experience. To cut a long story short, At the time ICA was the clear choice. So a trip to Citrix HQ was planned, arguments were had, this secret PortICA project was brought to my attention that had no use cases around it. A few months later, after a few drinks a few of us including Citrites were walking past Trinity church on Wall Street. Citrix at the time had an umbrella project called project Constellation, and there were three primary user types being thought of for this new desktop opportunity. "Bingo! we'll call it project Trinity," as a joke and it felt like it was a project Constellation theme. This is a true story, and it was just our internal fun name for the project. I couldn't believe it when Citrix announced it at iForum. I was sitting at the back of the room with a huge grin. I remember the Customer Council sessions at that conference, and enquiries from the Marketing team that there may be religious reasons for this, if only they knew..... The rest is history, and today Trinity has evolved into XenDesktop.

So five years on, I see many customers that are thought leaders beginning to adopt this new model and many more people thinking about it or confused about the use cases. Now that Windows 7 is around the corner, I think the time is now to really sit down and understand the desktop virtualization opportunity, if you haven't already. Understand your use cases, where it makes sense for you, where it doesn't and the big picture. Keep in mind how the industry is investing to enable even more capabilities to drive new use cases and lower TCO. Windows 7 means a fresh opportunity to redefine the desktop after so long. Even in the current economic climate customers continue to invest in desktop virtualization, because they understand the strategic significance that greater flexibilty and agility brings today. Now that may not apply to every desktop environment today, but desktop investments are about to get a shot in the arm. I would hate to be in a position of having to go back asking for budget exceptions if I hadn't thought about how desktop virtualization fits into my organization and invested in the wrong areas during upcoming refreshes.

With the release of Citrix Receiver for iPhone 1.02 including AG and RSA support, the ability to securely deliver any app, anywhere, is closer than ever to reality ( we already cover WinMo, Symbian and close to BlackBerry and Android ). One question I have been pondering with Martin Duursma and few others on the team is what is next ? It's great we can get to all these other Windows and RIA apps, but the app many of us use most is email. The question is, what is missing from the native iPhone email or Outlook ? What features would be most useful for a mobile app that we would use all the time from any device?

The native iPhone email client does a good job, but not everything. Attachment viewing is limited and sometimes crashes if the file is too big. You can't write an email and attach a file from your PC or file server. Also many company IT policies do not even allow iPhone access because of security concerns and lack of data / device control. Many of these obstacles could be overcome if the app was hosted on XenApp provided there was fast access and a great user experience. There are probably many new features that could enhance the email experience but you don't even know you want it or need it. Xobni is a good example of an Outlook value-add that I find useful even though I didn't even know I needed it before I started using it every day. So there must be mobile email features that would make your life easier, more productive, or just provide a better experience. What if you had an app that was optimized for the device real estate and mobile scenario ( ie just the functionality that you are likely to need when using your mobile device vs when using a laptop/desktop). If you could have the Nirvana app that was continuously available as a hosted app. Imagine the possibilities !    

Some things that come to mind are listed below, do you agree or have more for the list ? Please add your votes and comments.

http://twitter.com/chrisfleck

This week at our iForum Singapore event Adam Jaques and Gordon Payne demonstrated an early version of the Citrix Receiver for the Android operating system.

UPDATE August 3rd: See the announcement and demo: http://community.citrix.com/blogs/citrite/adamj/2009/07/29/Citrix+Receiver+for+Android+Demonstration+Video

I'm excited about this, first because it's being developed in Citrix Labs, and what's more in Citrix Labs Sydney. I'm more excited because it brings Citrix ever closer to ubiquity on the smart phone - we have a client for Windows mobile, a receiver for the iPhone, an alpha receiver for the Blackberry, and soon a receiver for Android.

This is really important for Citrix and for our customers because the age of Smartphones has begun, and the mobile device, and mobile experience, will never be the same again. Citrix is helping make this happen by making the Smartphone enterprise friendly by bringing 'every' enterprise application to the Smartphone, no matter what variety; be it Windows, web or other.

For many, the Smartphone will be (or already is) the major connection to the web, the Internet and to the work environment. This brings new challenges for information and security management in every organization.

To address these challenges Citrix Labs is working closely with Open Kernel Laboratories to bring cutting edge laptop management approaches to the world of the Smartphone. In much the same way that the XenClient initiative (originally Project Independence) is bringing new capabilities for laptop management, there is an opportunity to combine the new Android Receiver, secure virtual cell technology from OK Labs, and a management infrastructure to create separate personal and enterprise cells on a given Android device. This is an ambitious goal, but one that could open up a new age of Enterprise managed mobile devices.

In a press release in May, Martin Duursma (VP of Citrix Labs) put it like this:

"Working together on mobile-to-enterprise virtualization (M2E), Citrix and OK Labs will enable handset OEMs, MNOs, or enterprises to deliver enterprise applications and content to any mobile device through an OK Labs implementation of Citrix Receiver for the OK Labs mobile phone virtualization platform," said Martin Duursma, Vice President, Citrix Labs. "Today's announcement broadens the Citrix vision of Project Independence for local desktop virtualization and desktop computing and applies it to enterprise application and desktop delivery into mobile devices."

Steve Subar (CEO of OK Labs) puts it like this:

"To address the security requirements of enterprise IT and the personalization preferences of mobile workers, mobile-to-enterprise virtualization (M2E) will enable a secure corporate cell on a mobile device where the receiver function is protected from the security breach of a personal cell. This solution will enable mobile phone users and Corporate IT to leverage best of both worlds - open, unfettered access to personal consumer applications and data with secure, controlled access to enterprise applications and desktops. In addition, M2E will make possible the centralized remote management of the corporate IT cell across all user devices."

My view - we're in for a gloriously interesting next few years with rapid changes coming from consumerization married with Smartphone technological innovation. With the Citrix receiver providing EVERY enterprise application on EVERY Smartphone, Citrix is definitely along for the ride.

Are you?

Have you ever needed to demo Citrix XenApp to a colleague or customer ? Or perhaps just needed a reference connection to validate a client is working properly ? You may have also have wanted to check out Citrix Dazzle based on a demo account vs your production environment.
Now you can easily check out a live demo XenApp system hosted in the Cloud. You only need to enter your email to get your own credentials to check out a variety of apps that run as expected. ( not canned Flash demos ) . You can also simply send someone the link for them to get their own credentials, as well including links to client downloads if required. The current system will provide access from PC's Mac's, WinMo and iPhone's ( any where, any device ).

Give it a try and spread the link @ http://CitrixCloud.net

http://twitter.com/chrisfleck

Following on from our earlier annoucement this week with Microsoft, a great short video put together by Kurtis Moody to answer many of your questions.

1. Shows the Microsoft App-V plug-in delivered via the Citrix Receiver.
2. Shows a user self serving an App-V application subscription via Dazzle.
3. Demonstrates our ability to leverage Citrix Application Streaming side by side with App-V

Thanks for working on this Kurt!

http://www.citrix.com/tv/#video/787

Today Citrix and Microsoft announced an expanded Desktop Virtualization partnership. I'll let the announcement speak for itself and we'll start to release more specifics on the solution over time, but I did want to share my perspective. I think this is good for our customers because Citrix is enabling choice by allowing them to leverage existing or planned investments and extends the reach and usability of those investments. Let me attempt to clarify what I mean.

The reality is, that many customers use or need a combination App-V, Systems Center, Citrix Application Virtualization both online and offline. I always felt that this caused some artificial confusion about what to choose. For example if I need to stream 64 bit apps with Citrix technology, and I need to stream applications which have services via App-V technology then I can now do both side by side in an integrated fashion. Your existing investments (e.g. the sunk cost of packaging, sequencing, testing and validating the applications) are protected and you can plot your course as you see fit together with Citrix and Microsoft.

I know this question will come up so I will also answer it directly based on the data in front of me. Does this mean Citrix is stopping Application Virtualization development? Well, now that I have the advantage of having access to status reports I don't have to speculate anymore. I know for a fact that there are a number of enhancements that our development teams are working on, so these enhancements continue in preparation for the next XenApp release. Moving beyond just the next release of XenApp, we plan to continue to invest to enable delivery of Windows applications as a service.

I believe customers want uncomplicated, user-friendly products that simplify their lives. I know from experience that managing Desktop agent sprawl is a pain. Hence, later in 2009 App-V will be able to be plugged directly into the Citrix Receiver which will make things easier for our customers via the Receiver management framework. This will also enable more intelligent options, where via policy or connectivity one can determine the best place to determine application execution for a user, streamed or hosted. Certainly an area I am going to spend a lot of time thinking about. Additionally, Citrix Dazzle enables a new 'Pull' based interface that consumers are familiar with. Note, I don't just say it's a PNAgent replacement, I think it's a lot more if you grasp the real value. This enables a whole new delivery model, and innovative ways for IT to reach and empower it's customers that too often accuse IT of being slow and rigid. How much time is spent setting up user environments, getting inventory, reconciling and so on? By enabling user based self service, a whole new capability is available. Yes, Citrix will enable App-V to be delivered as a user self service via Dazzle, which I think will be cool, and combined with Merchandising Server, opens up the realm of the possible for delivering applications as a service. Extend these ideas out further into the Cloud and emerging license models, and I think enabling application delivery for the vast majority of applications that are Windows based to complement Desktop Virtualization is a huge deal.

In 2010 XenApp will have a connector to ConfigMgr. This means that you will be able to manage XenApp environments from the ConfigMgr console. We'll blog more on specifics on what features of XenApp management we will expose as we evolve the capability and how,  but for now it's reasonably safe to assume we will do things like publishing apps, advertise XenApp as collections etc.  The more important point right now is to understand that by leveraging XenApp, you will now be able to extend the reach of ConfigMgr to a more diverse set of platforms like Mac and Linux that may not be managed by ConfigMgr. Think of it as Citrix extending the depth of solutions that Microsoft is providing for our mutual customers.

I thought it would be fun to share some experiences from week one and some of the cool innovations I saw.
So as you can imagine, one of my first instincts, having been curious for so many years as a customer about why this, why that, reading speculation, I just had to find out! It was like I had just been given my driving license and could go anywhere. I am sure many of you know Brad Pedersen our Chief Architect, Citrix Fellow and father of ICA. It was simply awesome to have him answer so many of my historic questions, 'the inside scoop,' and spend hours brain storming about where we are/could-going/go and ME being able to shape that conversation now. I also realized that we don't hear about a lot of the unsung hero's of Citrix who are the current generation of brilliant minds here. There is some really cool stuff coming with power management, so watch this space, and some future ideas that I hope we gain traction on. There are some advanced management ideas that we are thinking about and upcoming features that will help simplify your lives. HDX/ICA will continue to get better and you will see some new capabilities in very near term releases of the protocol. I'm beginning to play with some of the future prototypes of Dazzle that I think will be really easy to use from a more diverse set of devices.

I discovered the best conference room names are in our UK offices, best example was 'Vain.'  Without the internal Citrix Wiki I would be lost, everything has a code name! It's like learning a new language. I have never been so spoiled for choice on which free soda or juice to drink. Wow, I saw people wearing shorts at work a shock to the system after Wall Street. I got a chance to spend time with Mark Templeton our CEO and many of the executive team. Prior, my interactions were watching them on stage, or brief encounters at Customer Council events. I am pleased to report they are not aliens, and are listening. I asked Mark if it was ok to disagree with him, and he promised to hit me if I didn't!

I had a great conversation with Martin Duursma who runs Citrix Labs and chairs our CTO office, where we really got into interesting future areas that are currently under research, including Cloud and Client Virtualization including Mobile devices. Some of previous work from Citrix Labs has worked it's way to product, think iPhone client. This device support is now becoming even broader, check out Keith Turnbull's blog on our upcoming Blackberry client.

I also developed a new found respect for the size of our product and how much it actually does to support a vast customer base. There is so much deep embedded knowledge in so many areas that is very hard to replicate. I don't think people on the outside really appreciate what it takes to deliver this stuff. Coupled with the fact that these teams get this space, I think we are very well positioned for the future.

So all of this is just week one, where I have spent most of my time with the XenApp team talking about futures. The great thing about being a Citrix CTO is that I get involved in providing guidance for the firm's technology direction across our product suite, so I am only beginning to scratch the surface. As I work with the rest of our portfolio teams, I can already see that we have so many pieces of the puzzle that will enable us to build innovative solutions for our customers.

I'll share more real time updates via Twitter

Hello World! This must be one of the strangest feelings I have had in my career, as for the first time I am now on the other side of the fence. My name is Harry Labana, it's a beautiful Sunday morning and after a crazy first week I am getting a chance to reflect on my first week at Citrix as the new CTO of the XenApp product group. So to begin, here's a little background to my story. I grew up in the UK of Indian decent and after working for a few years in the UK after University, I spent the last 13 years traveling the canyons of Wall Street with various firms, the last 9 of which have been as a Vice President with Goldman Sachs leading and working on numerous infrastructure, software development and management initiatives.

In particular, I have focused very heavily in the Windows world, and have been through the gamut of real world challenges this brings. From software distribution/packaging, OS upgrades, provisioning, software development, server/application/client virtualization, migrations/integrations, fair share of disasters, hardware, remote access, hosted applications and of course virtual desktops- I think I got most of it - I have been beaten into understanding the realities of execution responsibility at global scale. Fortunately, over the last few years I've also had the opportunity to work with many of the leading established vendors and emerging startups in the Application and Desktop virtualization industry and this has allowed me to learn from smart people with so many perspectives. By virtue of working in financial services, I've also been able to refine these perspectives by talking with investors, analysts and bankers in this space which has equipped me to be a VERY vocal Citrix Customer Council member for a number of years. So I guess Citrix had enough and decided to allow me to help chart their future direction, which is an immensely exciting opportunity, for which I am grateful and where I hope to make a difference by bringing a seasoned customer perspective.

As I reflect on what's happened in our industry over the years, a key observation is how I have seen Citrix technologies evolve from the early adoption days in the 90's as a band aid solution, to many customers now using Citrix as a strategic delivery platform and even greater numbers now considering the technology for the very first time. It is these early customer thought leaders that have done some really amazing things with the technology and enabled us to become a 1.6 billion dollar company by creating so much value for their clients. It seems to me that we are now also at the early stages of the next innovation cycle and early adopters are catching on. I recall sitting at a Synergy session in Houston last year where the topic was a discussion on Desktop Virtualization. I remember what felt like a cynical question about who's actually doing this and a call for a raise of hands. There was silence in the room and I got a nudge from one of my former team mates, and I raised my hand. I won't get into details, but the point is that I think customer thought leaders have and will continue to innovate and find use cases and solutions that we have not even conceived of yet because they are looking to build competitive advantage for their firms because they are driven by an opportunistic mentality that looks beyond teething constraints. Over time this innovation diffuses to the masses, and that's ok in many cases and lost opportunity for others. Working with customers and the broader community, I am convinced that we will continue to evolve our products to enable broader adoption of our technology stack so customers can solve real world problems.   

As I alluded to, I think it's very easy to play cynic, and I could have easily written an article about stuff many vendors can't do or theorize what will happen or what will not happen. I have learned that to build real world solutions requires skill, experience, judgment and the courage to reach out to customers and users who want to be part of the solution. I hope that many of you will be comfortable reaching out to me harry.labana@citrix.com and telling me what you really think as we build upon our current success and evolve our story. I promise I will incorporate your views into my thinking even if I don't agree.