Blog posts tagged with 'microsoft'

Citrix is all about virtualization. They have a suite of tools that enable IT departments to virtualize almost everything. Citrix is a Microsoft Certified Partner and, to some extent, a competitor. How does this Partner Competitor relationship work? Microsoft is very interested in virtualization technologies and with the advent of our hypervisor technology, HyperV, and application virtualization software, SoftGrid, you can bet that we'll compete hard with other virtualization vendors.

Here, we meet Simon Crosby, formerly of XenSource now working for Citrix (Citrix purchased XenSource). We discuss the relationship between Microsoft and Citrix, the complexities of building scalable, sercure, reliable and performant virtualization technologies and the future of virtualization. It's a very interesting conversation and Simon is quite the conversationalist. Enjoy.

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla.-- Today, Citrix Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ:CTXS), the global leader in application delivery infrastructure, announced it has won the 2008 Microsoft Partner of the Year Global ISV - Infrastructure Special Recognition award. This award recognizes the global independent software vendor (ISV) for superior technology, delivering innovative infrastructure solutions based on Microsoft platforms.

Microsoft also honored Citrix with its Partner of the Year award for Citizenship for the company's collaborative work on behalf of the Traditional Area of Ashanti-Agogo, Ghana, Africa to provide an infrastructure and training, allowing local residents access to applications and the Internet for the first time.

Building on an almost 20-year relationship, the 2008 Microsoft Partner of the Year Global ISV - Infrastructure award is a testament to the strength and commitment the two companies have in bringing solutions to market that benefit their mutual and respective customers. Over the past year, Citrix and Microsoft have reinvented their already broad relationship in application virtualization to include server and desktop virtualization, creating a complete end-to-end virtualization solution from the datacenter to the desktop that leverages technology from both companies.

"It is a privilege to be honored by Microsoft with these prestigious awards. It is clear evidence that the strength of our relationship and joint go-to-market strategies are benefiting our mutual customers across an increasingly broad set of product lines," said Mark Templeton, president and chief executive officer of Citrix Systems. "After almost 20 years of building and nurturing our relationship with Microsoft, we remain more committed than ever to creating IT infrastructure solutions that leverage Microsoft technologies as platforms for innovation."

Continue at Source: Citrix.com

I'm truly impressed with Microsoft Live Mesh services, it's an awesome approach to cloud computing, however, the service relies on RDP and we all know RDP is not fine tuned for HPRD (high-performance remote desktop).

I'm showing on this screencast a comparison of GoToMyPC and Live Mesh Remote Desktop side by side, and I add my thoughts on how Microsoft can partner with Citrix to deliver superior quality for this unique platform.





cheers,

Gus Pinto
Microsoft MVP - Virtualization
Twitter.com/GusPinto

In order to learn more and help improve our Citrix Technology Professional award, I got together with the father of the Microsoft MVP Program, a true hero to all MVPs around the world. I'm talking about Sean O'Driscoll. Sean is the General Manager for Community Support and MVP Program at Microsoft and I asked a few questions to the guy who made Microsoft MVP so valuable.

He was kind enough to stop by and chat with us right after his keynote on the MVP Summit 2008. Luckily Rich taped it all so we could share it with you guys.

Check out Sean's website:
http://communitygrouptherapy.com/

regards,
Gus Pinto

GUS PINTO: It's noticeable the steady growth of conversations around virtualization within organizations and in the Internet today, more specifically around server and desktop virtualization.

Microsoft is readying up Hyper-V, and a lot of technologies to allow these technologies to actually happen for the large enterprise. It's going into market in partnership with Citrix and its Xen Hypervisor.

I guess the question is, what is your true feeling about virtualization in the enterprise on the server and desktop base? Is this just really hype or is this something you guys truly believe is going to happen?

RAY OZZIE: No, it's absolutely fundamental. It is absolutely going to happen.

I would say you have to take desktops separately. The logic behind virtualization on the desktop is completely separate from what it would be on the server, and in some ways it's different within the on-premises world versus the cloud. So, I'll just touch upon those independently.

Before I do that, though, let me just say that from a TS perspective, Terminal Server based deployment will always be more efficient than virtualization. It was a designed-in, multi-tenant model within the OS. So, if there are applications and solutions that fit the TS model, that's just a terrific model to use, and I would encourage organizations to use that model.

Within the enterprise, virtualization, the simplest and most straightforward way is to just make the best use of the datacenter resources that you can from a consolidation perspective. This is we are absolutely taking it seriously.

There are two phases of that consolidation. Phase one is bringing things together, meaning if you have a scale-up cluster or a scale-up, some expensive configuration of hardware, how can you package much usage on that piece of hardware as you can? The other one is then movement of images amongst the different machines within the back-end. You'll see investments progressively from us in both of those realms.

Taken to the extreme within the cloud, virtualization is absolutely critical. Virtualization is key to making the best use and securely isolating properties from multiple customers that might not use even a full inexpensive CPU, and moving them geographically or whatever to provide resilience and robustness. So, it is something that's extremely important.

On the client I'll only say that the uses of it, the way that the Mac uses it to run Windows and stuff, it's clever. Parallels, they're very clever technologies.

The way that you'll see us take advantage of it over time more and more on the client is our mechanisms around ensuring compatibility. App compat is a very, very challenging thing, and you want to continue to make progress with the operating system. We look to it as another tool in the toolbox to try to help in the compat world without -- enabling innovation while still enabling assurance of compatibility.

~snip~

I will be posting the Video with Q&A shortly.

Gus Pinto - Technology Evangelist
Microsoft MVP | gus.pinto@citrix.com

Microsoft and Citrix Evangelists hang out in Redmond on the Channel 9 - Code Trip bus and showing off their wicked cool gadgets!

Rock On!!!
Gus Pinto

P.S. For more stuff on our visit to Microsoft and MVP Summit 2008 check out Frameworkx.com

So if you see down bellow Rich pointed out that we are going to be in Seattle and Redmond next week attending the Annual Microsoft MVP Summit.

As Rich pointed out the event is 100% NDA, and we won't be able to share minimum if anything from what's being talked about with the general public.

However you can still make a different, having us be your voice during the meetings by sending us your questions and comments that we can relay to the Microsoft Terminal Services Group.

So if you could ask anything to the guys who are responsible for Terminal Services at Microsoft, what questions would you ask?

cheers,
Gus

Microsoft and Citrix are hosting a killer virtualization seminar in The City on the 21^st of April.

I highly recommend all of you tech dudes in the bay area to get in the loop and learn more about Virtualization technologies today and the road ahead.

Here's the schedule for the day:

Oh yeah, I almost forgot that attendees could win an 80 GB Zune!