Tim Greene over at Network World has just posted a great article titled The ABCs of WAN Optimization Savings. The article walks through the various functions of today's WAN optimization devices and how these technologies add up to big savings for IT. Citrix is singled out in the article for our dominance in speeding up virtual desktops and applications, something we have offered since delivering ICA acceleration with Branch Repeater 5 back in February.

As part of the HDX technology framework, Branch Repeater includes a suite of WAN optimization technologies that have been adapted for virtual environments. Since the underlying WAN optimization technologies are discussed in the Network World article, I will explain how Branch Repeater is unique in applying these to accelerate and optimize virtual desktops and applications.

Compression and caching - By default, XenApp compresses all ICA traffic to optimize individual user sessions. Branch Repeater automatically negotiates with XenApp to disable the native ICA compression in order to cache common graphics and data locally in the branch and compress traffic across multiple user sessions. Branch Repeater is the only WAN optimization solution that can inspect the ICA virtual channel to help determine whether to store cached data objects in memory or on disk. This helps to minimize latency for interactive traffic (screen updates, mouse movements) while maximizing compression ratios for bulk transfers within ICA (printing, file transfers).

TCP acceleration - Like any TCP-based traffic, ICA performance can suffer due to high latency and packet loss common on long distance WAN connections. Branch Repeater overcomes these issues with adaptive TCP flow control that senses these conditions and responds by optimizing TCP behavior.

QoS and traffic prioritization - In many networks, ICA shares the wire with other bandwidth hungry applications. Network congestion can 'starve out' ICA traffic causing slow and inconsistent performance. Branch Repeater prioritizes traffic and allocates bandwidth to ensure reliable, high-performance for virtual desktops and applications. However, not all data transmitted within ICA should receive equal priority. For instance, interactive screen data should be prioritized above print jobs. To address such conflicts, Branch Repeater provides the only ICA-aware QoS engine that can granularly allocate bandwidth based on virtual channel priority tags.

Branch Repeater ICA acceleration goes beyond optimizing each of these core technologies for virtual desktop and application delivery. Virtual environments tend to be far more dynamic and flexible than traditional enterprise applications. For this reason, Branch Repeater is fully integrated with XenApp and other HDX technologies to apply the right mix of optimizations for every scenario over any network. And since many of the techniques involve peering inside the ICA session, Branch Repeater works with native ICA encryption (Basic and Advanced RC-5) so there is no compromise to end-to-end security.

The Network World article wraps up by suggesting that businesses consider WAN optimization gear when deploying new applications. Rolling the cost of WAN optimization into a larger IT project - such as desktop virtualization - can be a cost-effective way to pay for the solution. So if you are considering deploying virtual desktops (VDI) in your organization, be sure to include Branch Repeater as part of your plans.

I recently tried the newly released XenApp Plug-in for Mac, previously known as Mac ICA client.

Overall I had a good experience with it. It's simpler to use and feels more like native applications than earlier version.

Here are a few things I learned that you may find useful:

• This XenApp Plug-in contains a new component called Dazzle. Dazzle is an application that allows you to "install" your favorite published applications so that you can launch them easily later just like native applications.

• Dazzle doesn't however launch published applications.

• Launching from Web Interface from browser is still supported.

• Dazzle relies on XenApp Services (previously known as PNAgent service). Please make sure you provide PNAgent URL not Web Interface URL when asked about server address.

• Once you click the add button next to a published application in Dazzle, an application shortcut is placed in /Application/Dazzle folder. Then you can treat the application just like any other locally installed applications. You can launch it from that folder or drag it to the dock for example. At first I was not sure what happened when I clicked the add button.

My wish:

The published applications, once "installed", behave very much like native applications. One thing that is missing still though is the ability to drag a file from a finder window to a published application. For example, I would love to attach a local file to published Outlook by dragging the file and drop it into the outlook window.

There are certain behaviors of Dazzle that I wish were different. But once I learn how to use it properly, it is not a problem for me since I don't have a need to use Dazzle often. It's more like an installer for me. What's most important to me is the experience of actually using my favorite published applications.

Overall, I am happy with the improvements. Keep up the good work Mac team!

You can find another review by Orestes with pictures here.

Try the new the new Plug-in (client) now.

You can download it from here

I'd love to hear your comments and your experience. I will be happy to relay the feedbacks to the team who developed this release. If you are seeking help with an issue, I'd recommend posting it to this forum and leave a link to it in your comment so that I and others can better help you.

Ray (Ruiguo) Yang
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The issue

Many people have encountered problems with clipboard (cut and paste) not working in Citrix XenApp ( formerly Presentation server/Metaframe) environment.

The cause

A not well behaving non-Citrix application can interfere with clipboard operation and cause problems with XenApp. A complete fix would require changes to the windows operating system.

Workaround exists but has limitations.

My colleague Dmitry Vostokov wrote a tool called RepairCBDChain to work around the issue. It works, but it is not easy to use, especially for end users.

A fix was incorporated in XenApp plugin (client)

Back in 2005 when I was still in Engineering department, I started tacking this problem. I found it a challenging but fun problem to solve since I can't modify bad third party applications nor the operating system. And the problem happens intermittently.

After quite some effort, I found a way to allow the XenApp Plugin to detect broken clipboard and fix it automatically. I was happy and thought my job was done.

Here is the detailed information about the fix. The fix has been included in XenApp plugin (client) since 2005 version 9.100.

Our internal tests showed that the fix was effective. Some people in our support forum and blog have also reported successful use of my fix.

http://forums.citrix.com/thread.jspa?threadID=57670&tstart=0
http://forums.citrix.com/thread.jspa?threadID=88284&tstart=0
http://community.citrix.com/x/l4TeAQ

The fix is disabled by default unfortunately and was not well publicized.

The story didn't end though. To reduce potential side effects, the feature was disabled by default. I didn't agree with the decision but went alone. Unfortunately, the fix was buried in long release notes and not well publicized. As a result, not many people seem to know about the fix, including even XenApp experts. For example please see the comment section of this blog dated 2008 . And this blog. Another evidence is that RepairCBDChain is still one of the top downloaded knowledge base articles recently. I am disappointed that users haven't benefited as much from my hard work as they should have been.

Should it be enabled by default now?

I wonder if this fix should be enabled by default now. After all, what good is a fix if people don't know how to take advantage of it? In my opinion, the fix doesn't have much risk. If it does have bad side effects, after all these years, people would have reported problems with the fix already. What do you think?

Related articles.

Citrix KB articles about clipboard issues
http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX104631

Articles about RepairCBDChain tool.

http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX106226

http://www.dumpanalysis.org/blog/index.php/2007/06/21/repair-clipboard-chain-201/

http://www.dumpanalysis.org/blog/index.php/2006/12/09/clipboard-issues-explained/

Jeff's blog about clipboard in general.
http://citrixblogger.org/2007/05/27/the-citrix-clipboard-part-i/
http://citrixblogger.org/2007/05/30/the-citrix-clipboard-part-ii/

Ray (Ruiguo) Yang
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HDX MediaStream does a fantastic job of reducing the network bandwidth requirements for streamed video compared with rending the video on the server. When using HDX MediaStream your bandwidth requirements roughly equal the bit rate of the source video file. For lower quality clips, like those found on YouTube, this is around 256Kbps. For full HD content the bandwidth requirements can be as high as 8Mbps.

While this works great over a high speed LAN, trying to push that amount of data over typical branch office T-1 is another story. This problem is magnified even more when you have multiple users in the branch office who are repeatedly pulling down the same video content. In this situation, the video quality suffers and other business applications can be impacted. This issue has nothing to do with XenApp or XenDesktop. It is purely a function of the size of video file and the limited amount of available network bandwidth.

What can you do about this? Well if the culprit is the latest viral video making its way around the Internet you could attempt to block access to sites like YouTube. However, what if the video is for legitimate business purposes? I talked to one customer at Synergy who is rolling out a corporate compliance training video to their entire company using XenApp but is worried about the impact to network bandwidth.

Enter Citrix Branch Repeater and HDX IntelliCache. With Branch Repeater 5 we now participate in the ICA session and accelerate the ICA virtual channel used by HDX MediaStream. The first time the video is streamed to the branch office, Branch Repeater caches the content locally. The next time the video is requested, Branch Repeater serves the content from its local cache rather than pulling it across the WAN. Using branch caching, you can reduce the bandwidth requirements for on-demand videos by up to 90%.

Don't just take my word for it. You can see a demo if this in action on the latest edition of Brian Madden TV. (If you don't want to watch the entire episode you can jump ahead to 5:49 into the clip).

Have you seen the error "You have chosen not to trust XXX Server CA, the issuer of the server's security certificate (SSL error 61)." on Citrix Linux Plugin for XenApp (formerly known as ICA client)? It may be because the certificate authority from whom you get your server certificate is not trusted by your client.

I've got questions from users about this error. And I've made a request to product team to mitigate this issue. Please see comments from my earlier blog.

There are articles you can find on the Internet which describe a solution. However some users found videos more helpful than text only version. So I decided to create a video version of it.

You will need to download the right certificates. If you have questions, you may want to ask your server administrators or your certificate authorities who issue your server certificates. Alternatively you may be able to export the certificates you need from your firefox browser on the same Linux machine.

Here is an article I found that contains useful text based instruction and has a script that automates the process. You may need to customize the script to fit your needs.

I hope in the future, the product team can find ways to mitigate this issue. One step is to trust more certificate authorities by default. It's not difficult to implement. But I was told it might require some legal work to redistribute certificates from third parties. Another possibility is to share the trust with Firefox which will require more develop work. What do you think? Do you know how other Linux applications solve this issue?

Here is my earlier blog that explains how to install and use Linux ICA client.

I'd love to hear your feedbacks.

Ray (Ruiguo) Yang
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Does your organization deliver virtual applications to the branch office over a sloooow WAN link?
Are you tired of trying to fix all of your WAN issues with a bigger and more expensive WAN connection?

There has to be a better solution...
Citrix Branch Repeater and XenApp work in concert to deliver a "high-definition" branch office experience, drastically improving the XenApp experience to branch office users. Using Citrix HDXTechnology, Branch Repeater and HDX IntelliCache adaptively orchestrate with XenApp to disable the native ICA compression used for optimizing single-user sessions.

Just how much better?

• Branch Repeater reduces XenApp traffic by up to 95 percent, increasing file transfer throughput by up to 20 times and increasing print traffic throughput by up to 33 times.
• Together these enhancements allow customers to serve up to 4x more XenApp users in each branch without upgrading bandwidth.

Learn more about ICA Optimization, how to deploy the components, and see the High Definition branch experience yourself in this exciting demo, which can also be found on the Branch Repeater demo page of Citrix.com.

This is a follow up to my earlier blog.

Do you wish to use your iPhone to access Flash based applications? So far you are out of luck. According to the recent news article from CNET, "Flash 10 coming to most smartphones in 2010". And iPhone is not on the list.

But why wait? With the upcoming Citrix receiver for iPhone, you will be able to run Flash based applications not only from iPhone but also from many other popular mobile devices. Initially the focus will be to support business applications.

The Citrix technology also adds another additional layer of security by only transmitting the display to the mobile devices. A typical flash based business intelligence report may contain sensitive data. If downloaded directly to a mobile device, the data may be vulnerable to leaks. For business users,the added security may be important.

Here is a quick preview of what is to come.

Here is the iPhone friendly version

A business intelligence application is demonstrated above. You can find the demo application at this Adobe web site.

If you know any Flash enabled web application/sites that may be useful when accessed from iPhone, could you let me know by posting comments?

Please check out our iPhone project community site for more details.

Ray (Ruiguo) Yang
Check out my other blogs

A key strategic concept that guides the Citrix Multimedia Virtualization Initiative (project Apollo) is "SmartRendering". This term describes the intelligent, automated combination of server-side and client-side rendering of graphics and media streams. SmartRendering considers such factors as the attributes of the application, the capabilities of the client and the server, and the characteristics of the network, to ensure an optimal user experience and the most efficient use of computing resources.

Many exciting new developments lie ahead as we extend SmartRendering to how we will deliver Aero desktops (introduced in Vista and enhanced in Microsoft's upcoming Windows 7 release with "Aero Peek"), next generation applications (such as data visualization applications built on Windows Presentation Foundation), Flash videos (including HD videos rendered with Adobe's H.264 codec) and 3D professional graphics (OpenGL and DirectX).

Although SmartRendering is a technology with lots of innovation and evolution still to come, it already plays an important part in how XenApp and XenDesktop deliver multimedia/graphics content in our currently shipping releases. Our software continually monitors the network and dynamically adjusts how it sends data to the client. And it constantly makes decisions about how best to render the GDI/GDI+ graphics used in most applications today. Often, SmartRendering will send GDI commands over the wire to be rendered by the graphics processor (GPU) on the client device, offloading the server to maximize scalability. In other cases, SmartRendering will determine that it is more efficient to render the graphics on the server and send a compressed bitmap image over the wire, with SuperCaching to eliminate redundant transmissions.

SpeedScreen Multimedia Acceleration, based on Citrix's RAVE technology and included with XenApp since Presentation Server 3.0 (introduced in 2004), also employs SmartRendering. If the user's device is capable of decoding a video using its own resources, SpeedScreen Multimedia Acceleration leverages the client's CPU and the appropriate codec, with automatic fallback to server-side rendering when needed. The result is a high definition user experience and outstanding server scalability. Very soon, you'll see this feature in XenDesktop, too, and supported by our Linux plugin (client) for both XenApp and XenDesktop.

Other vendors are starting to implement similar techniques. Wyse offers TCX Multimedia and has announced its Collaborative Processing Architecture which "intelligently divides the workload between the server and client, reducing the need for larger servers". And Microsoft's upcoming Windows Server 2008 R2 release will deliver multimedia content "by redirecting multimedia files and streams so that audio and video content is sent in its original format from the server to the (Windows 7) client and rendered using the client's local media playback capabilities."

In an upcoming blog post, I plan to show you a video demonstration of a new SmartRendering capability now under development at Citrix that leverages a DirectX 9 or better graphics processor on the endpoint for client-side rendering of the full Aero desktop experience. And it doesn't require Vista or Windows 7 on the user's device. So stay tuned because SmartRendering is going to get even more powerful!

Derek Thorslund
Product Strategist, Multimedia Virtualization

Do you wish to use your iPhone to access Silverlight enabled web sites? Silverlight is growing in popularity. Check out the Silverlight showcase.

While currently iPhone doesn't support Silverlight natively, you will soon be able to view Silverlight powered cool web sites via Citrix Receiver for iPhone. Here is a quick preview of what is to come.

Did I forget iPhone doesn't support Flash? Here is an iPhone friendly version. I will blog about Flash on iPhone soon.

A business intelligence application is demonstrated above. You can find the demo application here.

Some Silverlight applications will work better on iPhone than others. But at least you have an option to use them now. Citrix also enabled opportunities to optimize Silverlight enabled web sites for iPhone. More on that later.

If you know any Silverlight enabled web application/sites that may be useful when accessed from iPhone, could you let me know by posting comments?

Please check out our iPhone project community site for more details.

Ray (Ruiguo) Yang
Check out my other blogs

This has come up a few times now, most often on Brian's blog (for instance here and here): XenDesktop uses ICA to deliver virtual desktops to endpoint devices, so why doesn't it have the same capabilities as XenApp?

Before I go into details on the differences in capabilities of XenApp and XenDesktop, just a few words on the technical background: "ICA" is a rather wide-ranging concept. If you look at the details, it includes of a fairly low level "core" that deals with concepts such as capability negotation and security of the data stream. Most of the "interesting stuff", such as graphics, drive mapping, etc is handled through virtual channels built on top of this core protocol. You can envisage a virtual channel as a direct connection between a piece of software on the client and on the server, and the data sent between these components is tunneled through the ICA connection. So ICA both provides a backbone, and on top of that many of the "ICA" features are in fact fairly independent pieces that use the core ICA protocol as a communication pipe.

What does this mean for XenDesktop? Well, of course the ICA stack in XenDesktop inherits heavily from XenApp (Jeff has blogged on this extensively, and Brian has a more detailed analysis too). But the underlying infrastructure is very different: XenApp builds on top of Terminal Services, while XenDesktop uses basic OS APIs. This means that some XenApp features that are intricately linked to the Terminal Services platform, like shadowing, are by no means a straight: "just recompile this for Windows Vista and it'll work". Instead, we had to re-code some features from scratch in a way that's different from, but compatible with XenApp. All this takes time, and that's the main reason we had to prioritize which features were shipped in the first version of XenDesktop. In addition, since we were re-working some aspects, it also meant that we had the opportunity to incorporate some innovations and enhancements, such as extended support for multiple monitors and - coming soon - support for USB devices.

Now looking through the limitations listed in the technical FAQ, here is a bit more background:

• Kerberos SSPI: For this feature to be really useful you will typically have to mark the computer that your end users connect to as "trusted for delegation". While that may be ok for a relatively small number of well managed XenApp server, it's less clear that you'd want to do this for thousands of virtual desktops, where your users may have full admin rights. Moreover, Windows XP doesn't support constrained delegation, which makes this a less attractive solution. Lastly, from a technical point of view this feature integrates deeply with the logon process, and this is one area where XenApp and XenDesktop differ considerably. As a result of all of these reasons, we did not prioritize this for the initial release.
• SmartCards: this is a very important feature for a relatively small, but vocal target market. Again, from a technical point of view it is far from a straight port from XenApp. There are some unique considerations for virtual desktops, the applications that reside on them, and the apps that might be hosted on XenApp. Having said that, it is a very high priority item and we are working on delivering it as soon as possible.
• SpeedScreen: SpeedScreen is a term that refers to a large array of technologies that optimize the end user experience. The first version of XenDesktop shipped with support for the majority of SS features, including SS Browser Acceleration, SS Image Acceleration, SS Progressive Display. Now for the features that didn't make the cut: SS Multimedia Acceleration and the ability to change the quality of Flash based on bandwidth were unfortunately too late to make it into the first release, but we are well under way with it now. The situation is less clear with SS Zero Latency - XenDesktop already supports mouse click feedback, but keyboard type-ahead is a technology that is not terribly easy to set up, and can be tricky to get working with more recent applications that you would typically find on a virtual desktop; furthermore the bulk of the other SpeedScreen features already provide a highly optimized end user experience in high-latency environments. As a result, for now we are assessing how we can best make additional functionality available on XenDesktop.
• PDA Sync and Twain: again, these are fairly tied to the Terminal Services infrastructure on XenApp and we made the decision to take a little more time to do handle these devices (and others beside them) in a more compatible and user-friendly manner through our upcoming USB remoting technology in XenDesktop - look for this soon. This is one of those areas where it just didn't make sense to simply replicate what we had done in the past, and instead make an overall improvement.
• Shadowing: as I mentioned before, on XenApp this is based off Terminal Services capabilities that just aren't available to us in XenDesktop. Subscription advantage for XenDesktop Platinum comes with Citrix GotoAssist, which is a more complete replacement for shadowing, or you can also use the built-in Remote Assistance feature built into Windows for a premise-based solution. We also have plans to support shadowing functionality in future, but with the available alternatives, customers are still able to achieve the same capability.
• SmartAuditor: SmartAuditor is used by a relatively small customer segment, and thus wasn't among the highest priority items for a first XenDesktop release. There has been quite a lot of prep work for this already, and I am confident that we'll include this in one of the future XenDesktop releases.
• Audio on Vista: this is a rather complex area technically - Vista's audio architecture differs fundamentally from that used in Windows XP, and we need to completely re-implement the audio framework in PortICA to support Vista. This effort is nearing completion now. The good news is that we will be able to take advantage of this rework to integrate much better audio codecs in future and improve user experience with audio significantly.
• Perfmon Counters and User Experience Metrics: again lack of support for these metrics was due to resource constraints, and there are only minor technical difficulties to make them available on XenDesktop.

I hope this post has helped to give you an idea of the differences between XenDesktop and XenApp - and that we're not standing still here, but working as fast as we can to deliver an ICA stack that has full parity - and in some cases additional improvements - when compared with XenApp. Keep in mind that it took many, many years to add all these capabilities on top of the core ICA protocol, and we've accomplished quite a bit already and are closing in on several more. Most importantly, hopefully this dispels the myth that there is anything  fundamental that would prohibit us from making it the equal of XenApp ICA.

(Note: I updated this post to clarify and extend on a few of these items and to highlight where XenDesktop's ICA capabilities exceed that of XenApp, including support for higher multi-monitor resolutions. And as was pointed out: perhaps this article should instead be titled "Why ICA is ICA after all ".)

I've been working on the ICA on iPhone project recently and I had to move a new build from my development machine to my test server frequently. At first I tried RDP. But it is painfully slow to copy my binary to the test server for me. Then I tried ICA and it worked much better. The experience made me appreciate the efficiency of ICA more.

Seeing is believing, I've captured my experience in a video. If you use client drive mapping, you might be interested in checking out this video.

Dicscover more Citrix related videos at the Citrix utipu video site

Ray Yang

Check out my other blogs

AutoDesk and Citrix Tips and Tricks Part 4

Here is a video demo of how to apply Autodesk AutoCAD Map 3D 2009 on XenApp post installation script.

Dicscover more Citrix related videos at the Citrix utipu video site

For more information and download the script, please visit the following link

 http://community.citrix.com/display/xa/Autodesk+AutoCAD+Map+3D+2009+on+XenApp+post+installation+script

Tip:

• You can find a log with details about the execution of the scripts in the user profile directory named AutodeskForCitrix.log
• The template directory in which the information is saved has to exist before running the scripts
• Change the batch files to use a different directory to save information. Network share is supported
• Run the apply script automatically whenever a user logs in

Please see my blogs for the complete series.

Ray Yang

AutoDesk and Citrix Tips and Tricks Part 3

How to publish AutoCAD Map3D 2009 on XenApp

Here is  a short demo of publishing AutoCAD Map3D 2009 as a published application on XenApp.

Dicscover more Citrix related videos at the Citrix utipu video site

Tip: publish executable acad.exe

How to change published Map3D 2009 icon

When you use the default settings to publish AutoCAD Map 3D 2009 on XenApp, the icon associated with this published application is different from the official blue icon the installation placed on the desktop. This short demo shows how to associate the right icon with the published application.

Tip: get the icon file location from the desktop shortcut property.

Please see my blogs for the complete series.

Ray Yang

To start with, here is a short demo video of how to install AutoCAD Map3D 2009 on XenApp I created.

Discover more Citrix related videos at the Citrix utipu video site

Note that AutoCAD Map3D 2009 requires you to use network based license which is not default option. If you don't read the installation guide carefully, you can mistakenly take the default option.  If the wrong model (standalone license) is chosen, at most two users can connect concurrently. And there is no easy way to change the license model after installation is completed. Initially I made the mistake of choosing the default option and had to re-install .

Please see my blogs for the complete series.

Ray Yang

I've been working with AutoDesk for a while to ensure AutoDesk products can work well with Citrix products and create new solutions.

I'd like to share what I learned with the community. Thus I am creating this tips and tricks series to cover all things that are related to AutoDesk and Citrix. I will try to cover mainly technical information, tips and tricks. But I may include other useful information as well.

Many thanks to everyone who helped with this on-going effort!

If you would like to hear more about certain aspects of AutoDesk and Citrix related solutions, please leave comments on my blog. I'd love to hear from you.

Ray Yang

XenApp and XenDesktop provide the means for users to access their Apps and Desktops from a wide variety of platforms and devices. At Citrix our vision is to create a world where anyone can work and play from anywhere. Mobility is not new to Citrix. There are XenApp clients available today for Windows Mobile and Symbian devices, but small form factor devices have had their challenges. Slow, unreliable wireless networks, small screens and awkward user input models have relegated hand held access to small and highly specialized market segments. But that's all about to change.

The latest generation of hand held devices with their large, high definition screens and the availability of high-speed wireless networks are changing the game in a big way! A hand held device such as an iphone connected to XenApp via a high-speed 3G network yields a remarkably usable experience.

While serious content creation might have to wait for an external keyboard and monitor, consuming content like reviewing a spreadsheet or a patients records and simple tasks like approving an expense report are quite frictionless. And because you're accessing your content via XenApp and XenDesktop your access is fast and reliable and you never need to worry about your valuable data being compromised if you misplace or loose your phone.

I've been fielding quite a few inquiries lately about our strategy and plans for the iPhone. I thought it was time to let everyone know where we are and where we're going. The guys on our Mac development team in Chalfont, UK have just recently finished porting the core XenApp engine over to the iPhone platform. This was a great deal of work and the guys have done a brilliant job.

As you can see, pretty cool, but we still have quite a bit of work to do. During the next stage of the project we will be crafting a user experience that provides a natural, transparent and effortless user interface in keeping with the high standards set by our friends at Apple.

It's tough to say at this stage when we would have something that we could share with you but I promise if you watch this space we will provide regular updates on our progress and schedules as they reveal themselves.

Its the continuous and enthusiastic feedback we have collected from you all that has helped get this project off the ground. If you haven't done so already please check out Chris Fleck's iPhone blog and cast your vote.

Al-

 A few of us were having a brainstorm session recently regarding the ICA client, mobility and device support, inevitably the discussion led to the topic of competing priorities, limited resources, and business cases. Al Granville ( sometimes affectionately referred to as the " suit " in the blogosphere ) is the Product Manager for the ICA client and has the enviable position of driving what features and functions get included ( and which ones don't ). Nowadays you can't talk about mobility without the topic of support for the iPhone and where that fits versus all the other priorities. If you also want Citrix iPhone support please place your vote and tell us your use case here. Typically this analysis means doing a market analysis, talking to customers and developing a business case comparing all the alternatives and determining the ROI. During this discussion however, Al made the profound statement that maybe in this situation the business case simply needs to say  ...   it's the iPhone.. Stupid !  

This brings up a really interesting point that IT also seems to be dealing with lately, that is what is the value of new and "cool " and do you spend resources to enable these technologies. It could be the iPhone or it could be Web 2.0 collaboration tools or desktop video conferencing, whatever. Sometimes it's straight forward to put an ROI and business case together, however quantifying the value of "cool" is subjective at best. Apple as the best example has done a superb job proving that elegant design, user experience, and "cool " is a profitable business model. This certainly has proven to be the case in the consumer world, but it's also evident that this is impacting the business IT world as well, at least from the perspective of user expectations. I am interested to know if this phenomena is also impacting IT's decision process for implementing new projects.  

What criteria does your IT organization use for evaluating new projects ?	Choose
Business requirements, ROI, and compliance only
The above plus,  Executive mandates
The above plus,  User productivity and desires ( like iPhone support )
The above plus,  Does the new IT technology provide a competitive advantage

As you may have seen in previous blog discussions some of us are very keen on the idea of a device that goes beyond the existing smartphone limitations of small screens and keyboards. The ability to connect to XenApp - XenDesktop from a phone and view it ( & use it ) on a large screen is now possible. This pic shows the Nirvana Phone concept with an iMate 6150 and a standard monitor and BT keyboard. We are not at Nirvana yet, but these devices make it visible we are getting closer.

Do you ever go on trips and wish you could leave your laptop home?	Choose
All the time
Occasionally
Wishfull thinking ..

Let us know of other candidates for the Nirvana Phone, and what you think is still missing.

If you are interested in running ICA client on Linux, I've created two short videos showing the step by step instructions. Unlike windows ICA client, installing Linux version of ICA client requires more steps although it is relatively straight forward after you watch the video I hope. I used Ubuntu Linux as an example. Other Linux distributions may work slightly differently.

How to install ICA client

How to use ICA client

Click here to see all of my videos.

Here is my earlier blog that is related to installing ICA client on Ubuntu. 

I hope you find the videos useful. Love to hear your feedbacks. For example, your experience with other Linux distributions will be interesting.

Acknowledgment:

I found many articles on the Internet about installing ICA client on Linux. Here are some good examples I referenced

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/CitrixICAClientHowTo 

http://bin-false.org/?p=13

http://www.hanckmann.net/?q=node/13 

Ray Yang

       Update **

Running Windows applications on the iPhone may not be a high priority for Steve Jobs, but for many IT users and providers the desire seems to be increasing. The recent SDK and upcoming release of the Apple 3G iPhone has increased the interest in Citrix enabling iPhone access to XenApp hosted Windows applications. We are always encouraging expanded access to XenApp from any suitable device and the iPhone appears to be a very good candidate. The great screen and touch features would provide usable viewing of apps even though they were designed for bigger screens. Plus the improved email and networking capability of the device can now make it a real contender for business use. The iPhone could be even be the " Nirvana Phone " if a new docking station was offered to provide video access to a full sized monitor plus a standard keyboard.

So the question is one of priority and market demand, where does this fit on the list of nice to have vs. must have now, and does the solution need to come from Citrix or could it be partner provided such as the Rove Mobile client for BlackBerry. We encourage your opinions and feedback.

Do you need a Citrix client for the iPhone ?	Choose
I want it for myself
I need it for my company users ( and myself )
Cool, but my company is not likely to enable it

What is the primary iPhone use case at your company ?	Choose
EMR - Patient records, view and update.
CRM - Customer records, view and update.
ERP - Process workflows, approvals, etc.
Documents - Find, view, edit, forward.
Specific line of business app

** Update 11/1/08

Yes, we are listening, and yes we are going to ship a Citrix Receiver for the iPhone ! Mark Templeton demonstrated our latest internal build at our Summit event last week and our partners gave us the same enthusiastic response as we are seeing here on the Blogs. Right now the ship schedule is first half of '09 , but keep those votes and use cases coming and help us increase the priority further ! 

*** Update 3/30/09

Check the App Store !

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