Blog posts tagged with 'poll'

One of the attractions of virtualization is the ability to deploy applications as pre-built virtual appliances. An article in CIO Magazine describes a virtual appliance as "an application is designed, certified and delivered, with its own little OS, to run as a virtual machine on your existing physical server, or to run in a VM via a "cloud computing" service like Amazon's." Virtual Appliances are expected to provide rapid deployment, simplified support, improved performance (OS and Application Tuned by ISV), and increased security. There are many advantages to virtual appliances. But is this deployment method the best solution to your deployment issues?

With all the buzz about virtualization and cloud computing, the interest level from both IT departments and vendors in virtual appliances is rising rapidly. Citrix has offered an Evaluation Virtual Appliance of XenApp for over a year. It has been downloaded over 11,000 times, according to Kurt Moody. Microsoft nows has virtual appliances for Windows Server 2008, System Center Configuration Manager, SharePoint Server 2007, Exchange Server 2007, and more.  Many virtualization vendors like Marathon Technologies, Platform Computing, Fortisphere, VMLogix, deliver their product as a virtual appliance.

Some application vendors have also jumped on the virtual appliance bandwagon, such as Business Objects and Satori. Several virtual appliance sites have been launched, included rPath, VirtualAppliances.net and JumpBox.com in addition the the existing VMWare Virtual Appliance Marketplace. Even Paralells has started offering virtual appliances from their website.

There are some concerns about this new model. As this article points out, there are questions about licensing of the OS and application (especially for Windows based applications) as well as export and security issues.

With all these new virtual appliances becoming available, I am curious to know if you use virtual appliances, and, if so, for what purposes? What do you see as the advantages and disadvantages of virtual appliances?


Please vote in the polls below. Once you have voted, please post in the comments if there is anything else you would liek to see from virtual appliances.-

I an earlier post, I asked "How do you make Technology decisions?". According to a recent survey, Google is by far the most used tool by technology buyers (83% ALWAYS use Google). The poll on my post found similar results.

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Again Google is the clear leader, but not nearly by the same margin as in the external survey. I am curious if the is partly because the question in the poll was phrased a bit differently.

Instead of guessing why, I decided to ask you. Please vote below on whether you always, sometimes, or never use these different resources when researching a new technology before making a decision on a solution to implement.

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Do you always, sometime or never use Google when researching technology?	Choose
Always
Sometimes
Never

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Do you always, sometimes or never use another search engine (Yahoo, MSN Live, Ask, etc..) when researching technology?	Choose
Always
Sometimes
Never

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Do you always, sometimes or never use a vendor blog when researching technology?	Choose
Always
Sometimes
Never

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Do you always, sometimes or never use an independent blog when researching technology?	Choose
Always
Sometimes
Never

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Do you always, sometimes or never use a vendor product site when researching technology?	Choose
Always
Sometimes
Never

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Do you always, sometimes or never use a vendor support site when researching technology?	Choose
Always
Sometimes
Never

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Do you always, sometimes or never use a third party analyst site when researching technology?	Choose
Always
Sometimes
Never

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Do you always, sometimes or never use a user group when researching technology?	Choose
Always
Sometimes
Never

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Do you always, sometimes or never use Wikipedia when researching technology?	Choose
Always
Sometimes
Never

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Now that the first Citrix Delivery Center Podcast is completed and posted, I am looking for suggestions on topics for future podcasts. Episode Two will be cover the scalability testing of XenApp on XenServer. What would you like to hear in future episodes? Are there particular topics that interest you, or would you like to hear from a particular person? Vote below and let me know.

I am trying out a new third party poll (PollDaddy - flash required) that allows for multiple choice votes.

UPDATE:I have added three new options based on emails I have received. "How to Speed Up XenApp Logons", "Provisioning Server Deep Dive" and "Using WorkFlow Studio".

If you could wave a magic wand and have any one single feature in the next release of Citrix XenApp, what would it be?

While XenApp has literally hundreds of features that have been added over the last 10 years as the product has evolved from MetaFrame 1.0,1.8, XP, FR1 though FR3, 3.0, then 4.0 and now 4.5, is there one feature you really want to have but have not seen yet?

I pulled in a few ideas I have received into a poll. If you would like to add others to the list, post them in the comments and I will add your suggestion. I am looking for big home run features, but ideas that help you in your day to day job are fine as well.

From my past experience, many of you just do not have the time to keep up with every feature added to XenApp/CPS over time, especially if you are migrating to every other release. I have a theory about that as well (but I am saving that theory for a later post). It will be interesting to see if any feature ideas are submitted that have already been added in a past release.

Of course, there is no guarantee anything on this list can or will be included in the future (since I am not on the XenApp product team). I do guarantee I will communicate the results of this poll to that team.

This is a very preliminary list based on an informal survey I took recently. Instead of editing it, I am just posting it to get the discussion (and voting) started. If you want to add a feature to this list, post it in the comments and I will add it. Focus on the problem you need to solve.

If you could wave a magic wand, what feature would you put into the next release of XenApp?	Choose
SpeedScreen Multimedia support across all client platforms
Enhanced smart phone integration
Enhanced Mac integration
Live migration of individual sessions
Diff tool for Microsoft and Citrix patch levels on all servers
Integration with third party app virtualization solutions (MAV or SVS)
Greatly enhanced scalability
Security Analysis and Lockdown Tool
Pool of Pre-Launched Sessions for Faster Launching
Management through an Active Directory OU

UPDATE:Two Additional Choices offered based on comments.

If there is a lot of interest in this poll, I will post follow ups on the features requested and similar polls for other products. My goal here is to get unfiltered feedback from you about what you want to see in the product and how we can improve the product to solve the problems you face.

UPDATE:The response to date on this poll has been excellent. Votes are still coming into the poll. I have sent a screen shot of the results to date to a member fo the XenApp team to ensure the product team is aware of these requests. I am working to get some members of that team to discuss of these requests and the comments posted here.

I recently came across this chart of the results of a survey of IT decision makers and influencers about where they look for information when evaluating technology solutions.

link

I have long believed that Google is the most important tool to IT when researching products and solutions. It has been that way for me ever since I first heard of Google in 1998. "Google" has become a verb in IT, so this is not surprising. Many in the tech industry accept this as fact, and just as many are very skeptical of the importance of a search engine in the IT decision making process.

I am curious of how readers of the Citrix blog would vote in such a survey. What is your most important research tool when looking for information on new technology solutions?

UPDATE:Thanks for voting in this poll. appreciate so many of our readers taking a moment to share your thoughts with us.

Where do you look first for information on technology solutions?	Choose
Google
Yahoo
MSN Live
Independent Blogs
Vendor Blogs
IT Vendor Product web site
IT Vendor Support web site
Online IT publication
Directory
Analyst site
User Group
Wikipedia