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As previously announced, three legacy Citrix Certified Enterprise Administrator™ (CCEA) and Citrix Certified Integration Architect™ (CCIA) certifications will expire on June 30, 2010. After this date, these credentials will no longer be current and will be listed as "expired" on Certification Manager transcripts. These certifications are:
- CCEA for MetaFrame XP Presentation Server
- CCEA for MetaFrame Access Suite3.0
- CCIA for MetaFrame XP Presentation Server
So how do you update or keep your certification valid if you hold one of the above?
Before Expiration Date of June 30, 2010
- You may take advantage of update paths* for the new Citrix Certified Enterprise Engineer™ (CCEE) and CCIA for Virtualization, available in January 2010. With the update path, only one exam is required for updating to CCEE and one additional (two total) exams are required for CCIA. To learn more about the update paths, visit www.citrix.com/CCEEupdate or www.citrix.com/CCIAupdate
After Expiration Date of June 30, 2010
- If you have achieved three or more requirements towards the Citrix Certified Enterprise Administrator (CCEA) for Citrix XenApp (Presentation Server 4), complete the track. Doing so will extend the validity of your CCEA and enable you to take advantage of the CCEE and CCIA update paths.
- If you have not made any progress towards updating your CCEA or CCIA, begin completing requirements for the new CCEE for Virtualization. The new, streamlined requirements consist of a total of five exams, and if you possess any of the recent Citrix Certified Administrator™ (CCA) or Citrix Certified Advanced Administrator™ (CCAA) certifications, you may have already fulfilled part of the requirements.
*PLEASE NOTE: The update path is recommended for seasoned professionals who possess knowledge of, or hands-on experience in, Citrix virtualization technologies. For those without experience in these technologies, following the complete CCEE and CCIA paths is recommended. Please note that individuals with versions of the CCEA and CCIA for XP expired in 2005 are not eligible to use the update path and are encouraged to take one of the two courses of action indicated above now. Visit Certification Manager to confirm your certification status.
If you have any questions about this expiration notice, or about how to maintain your certification status, contact training@citrix.com.
Recently, I have heard many talk about how to deliver better application experience over WAN to branch users with flat or shrinking IT budgets?
Is delivering a better IT experience to branch or mobile users truly "priceless"? Or do you really need to demonstrate ROI?
It usually takes a lot longer than a year for something to become a 'cliche'. But the current global economic recession has created one of the quickest 'cliches' - 'Flat is the new Growth!' - flat revenues, and flat IT budgets alike.
Faced with flat or shrinking IT budgets, many organizations are clearly and rigorously prioritizing the highest ROI projects, focusing on doing more with less. Increasingly, the following lexicon has taken on a new level of significance and has become part of the IT budgeting process - time-to-ROI, payback time, hard or direct ROI, soft or indirect ROI and so on.
WAN Optimization is one of the very few technologies where IT spend is actually growing while spend on many other technologies is shrinking. In earlier blogs, I blogged about how good the user experience can be with the right WAN optimization solution. But if you are an IT decision maker, you are looking for hard dollar ROI to justify those investments.
We recently published a web-based ROI calculator, designed to show our customers the great savings opportunities available with Citrix Branch Repeater for XenApp and XenDesktop customers. Why don't you try out the calculator and let us know your feedback? We are looking to updating this tool soon based on your feedback.
You may cut and paste the URL in your browser: http://www.citrix.com/English/ps2/products/feature.asp?contentID=1858204.
I look forward to your comments or feedback.
Happy ROI!,
Sai
Yo! Twitter-ers, you can follow the Citrix and HP partnership on twitter here - http://twitter.com/CitrixHP It's fresh, live and twitter-tastic. Ok - that was bad. 
(but the twitter feed is good now, and the following is growing rapidly!)
At Citrix Education, we are often asked the following question:
What is the difference between CXA-201-2I Implementing Citrix XenApp 5.0 for Windows Server 2008 and CTX-1259BI Citrix Presentation Server 4.5 and XenApp 5.0 for Windows Server 2003?
The easiest answer to this is simply, the operating system. CTX-1259BI applies to XenApp 5.0 for Windows Server 2003 and CXA-201-2I applies to XenApp 5.0 for Windows Server 2008. However, the more complicated answer is...a lot of smaller differences, like features.
During the development of courseware, Citrix products, including XenApp, continue to evolve and change. We manage this constant change in two primary ways:
- We plan an update/maintenance cycle
- We include features late in development (if they have been announced)
These two approaches, while capturing most changes, cannot reflect all changes to the product. That's why you may see a difference between what the courseware describes and what you can actually view in the live product. This, essentially, is the other fundamental difference between CXA-201 and CTX-1259. They each represent XenApp (on a different OS) at different times in XenApp evolution.
CXA-201-2I, available October 2, 2009, is the latest full course update on Citrix XenApp. It contains the most current and complete picture of XenApp on Windows Server 2008. CXA-201-1I, was the first release for the WS 2008 platform, and released in May of 2009. The features included in that course reflected XenApp 5 and nothing that has happened since...clearly, it was time for an update! Learn more about the delta between CXA-201-1I and CXA-201-2I (document also posted below).
In November 2009, we will release an update to CTX-1259BI. It will contain information including Feature Pack 2. Because it is available after the release of CXA-201-2I, it will become the course with the most current feature set of XenApp (WS 2003). Learn more about the delta between CTX-1259BI and CTX-1259CI (document also posted below).
In short, the main difference is the OS. The best choice for which class to take should be based on the OS on which you wish to learn. Or, if you are preparing for a platform migration from 2003 to 2008, we recommend CXA-201. To stay up to the minute current on new XenApp features, you can always reference the XenApp product pages.
If you have any questions or suggestions for the next release of XenApp courseware, please send them to training@citrix.com. We want to hear from you!
T-Mobile and Microsoft announced that a Microsoft subsidiary had suffered a "data-service disruption" that wiped out all Sidekick users' contacts, calendar entries, to-do lists, and photos. In the joint statement, Microsoft/Danger and T-Mobile said its teams were working "around the clock in hopes of discovering some way to recover this information." However, it noted that the likelihood of doing so "is extremely low." - From NewsFactor.com (Oct 12, 2009)
Google Search and Google News performance slowed to a crawl, while an outage seemed to spread from Gmail to Google Maps and Google Reader. From ComputerWorld (May 4, 2009)
It's hard to believe in this day and age that we should hear of data recovery being an issue, isn't it? Even the government has explicit input into this worrisome problem. Yet in the past six months we've seen two major Cloud Computing corporate faux pas. More correctly, here we are talking about Business Continuity or drilling down one level, Workforce Continuity.
One of my colleagues, who shall remain nameless, was aghast with these news releases and asked if it would negatively affect the push we are seeing in industry toward consumption based delivery of IT services. Specifically, if Citrix technology was associated with one such disaster as a part of the Citrix Service Provider program, would we end up with a "black eye" and thus a negative brand implication?
Ironically, when I was working on our CSP TCO/ROI calculator, the question came up about Disaster Recovery and whether or not service providers offer it as a part of their subscription/hosting business.
The next logical question is 'Do service providers also provide some form of disaster recovery for themselves?' It's one thing to back up data for the end customer, but what if the service providers' whole farm goes down? Well... this is really a great question, but as we've seen from the recent press, it may be a matter of big fish vs. small fish. For example, smaller hosting/service providers can and do back up their data using larger enterprises such as Amazon's S3. Why? The costs are relatively low and the processes relatively easy to use.
Also, because storage arrays are relatively inexpensive and technologies such automated failover are available, many smaller scale service providers opt to use their own backup and recovery systems on premise.
So one might ask, what about the big guys (Google, Amazon, Microsoft)? Who provides their data recovery systems? Well... based on the performance recorded in the press over the past few months, that appears to be a very good question. There are speculations that because large Cloud Compute companies use (very) low cost equipment (servers and storage arrays) that duplicating real-time data for instantaneous recovery is just a part of their operations. But is it really?
One of the challenges with scale is that you have to have enough compute power and storage to not only service the masses, but to provide continuity (and backup) in the event of a catastrophic failure. Will negative press such as that from Google and Microsoft's "Danger" (what a name for a DR company!) keep businesses from using service providers for their mission critical data? Anecdotally I've got to say no... at least at the SMB level because the data shows an increase in off premise IT services. But maybe Google and Microsoft need to take a closer look at how they handle these types of services, especially for the large enterprises.
I've got a question for you. When was the last time you actually tested your Business Continuity system? I mean, really tested a failure to see if your processes meet your users' expectations? Don't get caught in the news answering the question like these guys did!
Here's a special incentive for you to invite people to attend CitrixLive! Secrets, Lies and VDI on October 20. In addition to receiving leads, you can win a Nintendo Wii! For every 5 customers and/or prospects you drive to register for the CitrixLive! Secrets, Lies and VDI virtual event on October 20, you will receive an entry to win a Nintendo Wii game system. The more entries you have, the better the chance for you to win. So start promoting the October 20 event today. To get you started, there are banners, html e-mail invites, a powerpoint slide, newsletter text and a direct link to the registration site. All promotion details and resources are available now on MyCitrix. (https://www.citrix.com/English/mycitrix/resources.asp?contentID=1857906].
Simply click here to register to attend *CitrixLive! Secrets, Lies, and VDI* on October 20.
It's no wonder that the recent announcement of Citrix XenDesktop 4 is the hot buzz around town. Citrix XenDesktop 4 delivers optimized delivery for every user, making it the best way to manage applications and the best user experience. It is the first-ever solution to provide all the desktop and application delivery technologies needed to bring desktop virtualization to every user.
So now that you've heard the news, it's time to get geared up with partner Sales Tools designed especially for Citrix XenDesktop 4. This includes a whitepaper about the future of desktop virtualization, a whiteboard, technical overview presentation, proof of concept quick demo kit, a product reference card, and a whole lot more.
Also, in store for you is a FREE Citrix XenDesktop 4 training offer, where you can gain an overview of the Citrix XenDesktop 4 technology in less than an hour! In this training course, you'll learn about key product features, editions, strengths, and how XenDesktop addresses traditional desktop management challenges. Also covered are the key aspects of FlexCast delivery, architectural diagrams, and the steps to move to desktop virtualization.
For added insight, get the complete 411 at the Citrix "Secrets, Lies and VDI" event being held tomorrow, Oct 13 just for Citrix partners. This is not-to-miss event that will unravel the myths and uncover the truth about VDI to give you a clear, strategic view of desktop virtualization today. You'll get a complete understanding of what desktop virtualization really means. Some of the event features include a Keynote Address and sessions, as well as Ask the Expert Q&A. Registration is still going on - don't miss out!
Okay, now you have it - complete sales tools, free training, and a super, hot event!
Virtualization - it's a Citrix world now!
There is an $8 Billion market opportunity for hosting Windows applications, but if you don't have the right marketing approach, you'll be sitting on the sidelines. Our partners, who are both Microsoft SPLA (Service Provider License Agreement) and CSPs (Citrix Service Providers) have been screaming for more marketing insight, so here it is!
I wrote a blog back in August about Marketing IT Services and this blog speaks specifically to Step 2 - "Know Thy Customer" and Step 3 - "Know Thy Marketing Approach". For Step 1 "Know Thy Product and Value" we are running a separate webinar that you can sign up for by hitting the links listed here...
| Title: | |
CSP Business Overview - Citrix Cloud Center: Infrastructure and App Services |
Date: Wednesday, October 28, 2009*
*If you can't make any of these times, you can register afterwards for the recorded session.
Under the "Know Thy Customer" heading, you've got to pick a way to get to them after you've figured out your product offering. One of the most cost effective approaches today in this market is through your website. Most service providers know this but don't spend the right resource emphasis to make it a reality. Look, 1990s marketing approaches won't work in this space and your (potential) customers are searching for ways to do business the same way they are doing all of their other research, via the web. So if you don't have the right content, or tools to monitor your sales approach, you will be stuck going door-to-door, which is the recipe for long sales cycles in a volume subscription market... not what you want!
The first question you need to ask is, "Is my site effective?" To know this you'll have to employ some kind of web analytics to get the information required to determine the effectiveness of your online campaigns and lead generation. If you want to do this on the cheap, Google has a free tool you can pick up that will show you things like "bounce rate" (people who leave your site from the top page).
The second question you should ask is, "How do I get visitors to immediately sign up for my service?" One way to do this is to provide them with an interactive tool where they can see for themselves the benefits you provide over their existing model. The CSP Marketing Team has created a great TCO/ROI tool that you can repurpose and rebrand for your site. Another way to do this is by allowing customers to trial the service without having to pay right up front. One way to accomplish this is to sign up with a billing clearinghouse/broker who will allow you to encourage "impulse buying" by your prospective customers. According to one company, "customers who use the service spend 75% more per transaction than a website's typical buyer".
Now that you've got a way to get knowledgeable about your customer and a way to allow he or she to access your services more easily let's talk about the "Know Thy Marketing Approach" for a minute.
It may seem infantile in this age of high tech, highly graphical marketing, but online selling gimmicks such as Avatars are very effective. There are companies who specialize in this marketing approach and can set you up with the tools to rapidly put these animated sales people to work for you. Buy the way, according to some experts, among virtual sales reps, female avatars produce twice as many sales as males.
You should also offer "Amazon.com-style recommendations". This may seem like expensive proposition again, but there are companies that specialize in setting up the tools for you and you'll know in just a couple of months whether or not this is worthwhile for you. One company who issues this software claims you'll see an average increase in sales of 20%.
Lastly, use Email advertising. Hear what I am saying...DON'T SPAM your customers. Rather once you have your analytics from the tools you incorporate, ask for potential customers to "opt in" to messaging from your company. You have to be careful with this approach and be very targeted with your email ads. I subscribe to five different services for marketing research and I can tell you that I'm fed up with all but one of them because they send me information that has nothing to do with my work... and so they have now been either discontinued or sent to my SPAM mail box. If you do this correctly, you could see up to 35% conversion rates on the ads you send.... if you do it incorrectly you'll not get another chance with that same customer.
Follow these steps and I can assure you that you will do better than just throwing a web site together and hoping for the best. By the way, if one of your senior people isn't personally running your electronic marketing, then you might as well just stop doing it. Research shows that there is a direct proportion of sales (or lack thereof) to the quality of the team supporting the content.
Note: I need to credit INC magazine for some of the content here. They had a great article in their February 2008 edition if you're interested.
As of December 31, 2009, the Citrix Certified Sales Professional™ (CCSP) 2008 certification program will be discontinued in French, German, Portuguese and Spanish. After this date, all CCSP 2008 tracks will no longer be available to new registrants. Individuals in the process of obtaining CCSP 2008 must register for all required courses by December 31, 2009 to access these courses after the discontinuation date via their learning transcript.
Individuals currently holding or pursuing the CCSP 2008 are encouraged to attain the most current certification - CCSP 2009. The CCSP 2009 is now available in English and will be available in French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Simplified Chinese, and Spanish by November 2009.
Partners who currently hold a CCSP 2008 should contact their regional channel team for more information on maintaining their certification status and the timeline for migrating to CCSP 2009. Please forward any additional questions or comments to training@citrix.com.
Looking for a clear way to get up to speed on Citrix desktop virtualization? Check out the Learning Path for Desktop Virtualization - a guide to help you determine the training you need, based on your key virtual desktop learning objectives. This learning path includes the hypervisor, provisioning/delivering desktops and delivering apps on-demand, as well as advanced virtualization solution training. Learn more
They were once multi-billion dollar technology companies and now they no longer exist!
Well we could leave it right there and just chalk up the demise of these companies to poor economies or even to a fatal flaw in their technology. But neither of these answers would be true. In fact, in their hay-days each of these companies would have been called the darling of the industry. What Wang did for business productivity shot them to the top of the charts back in the 80's and at $3 Billion in sales with over 40,000 employees one would have thought them to be a long term contender. Wang got so overly focused on a single platform application (word processing) that by 1992 they had to file for bankruptcy.
In 1987 I was a software engineer doubling as a Systems Administrator for engineering workstations at a company called TRW (which was also a multi-billion dollar company that no longer exists). We were just migrating from DEC equipment to Sun Sparc Stations... and man did those things run fast (at the time). Sun was said to have (3) generations of workstations ready to ship but there was so much demand for their hardware the rumor was they were holding back the shipment of new technology until they gave themselves enough time to sell what was already going like hot-cakes. But hold on to that for a second while I back up to talk about DEC.
We had a gaggle of Systems Admins for the DEC VAX computers in 1983-85. DEC was crushing IBM at the time with performance/cost and shares of DEC stock were going through the roof. However, as Sun began to emerge there was a whispering on the wind about the proliferation of Sys 5 and BSD based operating systems. DEC was proprietary at the time and you had to be a PhD in VMS command line just to know how to boot a machine. With so much frenzy over Unix, DEC decided to get into the business but do it in a way that ultimately led to their demise. They had so much expertise in their own operating environment that they had to pay huge sums of money to get Unix developers on board and get their own version of Unix (called Ultrix) into market. But to pay for the development DEC came up with a scheme that ultimately put them in the ground. They decided to charge double the amount for system maintenance and software upgrades to all of the customers that had been loyal to them for years. And when Sun came out with higher performance minis and IBM fought back with their 6000 series, DEC was caught with their pants down. The net result was an exodus away from the VAX machine and no loyal customers to foot the Ultrix bill.... Good-bye DEC!
By 1990, Sun was the "Super-Hero" and they began to forge ground against the incumbents like IBM and HP. There was a huge following of Sun both in terms of performance/cost and in terms of the scientific community as Sun became known as the anti-establishment technology company sprouting forums for the enhancement of open source collaboration. So superior was their technology that the big mainframe companies tried desperately to steal their talent away. But the die-hards at Sun would have nothing of it. Besides creating the best platforms in the world, Sun had become the giant for networking with their mantra of "The Network is the Computer". Driving network development through the precursor to Internet Protocol, Sun was on a rocket ship ride. But then something odd began to happen. Sun began to fragment their development and soon the performance of their equipment was not as stellar as their focus shifted to a world of Java collaboration. They had a great run but couldn't figure out how to monetize all of their engineering efforts to create a Java enabled world. With millions of devices running Java clients, but no revenue streams, Sun began to bite the bullet... and now... swallowed by Oracle!
So now there are some new darlings on the block regarding Cloud Computing... aren't there? And Citrix is staying the course with the technology that has enabled our growth for 20 years. We just announced XenDesktop 4, which is a logical path to virtualization... both for applications and for desktops. I think we've learned from the past mistakes of others that you've got to keep doing what got you here and do it better than anyone else. And don't forget about the next generation of IT Services that are coming on like gang busters. We're in that market too!
Announcing a brand new offering courtesy of Citrix Technical Readiness in conjunction with Citrix Education. Its a brand new method for self-service training that we call a Learning Lab Series. Learning Lab topics are focused on hot new Citrix features. A Learning Lab provides you 3 basic deliverables:
- A brief CitrixTV recording to get you familiar with a concept or feature
- A hands-on lab document with detailed steps on how to configure the feature
- Access to a hands-on lab environment to execute the steps in the lab document
That's right...you have a chance to get hands-on experience for FREE! What could be better than that!
In this first release, we have posted Learning Labs for the following topics to citrix.com:
The hands-on lab access is only available to Citrix Partners but the CitrixTV recordings are posted for everyone to view. See the latest recordings on the following topics:
We look forward to your comments, so let us know what you think.
We've scheduled a Technical Overview Webinar for Essentials for XenServer and Hyper-V at three different times to accomodate for all partners, we will record and post the Webinar online if you can't make any of these times on October 5. Click on the link below to register.
Citrix Service Provider Technical Overview - Essentials for XenServer/Hyper V
Monday, October 5, 2009
9:00 AM - 10:30 AM EDT: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/228005408
2:00 PM - 3:30 PM EDT: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/975636224
9:00 PM - 10:30 PM EDT: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/126336201
I've been doing a lot of research of late around the future of the Cloud, what of the hype is real and where the market dominance will be for Internet based applications delivery. I read a piece by one of the analysts I follow and he gave some sage advice about not getting drawn into the herd of marketers who are using Cloud as a platform to sell anything in their portfolio by renaming it "Cloud -X". Another analyst I follow put together a great map of the differing technologies that make up Cloud Computing and one of the huge foundational pieces is that of Software-as-a-Service. In fact both of these analysts would say that SaaS is absolutely not hype and is one of the pieces of Cloud that will not only emerge, but flourish in the process.
In my research, I've been trying to assess the total number of Windows based applications that are in market today. The purpose is simple. To determine the total market opportunity in the SaaS space you first have to determine who is playing in it, what the applications are and who will subscribe to those applications. SaaS is defined as "a model of software deployment whereby a provider licenses an application to customers for use as a service on demand" and there is no distinction between Windows based applications and Web based applications.
Since Windows still enjoys over 90% market share in the operating systems realm, it also makes sense to extrapolate service offerings based on what businesses are currently using... which happens to be Windows based solutions. The difficulty in making an assessment for the total number of Windows based application in market today is nobody wants to talk about it. Microsoft got in hot water in 2000 with the DOJ because of the volume of Windows applications in market creating what was being called a "barrier to entry" for developers of other platforms. As a result, Microsoft doesn't publish this information. And the forums that support Windows developers are only microcosms of the larger eco system.
Third parties make attempts to extrapolate the total population of Windows based apps, but we don't often see real data to support it. To add to the problem, some support programs for Windows based apps are considered applications themselves. Some estimates have the total number of Windows based applications in the 100,000 range and above. In 2008, Windows Mobile apps alone totaled 18,000. Even if we take a fraction of these estimates there are still a huge number of applications to consider. For purposes of this blog, let's take a total number of 120,000 and divide that by 1/2. That would leave us with approximately 60,000. If we cull that number by another 50% to delineate only business applications we get a total of 30,000 applications. If we use an equal distribution of applications per business segment (Finance, Gov't, Healthcare, Communications and Services) we have 6,000 applications per segment.
That means that there is an opportunity for 6,000 Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) in each major business segment to expand their base by offering a different route to market. Many of these ISVs have been stifled in their growth because of their current sales motion and distribution channels. Also, servicing their existing customer base is expensive because upgrades must be done through expensive marketing, downloads and retail shrink-wrap sales. Up to now, there has only been one alternative... re-engineer and re-code to a web enabled browser based application. This is a very, very expensive approach. But what is an ISV to do? If he wants more revenue through expansion of his base of customers, is there any alternative?
Well the answer is yes but I continue to be dumb founded that more ISVs don't look to Citrix when they begin this analysis. When Terminal Services was in its infancy, Citrix was solving the problem of remote access even before the Internet reached the masses. The identical technology can be used today to solve the dilemma of ISVs in the SaaS space. Why re-code when you can host the application just as it is and give users the same experience as being loaded locally? The question is will the ISV of today be savvy enough to choose the Citrix path before spending millions on re-engineering the code? Time will tell.
I'm willing to bet that any Windows based ISV who does adopt Citrix technology to expand his base of customers through SaaS will be miles ahead of his competition who are spending money on re-engineering instead of capitalizing on additional subscriber growth with the same code.
By the way... if you've got a better assessment of the total number of Windows Application in market today I'd love to see the comment!
Please join us for two webinars covering XenApp Fundamentals sales and technical topics. The new sales topic is "Extending Terminal Services with XenApp Fundamentals". We will expand on several newly published case studies that illustrate why customers still have a need for a remote access solution that meets both their performance and security requirements. These case studies highlight instances where customers had initially implemented Terminal Services as a stand alone solution, and why they saw a need to add XenApp Fundamentals to their application environment.
Our technical topic will be "XenApp Fundamentals for HP Proliant Servers with Microsoft Small Business Server 2008 - Technical Overview". This session is a technical review of the implementation options for deploying XenApp Fundamentals with Windows Small Business Server on HP Servers. We have many partners who have already implemented this solution and are pleased to have Terry Sheehy,who is an independent IT consultant, join us to share some best practices. This topic was originally presented several months ago and is being repeated due to popular demand.
| Title: | Extending Terminal Services with XenApp Fundamentals.......The Secure Remote Access Solution For Small to Medium Businesses |
| Date: | Thursday, October 8, 2009 |
| Time: | 2:00 PM - 3:00 PM EDT |
| Register: |
https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/519248097 |
| Title: | XenApp Fundamentals for HP Proliant Servers with Microsoft Small Business Server 2008 - Technical Overview |
| Date: | Thursday, October 15, 2009 |
| Time: | 2:00 PM - 3:00 PM EDT |
| Register: | https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/582954936 |
Sometimes I wonder if people really connect the fact that Citrix Systems and Citrix Online are the same company. I also wonder if people understand that the same company that completely dominates the hosted application and desktop market also is the dominant player in online collaborative services. In fact Citrix Online products rank top 4 in the world among Software as a Service (SaaS) vendors. Next time you see a GoToMeeting advertisement on Fox News, Discovery or whatever your favorite TV channel is... take a good look. You'll notice at the end of each commercial a tie-in to Citrix.
Maybe one of the reasons that this connection is not readily understood is the market dynamic. Could it be organizations using GoToMeeting or GoToMyPC may not be using XenApp or XenDesktop? In fact the Online products are so easy to use, IT is rarely involved. You merely sign up for the service and start to use the meetings, webinars, and other collaborative tools.
So while I'm musing I also wondered how many service providers (or hosting companies) out there understand the value they would bring to one of their customers if they could bundle a collaboration service with other application/desktop hosting solutions. Did you know that according to many analysts collaboration is the #2 revenue generator in an $8+ Billion Market? It's just behind business grade email in terms of demand.
The service from Citrix Online is so easy that I used it the other day to give a presentation to a customer in China. That's right... I used my Internet connection from home (East Coast time was 10:00 P.M. - too late to be in the office) to do the presentation. But what was really cool was pulling my PowerPoint up using XenApp, making changes securely over the Internet 5 minutes before the meeting and then firing up GoToMeeting in four different locations on three different continents. What a business case in this new economy...Just think of all the applications your customers (SMB) have while they continue to grapple with shrinking travel budgets.
If you're in the hosting business and want to enhance your ability to service your customer, why aren't you in the Citrix Online Affiliate Program? All you have to do is sign up, plaster one of the best brands in the world on your web site and begin to collect revenues for it. Not quite ready to take the full steps to being an Affiliate but still want to make some cash? Citrix Online also pays for referrals. Sounds easy enough, doesn't it? Now you can take your million dollar business and add another couple of hundred thousand to it. Why would you not do this? I dunno?
Seems like a pretty good idea to me.
I heard a great phrase recently "an embarrassment of riches" . I thought to myself...that is definitely what XenApp has become. There's nothing you can't do with it now. When it comes to virtualizing applications, you can deliver from a Windows Terminal Server, you can stream to a server or a client, and now with VM Hosted Apps, you can deliver from a workstation if the other two methods are not suitable. The user gets a seamless application that looks like it is running locally without ever being the wiser on what back end infrastructure is hosting the application. These days, you will be hard pressed to find an application that cannot be delivered with XenApp.
If you did not read my last post, I talked about considerations that you should take into account before selecting VM Hosted Apps (new in XenApp 5 Feature Pack 2) as your application delivery solution. If you are still deciding whether VM Hosted Apps is right for you, then go back to my first blog to help you with that decision. If and when you are convinced, come back and read below where I tell you how to set it up.
VM Hosted Apps components for application virtualization
These are the components that make up a VM Hosted Apps infrastructure:
- Physical or virtual workstations with either Windows XP, Windows Vista, or Windows 7 installed. The Virtual Desktop Agent software and applications must be installed on these machines.
- A Desktop Delivery Controller which is the brains behind that operation. It brokers connections to virtual desktops.
- An IIS web server with the Web Interface software installed. The user connects to this web site to display the application.
- Citrix Receiver, or the online plug-in standalone, installed on the client device
If you are already familiar with XenDesktop, then these are the exact same components that deliver desktops. The only difference between a VM Hosted Apps and a XenDesktop infrastructure is the license. No really, it's true! You need a XenApp license to deliver applications and you need a XenDesktop license to deliver desktops.
Follow me as we dig into this a bit deeper. The first component you need to install is the Desktop Delivery Controller (DDC) software which must be installed on a Windows 2003 Server only (we're working on WS 2008 support so hang tight). Use the software version that comes with XenApp Feature Pack 2 on the VM Hosted Apps media. It will require a database in order to complete the installation of the DDC. You can use Access, SQL, Oracle, IBM DB2 just like XenApp. But don't try to make it part of the same farm sharing the same physical database as XenApp, because it won't work. It must exist in a separate farm database.
Administering application virtualization with VM Hosted Apps
Next, you will administer the environment using the Delivery Services Console, formerly the Access Management Console (Yes we renamed it... again). You can use the console that is installed on the DDC by default or you can install the console on a separate machine. You are actually installing a rebranded XenDesktop Console which means that if you already have XenDesktop you can use this new console to manage that as well. Since this console cannot be used to administer your XenApp farm, to make administration easier , install both consoles on the same machine. When you do this, they will aggregate together in the same MMC snap-in automatically. We know customers hate separate consoles but it could not be helped in this release. If the two consoles are installed on the same machine, then administration will be less of a hassle.
Publishing VM hosted virtual applications
To publish a VM Hosted App, it is nothing like publishing an application with XenApp. It is more like publishing a virtual desktop with XenDesktop. You run the Desktop Group creation wizard in the console and check the box "Use Desktop Group for VM Hosted Apps".
Don't forget to name the Desktop group the same name as your application and change the default XenDesktop icon to an application icon. The application name and icon you select is displayed to users when they log into Web Interface. Selecting this box however, does not make an application available to users. Here is how you actually publish the application.
- First, install the Virtual Desktop Agent software on the workstation image or vdisk you are creating.
- Then after you install the desired application, place a shortcut for this application in the "SeamlessInitialProgram" folder located under \Program Files\Citrix\ICA Service.
You should only put one application shortcut in this folder, if other helper applications are needed, you can install them on the workstation and they will be called by the main application when necessary. If you are using Provisioning services to dynamically provision desktops, then make sure these steps are complete on the workstation image before you save the virtual disk. If you are not using PVS, then be aware that you will need one virtual workstation for each simultaneous user because multiple users cannot launch applications from the same workstation.
The last step is to make the application available to users by modifying your Web Interface site to add the VM Hosted Apps farm and point to the Desktop Delivery Controller. Web Interface is actually installed on the Desktop Delivery Controller by default. You can use that Web Interface server or you can use Web Interface from a standalone web server, as long as it is version 5.2 or above. You must have a XenApp web (aka web interface) or services site (aka pnagent site) configured in order to deliver your applications.
That's it! Now if you run into trouble, apply the same troubleshooting methodology that you would for XenDesktop.
Cris Lau the Product Manager for XenApp Feature Pack 2, hosted a TechTalk on how to configure VM hosted Apps in which Sr. Software Engineer Madhav Chinta demonstrated how to configure and publish a VM hosted application.
If you are a Citrix Partner you will soon have access to an Education sponsored Technical Readiness Learning Lab Series that focuses on VM Hosted Apps. The Learning Lab series offers you the opportunity to watch a CitrixTV video about how to configure VM Hosted Apps, then we'll let you log into a hands-on lab environment in the cloud so that you can play around with this feature using a step by step lab guide. Stay tuned for that!
Learn more about Citrix XenApp 5 Feature Pack 2
- Official Press Release - http://citrix.com/English/NE/news/news.asp?newsID=1857726
- XenApp 5 Feature Pack 2 release Web Site - http://citrix.com/xenapp/featurepack2
- XenApp 5 Feature Pack 2 Executive Video - http://citrix.com/xenapp/fp2/video
- XenApp 5 Feature Pack 2 Release Webinar - http://citrix.com/xenapp/fp2/techtalk
- XenApp Expert Series videos for this release - http://citrix.com/xenapp/fp2/expertseries
- XenApp 5 Feature Pack 2 Blogs- http://community.citrix.com/blogs/tag/xa5fp2
- Download XenApp technology previews - http://citrix.com/xenapp/techpreviews
- XenApp Product Page - http://citrix.com/xenapp/
Follow XenApp on 
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Citrix Essentials is enterprise-class virtual infrastructure that enhances the scalability and agility of Microsoft Hyper-V with simplified storage set-up and operation, powerful VM lifecycle management, and dynamic server provisioning. Move applications into production faster with automated lab development, test and deployment tools.
This release is for early evaluation and education purposes.
You must have a MyCitrix account to access the links below, if you don't already have a MyCitrix account, please create a MyCitrix account at www.citrix.com (http://www.citrix.com)
Click Here to Download Beta and Obtain License Key
(http://www.citrix.com/English/ss/downloads/details.asp?downloadId=1857952&productId=1854179)
Developer Kits
Citrix StorageLink: (http://community.citrix.com/cdn/xs/sdks) and scroll down to Citrix StorageLink SDK
Forums and Support
Citrix Essentials forum: (http://forums.citrix.com/category.jspa?categoryID=101)
Planning is done, content is ready, now we are in the middle of rolling out the XenApp 5 Feature Pack 2 training to the support teams worldwide.
By Sept 29th, the date in which XenApp 5 Feature Pack 2 will be available for download as mentioned in the Official Press Release, we plan to have a majority of Support engineers trained.
The 2 1/2 day XenApp 5 Feature Pack 2 comprehensive training course covers all new features as outlined by Vinny Sosa in his What's new in XenApp 5 Feature Pack 2 in plain English blog. A majority of the course is spent "hands on" installing, configuring, break/fixing and troubleshooting the various new features.
Then 3-5 months post release we plan to deliver a follow up "Advanced" session on common issues encountered.
The agenda for the Advanced session will be based on common/troublesome support issue logged in our CRM, Support Forums and Tech Support Twitter accounts, here and here.
Learn more about Citrix XenApp 5 Feature Pack 2
■Official Press Release - http://citrix.com/English/NE/news/news.asp?newsID=1857726
■XenApp 5 Feature Pack 2 release Web Site - http://citrix.com/xenapp/featurepack2
■XenApp 5 Feature Pack 2 Executive Video - http://citrix.com/xenapp/fp2/video
■XenApp 5 Feature Pack 2 Release Webinar - http://citrix.com/xenapp/fp2/techtalk
■XenApp Expert Series videos for this release - http://citrix.com/xenapp/fp2/expertseries
■XenApp 5 Feature Pack 2 Blogs- http://community.citrix.com/blogs/tag/xa5fp2
■Download XenApp technology previews - http://citrix.com/xenapp/techpreviews
■XenApp Product Page - http://citrix.com/xenapp/
David
Twitter - http://twitter.com/citrixreadiness
Citrix Support on Facebook - http://www.facebook.com/citrixsupport
While some enterprises are still debating about the overall benefits of virtualization, Cloud Providers use virtual workloads as the de facto standard for all of their business. The question for Cloud Providers is not when to Virtualize but rather what is the best way. Can you say "Best enterprise class virtualization platform in the world for FREE!" Well that is exactly what XenServer is. And with our recent upgrades to the product there is no reason why every Cloud based service provider on the planet shouldn't be using it.
I had a conversation with an ISV who is also a Hosting Service Provider a couple of months ago (at the Microsoft Hosting Summit) who was using ESX at the time. Amazingly, he didn't know anything about Citrix. I proceeded to let him in on the technology we provide and he kept asking me over and over again, "Is this really free?" I saw him later in the day at one of the break-out sessions and he told me he had contacted his VMware rep. He said to the rep, "I've just been informed about an offering from Citrix that blows you guys away. If you can't come up with something comparable... you're out!" A great testimony to our technology and go-to-market strategy I would say.
So now that we're beyond the basics of server virtualization, it's time to talk about taking the next step and having access to the best enterprise level management tools for virtual data centers. That's right, I'm talking about Essentials for XenServer and Hyper-V. If you're a service provider looking to move up to Xen, then we've got some terrific news about some training you won't want to miss... led by our very own XenServer Architect in Readiness, Oliver Withoff. If you're interested (and by the way the training is FREE) you'll want to sign up at one of the sessions listed below...
Monday, October 5, 2009
9:00 AM - 10:30 AM EDT: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/228005408
2:00 PM - 3:30 PM EDT: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/975636224
9:00 PM - 10:30 PM EDT: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/126336201