Yesterday, Citrix announced the new Citrix Ready Open Desktop Virtualization program. Today, I would like to provide you with more details. The program is designed to ensure that organizations deploying virtual desktops have confidence that their deployments will deliver a true, high definition (HDX), multi-device experience for the end users as well as satisfy the security and management requirements of the IT organization

As you probably saw from our XenDesktop 4 announcement, Citrix's view of desktop virtualization is much broader than running a user's desktop in a hosted virtual machine (VDI) and is emerging in mainstream deployment with customers such as Emory Healthcare and Collier County Schools.  Citrix's FlexCast delivery technology enables the delivery of every major desktop virtualization model via XenDesktop. As IT organizations pilot and architect their the desktop virtualization solutions it quickly becomes evident that desktop virtualization requires a robust ecosystem of partners to ensure that, amongst other things, the deployment is fully supported in the desktop value chain, end user's USB devices that are attached to their desktops continue to work, user personalization of their desktops remains persistent and that their desktop are available via multiple modes of access.

At the center of the program is the open architecture of XenDesktop 4. XenDesktop 4 is the only desktop virtualization solution on the market with an open architecture that is designed, certified and tested to work with the wide variety of products customers already have in production, including all popular applications, servers, storage and backup systems, client devices (BTW, check out our new HDX Ready designation that ensures a truly awesome user experience), printers and desktop peripherals, security and desktop management software and systems management products. The Citrix Ready Open Desktop Virtualization Program incorporates over 200 Citrix Ready partners and covers more than 10,000 devices. The products are verified using the full reach of the Citrix Ready program... Citrix product engineering organizations; Citrix Ready partner engineering organizations; our community of technology partners, customer and resellers; as well some via third party venders who verify a range of products (for example, USB devices).

The program covers product categories from the data center to the desktop; from choice of virtualization infrastructure to choice of end user device as shown below. For more detailed information check out the Citrix Ready Open Desktop Virtualization program at http://www.citrix.com/ODV.

There has been a lively discussion going on in the VDI related Blogosphere kicked off here by Dan Feller and Brian Madden here. This issue of whether or not to allow "User Installed apps "exemplifies the dichotomy that IT Pros struggle with architecting a system that meets the business challenges of security, cost, and compliance plus at the same time satisfying the needs of knowledge workers with high demands and expectations.

As VDI expands from task oriented deployments to broader general purpose PC replacement scenarios this issue is likely to gain more attention. Most companies don't condone user installed apps but many do allow users to have administrator rights to their work PC and may look the other way regarding what an individual installs on their own. When it comes time to virtualize everything for VDI however now they need to pay attention. But how big an issues it ?

Dan indicates from an IT best practice standpoint it is better to develop an effective workflow that speeds and automates the IT approval, packaging, and delivery of new apps that individuals need to be productive. Will knowledge workers accept this solution ? As the commenter's indicate, this works for some but not all situations. Brian Madden proposed another alternative, just give the power users a second VM for unique/personal apps. Keep the corporate VM pristine under IT control and let users have their own separate sandbox if warranted. This may be a bit of a brute force solution but would work If the costs are justified. I like it because I do it myself now, although I use lab VM's as a sandbox vs IT delivered VM's. The commenter's however also found issues with this solution due to costs plus compliance issues about what SW/data gets installed into those user VM's. Some offered up BYOC as a solution if users really needed their own environment. There are many 3rd parties looking to enable User Installed apps as well, however even if the technical challenges are solved will IT support/endorse/allow this? Let me put forth another option/proposal, sometimes when I'm on a system thats not mine or a thin client I connect to my home PC via GoToMyPC and keep it running as long as I need it. This gives me access to apps that are not provided by IT, I have all the freedom to install what ever I want and IT doesn't need to deal with infrastructure costs or compliance issues. Yes this assumes that the power user has their own powered on PC and GoToMyPC does not currently have all of the features I might want for this solution, but you get the idea.

Let us know what you situations you face, is it a problem and do you see a solution for it? If you have another idea or comments on the above, please share it.

Two weeks ago, we introduced XenDesktop 4, an exciting new product line that I personally believe will make virtual desktops a mainstream reality for the first time ever.

The initial response to XenDesktop 4 has been overwhelmingly positive. Over the past two weeks, I've had countless conversations with customers, prospects and partners. In the course of these discussions, three themes in particular seem to have struck a real chord:

• Customers of all sizes like the fact that XenDesktop 4 with FlexCast goes well beyond VDI-only products, giving them the flexibility to deliver any type of virtual desktop to any user - from one, centralized solution.
• Including XenApp as a built-in feature makes virtual desktops far more cost effective and gives customers one seamless solution for desktop and application delivery.
• Many customers have commented on the long list of enhancements to our HDX™ technology and can't get wait to get their hands on it to try out, plus test the 90% bandwidth savings in comparison to other solutions.

Amidst all the positive responses, however, it also became clear that we missed a few important things on the licensing and packaging front in our initial announcement. Feedback from numerous surveys and 1:1 conversations found that some customers needed additional flexibility to license virtual desktops based on devices, rather than users. Other customers new to desktop virtualization told us they needed a simple "VDI-only" solution with more flexible licensing to make the transition easier as they ramp up. Finally, we heard from a number of K-12 and university customers who needed a simpler, more cost-effective program customized for the unique needs of the eductional market.

So what do we think about these suggestions? The short answer is "we agree". Your feedback has been invaluable in helping us make sure XenDesktop 4 enables the broadest set of virtual destkop scenarios possible. As a result, we've decided to make three important new enhancements to XenDesktop 4:

1. NEW device-based licensing option.
2. NEW VDI Edition available in both user/device and CCU licensing
3. NEW Campus-wide Licensing Program for customers in the education industry

 

Flexible licensing based on user or device

Customers in some industries have scenarios where multiple users share the same device. These situations include retail kiosks, warehouses, branch banks, labs, and the like. To help with these situations, we've decided to enhance XenDesktop 4 licensing to offer more flexibility by adding a new device license option - available at the exact same price as the user-based license. This means that users can access their XenDesktop from an unlimited number of devices with the user-based license option, and devices powered by XenDesktop can be used by an unlimited number of users with the device-based license option. As a result, your XenDesktop 4 product license can now be assigned to either a user or a device. Please also note that our user licensing doesn't require you to manage a bunch of named users or specific device lists. We've tried to make it as simple, easy and flexible as possible.

A killer "VDI-only" solution for people getting started with virtual desktops available in user, device or CCU licensing

While most customers were overwhelmingly positive about the power of FlexCast to deliver any type of virtual desktop to any type of user or device, we found many customers were still just testing the waters with VM-based "virtual desktop infrastructure" projects, commonly referred to as VDI. These customers wanted a flexible, VDI-only solution they that could trial in a wide variety of VDI use-cases. Because many were just getting started, they also needed flexible licensing that made it easy to ramp up as they got more familiar with the technology.

In response, we're creating the new XenDesktop 4, VDI Edition available for $95 per user/device, or $195 per concurrent user (CCU). XenDesktop 4, VDI Edition gives customers the ability to deliver best-in-class VDI-based desktops with a true HDX experience, and scale them up with our built-in provisioning services, profile management, and StorageLink™ technology. As with all the XenDesktop editions, the new VDI edition lets customers use any hypervisor, including XenServer or Hyper-V (both of which ship with all XenDesktop editions) as well as VMware ESX or vSphere. I'm confident customers who compare the alternatives will conclude that XenDesktop 4, VDI Edition is hands down the best VDI product on the market, at a far better price than any other competing solution.

Desktop Virtualization in Education is ready to go Campus-Wide

K-12 and university customers told us that they love XenDesktop 4 and want to use its desktop and app virtualization capabilities across a broad diversity of students, faculty, labs, and administrative facilities. They also want the flexibility to deliver either the full Windows desktop, or just some applications to a wide variety of use cases, including enabling access from smart phones, etc.

To address this customer requirement, we're adding the Citrix Campus-wide Licensing Program. This program, available starting November 16th, will offer extremely compelling prices to accredited educational institutions in K-12 and university campuses who adopt XenDesktop 4 for campus-wide use.

Putting it all together

Citrix XenDesktop™ 4, VDI Edition - Best-in-class VDI-only solution available at $95 per user or device, or $195 per CCU
Citrix XenDesktop™ 4, Enterprise Edition - Enterprise-class desktop virtualization solution available at $225 per user or device
Citrix XenDesktop™ 4, Platinum Edition - Best-value comprehensive desktop virtualization solution available at $350 per user or device

Remember, the user-based licenses are available not for per named users but the users as they login to their virtual desktops. You do not have to manage the user lists yourself.

Thanks for making XenDesktop 4 even better

Thanks to all of you who provided all the great feedback over the past couple of weeks. Your input was invaluable in helping us understand the additional use cases we missed the first time around. In short, your input helped make XenDesktop 4 even better, and for that, we are grateful.

As we approach the General Availability date for XenDesktop 4, I'm more excited than ever about the impact this product is going to have on customers of all sizes, across every industry sector. The best part of my job is watching the reaction of customers when they see XenDesktop in action. Even more fun is talking to end users who have discovered the power and flexibility of virtual desktops and would never go back to a traditional installed desktop. That's the power of desktop virtualization. And, XenDesktop 4 makes it real for even a broader set of use cases now!

Congratulations to Simon Crosby for having his blog recognized by Datamation as one of the Top 40 Enterprise Tech Industry Blogs. Datamation annually compiles a list of the top 200 Tech Blogs categorized into multiple categories including our Enterprise software segment. No doubt Simon's technical insight and opinionated positions have put his blog on the short list of many IT pro's and industry watchers.

To Quote Datamation:

" Crosby, CTO of Citrix's Data Center and Cloud Division, is a fierce partisan for the Xen virtualization software. He's also a canny and witty analyst of cloud computing and the larger tech landscape."

Take a look you may find some other interesting Blogs to follow as well.

Datamation Top Tech Blogs

72 hours after the XenDesktop 4 announcement

In the past 72+ hours after the announcement of XenDesktop 4, I have seen several positive comments written up by esteemed bloggers such as Chris Wolf (Burton Group), Dan Kuznetsky, Brian Madden, Doug Brown, the 451 Group, and more, reinforcing our mission to make desktop virtualization as the solution to the outdated desktop management practices.

In addition, I have personally had several 1:1 conversations with customers and partners and the feedback I have received has been extremely positive. In fact, I was visiting a healthcare customer today and when they heard about XenDesktop 4 - they loved it and when I told them about the Trade-up program, they were excited and wanted to move forward with it ASAP.

Licensing - what? why? hmm!!!

Licensing for XenDesktop 4 has certainly created some discussions in the blogosphere. The user-based licensing in XenDesktop 4 means that customers pick the users they want to deliver virtual desktops or apps to. In addition, it offers the ability to reassign a license from one user to another. For example, in a scenario where an employee quits an organization - the license can be reassigned to another employee. The licensing works perfect for the mainstream use cases where customers are rethinking their desktop management and applying the power of all types of virtual desktops and applications across a range of users. And, the licensing makes even more sense when you implement local VM-based desktops with offline use. In my conversations with the customers and partners, we have found that the licensing works well for majority of customers and prospects.

However, we have also seen comments that user-based licensing does not work for certain use cases, for example - student labs in schools or Universities or shared devices in a healthcare facility. First of all, I want to state that majority of these comments have reinforced that XenDesktop 4 is a solid product that addresses customer requirements, and customers are extremely interested in using the product for their implementations. Citrix's goal is to enable organizations to adopt desktop virtualization and address all enterprise use cases and not restrict usage for any specific use case scenario.

Is Citrix doing something about it?

We have received the customer feedback and we are actively investigating appropriate licensing programs for XenDesktop 4 to address these use cases. We believe that all customers should be able to adopt desktop virtualization enterprise-wide and reshape their desktop computing, and we stay committed on that mission. We are in the process of collecting some more information and we plan to share our solution to address these requirements within 30 days.

How can you help?

Finally, we recently launched a survey to collect more information on how our customers plan to start their desktop virtualization projects with XenDesktop 4. It takes less than 5 minutes to fill it up with mostly multiple choice questions. I encourage everyone to give us your direct input on your use cases. It will help us enhance our product offering overtime and guide us to offer appropriate licensing programs immediately. CLICK HERE TO PROVIDE FEEDBACK

Thank you for interest and support in Citrix and XenDesktop 4. We are open to input so we can serve you with the right products and programs.

Don't forget to attend our online event - we will talk licensing a bit more then!

Time to rethink your desktops

Months of planning, hours/weeks of discussions with customers, listening to the community and years of R&D effort leads to something big - and that right now is XenDesktop 4. Something that unlocks the potential of desktop virtualization that the world has been waiting for. With the new FlexCast delivery and enhanced HDX - now it is easy for anyone to look at desktop virtualization and start building plans to put their traditional desktop computing to rest for ever. Harry lists out why he would consider the change now and Raj talks about how this revolution will play out. Traditional desktop computing has clearly had its day - so long - hope to never see you again!

Looking at the responses within the community and several conversations with customers and partners have me convinced that XenDesktop 4 hits the mark. It offers exactly what customers need to serve different types of users with high def. user experience using one solution.

The only question I get is how do they get to it in the best possible way? What's the right license path to take? Every time I hear this question I think that the most important part of the job is done - getting the right product built for the customers that serves their needs and helps them solve their problems!

Three ways to get to XenDesktop 4

Now - let me walk through some scenarios that you may be faced with - it will help you decide how to pick the right path towards the bright future of desktop virtualization in your organization.

Scenario #1 - Not a Citrix customer today, but evaluating XenDesktop for virtual desktops

This is the most straight forward one. If you are considering desktop virtualization, XenDesktop 4 makes it simple. With FlexCast delivery - you have any type of virtual desktop solution you need, all with HDX user experience. You use it with Hyper-V, XenServer, ESX or vSphere - we will leave it up to you - I am sure you will pick the one that is most cost effective to you! Case closed!

Scenario #2 - Existing XenDesktop 2/3 customers, looking to XenDesktop 4

All XenDesktop customers get entitlements to XenDesktop 4 for no additional charge, as long as you are current on your soft assurance (which you likely will be because we offer 1 full year of SA with the product purchase). Most of you are already using the product based on 1:1 concurrency since virtual desktop means getting a license per user in most cases - Brian summarizes this quite well. So, this means more value for all of you at no additional cost. For example, if you are using XenDesktop 2 or 3 Advanced Edition - you get free entitlement to XenDesktop 4 Enterprise. All of the FlexCast delivery and full power of on-demand apps by XenApp at no additional charge. Wham! Similarly, Platinum Edition customers get the full capabilities of XenApp Platinum as part of XenDesktop 4 Platinum. In few cases I understand that there may be a concurrency delta from 1:1; adding new user based licenses of XenDesktop 4 with all additional capabilities as you expand to a larger number of users can be quite easy to justify with the new pricing and value of XenDesktop 4. Finally, if you are in an industry that has high concurrency ratios - stay tuned - we are working on offering you the right options to address your requirements.

Scenario #3 - All existing XenApp customers

Existing XenApp customers have three options now:

Interested in expanding to desktop virtualization now or in the near future for your XenApp users?

If you are interested in desktop virtualization, you should take advantage of the new Trade-up to XenDesktop 4 Program. This program is unbelievable value for anyone considering desktop virtualization. Here is how it works - you can trade-up all your XenApp licenses that you own for up to 2x the number of XenDesktop 4 licenses. Here is how you calculate savings. This might be enough for you to get your desktop virtualization going. You don't even have to start implementing virtual desktops day 1 - adopt it when you are ready and leverage the power of app virtualization as you get all the capabilities of XenApp with XenDesktop. Don't miss the opportunity - this program is only valid for a limited time.

Interested in XenDesktop 4 for new users that do not use XenApp today?

As part of the Trade-up program that I described, we also offer the flexibility to trade-up selective XenApp licenses and convert them to XenDesktop licenses. This program gives you the ability to use any XenApp licenses that you have own but do not use on a regular basis to deliver apps to your users. In fact, they may not even be current on Software Assurance. This program gives you the ability to leverage your existing investmet with Citrix - both license costs as well as your skill-sets and adopt XenDesktop 4 with lower risk and cost. Again, I encourage you to look at the Trade-up calculator.

Not interested in desktop virtualization?

If you are using XenApp to deliver apps with high concurrency requiements, keep using XenApp the way you are. Citrix is committed on XenApp product roadmap and support. We recently delivered powerful new capabilities in XenApp 5 Feature Pack 2. And, you will continue to see similar innovations in XenApp going forward.

Bottom line

This value with XenDesktop 4 is hard to beat, and time is now to look at desktop virtualization as you adopt your plans for windows 7 migration.

For all XenApp customers, look at the Trade-up program. If it doesn't work for you, no worries - XenApp is still the #1 strategic product with the biggest R&D and you will continue to see some solid product roadmap and support from Citrix.

For XenDesktop customers, most of you will have a solid upgrade with more value at no additional cost. I encourage you to look at the licensing differences as you go through the upgrade to XenDesktop 4.

For new customers, the choice is now easy. If you were thinking of how you can get one solution to serve all your users overtime. The solution is now here - Citrix XenDesktop 4

To learn more and uncover all the secrets, join our live event - Secrets, Lies & VDI

DIAL 'R' FOR REVOLUTION WITH XENDESKTOP 4

When I joined Citrix as general manager of the XenDesktop team in January 2008, I had a core conviction that when we would look back in 3-4 years time, we would have fundamentally transformed how enterprise users work with their desktops - for the better!

In June 2008, we launched XenDesktop 2 and transformed the desktop from a device to an on-demand service. Today, on October 6, 2009 we have taken a bold leap towards fulfilling our vision. A virtual desktop revolution is here - with the introduction of XenDesktop 4.

A virtual desktop - for everyone.

WHAT BEGAN IN 2008, ACCELERATED IN 2009
During the course of the last 18 months, my team and I have literally logged hundreds of thousands of air miles meeting hundreds of customers and partners worldwide. While many industry observers were skeptical about the hype, I always calibrate my impressions by studying and understanding what customers are doing. And I was certainly impressed with what I found:

• Customer interest was high worldwide - in North America, Europe and Pacific
• Key drivers were business agility, better security, anywhere access and yes - cost savings and green computing
• Adoption was across multiple verticals - education, healthcare, technology, manufacturing, government agencies, retail and financial services
• Primary use cases were for knowledge workers - whether remote, offshore or in the office
• Confirmation that user experience was very critical to the adoption of virtual desktops. In fact, the #1 reason why XenDesktop won over other alternatives was user experience - there were several reasons, but user experience was always #1
  In 2009, despite the tough economic headwinds, I saw our momentum accelerate:
• Early pilots were turning into production
• Many customers were coming back in 6-9 months to expand their deployments
• Larger initial purchases indicating deeper deployments
• Several customers kicking off strategic adoption of virtual desktops - broadly across thousands of users

WHAT'S AHEAD WITH VIRTUAL DESKTOPS
25 years ago, PCs fundamentally changed computing. They radically improved personal productivity and communication. PCs changed the way we work. However, that's not enough anymore.
Traditional PCs were designed for a different world. Today, people need to work in entirely new ways, powered by the connectivity of the internet, an explosion of new devices and the limitless promise of the web. A traditional PC - locked to an office, laptop or network is too confining.
In the world ahead, the virtual desktop will revolutionize computing all over again.
It will revolutionize how we work and play. It will enable a new virtual workstyle to unlock our efficiency and increase our speed to stay ahead - in a world that's flat, small and always changing.

Here is the promise the virtual desktop brings:

• Un-tethered from any office or location
• Un-tethered from any device: netbook, smartphone, thin client, BYOPC or Mac
• Access on any network
• Simple and complete access to enterprise computing on demand
• Self-service and provisioning of enterprise apps, just like picking songs from an iTunes store
• A high definition user experience.

With this virtual desktop, on-boarding new employees goes from days to minutes. New branches can be opened in a fraction of the time. Employee adds, moves and changes due to expanding businesses or M&A become quick, easy and save money. A graphics engineer in San Francisco can securely collaborate on a 3D graphics model with his colleague in Taipei.

This virtual desktop is here with XenDesktop 4 - for every user.

XENDESKTOP 4 FLEXCAST TECHNOLOGY: A GIANT DIAL FOR IT
As mentioned earlier, I have seen our momentum accelerate in 2009. However, I have also had customer meetings where people have been prone to take a wait and see approach.

Having worked in emerging technology markets before, I have found that when faced with a new type of solution many times people will fall into an "All or nothing" trap.
The solution must meet all use cases and all requirements or we will not deploy it.
This is what I would call an "on/off switch" approach. All or nothing.

I would suggest that you think of desktop virtualization as a "dial" rather than an "on/off switch".
Pick the use cases that are the most compelling for business agility, security and/or cost savings and start with them first. Then expand to additional use cases. Nothing succeeds more like success.

With XenDesktop 4 and FlexCast technology, we are providing a dial for IT. Pick the type of user: task worker, knowledge worker, advanced user or mobile worker. And then optimize the desktop with the appropriate desktop delivery that suites the user. You can control whether you want to deliver a hosted shared desktop, a hosted VM-based desktop, a blade PC based desktop, a local streamed desktop, virtual apps on physical laptop or desktop or a local virtual desktop. The right virtual desktop for every user.

So, perhaps VDI alone may have made you think of desktop virtualization as an "on/off switch". All or nothing.

We just gave you a giant dial with FlexCast delivery technology - the ultimate in flexibility for a complete desktop virtualization solution. You can start now with virtual desktops that best meet your needs and deliver an ROI.

Dial "R" for revolution. Let the revolution begin!

Raj Dhingra
General Manager, XenDesktop

Summary of announcement

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

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

So what are those use cases and drivers?

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

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

Business Perspective

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

User Experience Perspective

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

Technology Perspective

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Key considerations and takeaways

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

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

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

Veteran virtualization blogger Alessandro Perilli of virtualization.info, whom I credit with unearthing most of the interesting goings on in the virtualization world, made an interesting observation that I validated the VMware platform strategy in a recent blog, observing that I had done a good job of developing a rationale for the VMware SpringSource acquisition.

It's an interesting observation to be sure, but I'm going to vehemently stick with a response of "No I really didn't". For starters I didn't even mention SpringSource in my blog. The goal of the blog was to show how the emergence of two kinds of clouds - IaaS and PaaS - give us indications as to the future evolution of the technology landscape. And also to point out that very substantial changes lie ahead for today's OSes.

• I argued that the case for IaaS clouds is basically the case for virtualization as a property of the infrastructure, and I stated that it is my belief that customers are now purchasing virtualized infrastructure independently of the OS(es) which they choose to develop/run their apps. I pointed to the emergence of virtual infrastructure platforms as entities independent of the OS, from all vendors, as evidence of the trend.
• I also argued that the future of the traditional single-server centric notion of the OS as host of the application will be challenged. Again the evidence of this is the emergence of PaaS offerings from the major cloud vendors, most notably Microsoft, whose Azure platform indicates where Microsoft thinks the OS is going. There is other evidence too, which I hope to explain below.

Of course the PaaS concept, while extraordinarily powerful, is mostly about future apps. To develop future apps one needs lots of developers, and SpringSource and the Spring framework certainly have done a fabulous job of building a good developer base. But there's an awful lot of work ahead for VMware to turn Spring into a PaaS platform, and to monetize it either with enterprises or as a cloud play. And as of now at least, it is restricted to Java apps. So if one wanted to point to a powerful PaaS platform that is relevant to a massive developer base, and that had the opportunity to address both today's apps and those of tomorrow, Microsoft Azure would stand head and shoulders above the rest. My case for the future of the OS was really a case for the emergence of something like Azure - something that can run today's apps (as VMs) and tomorrow's (on the "next OS" platform).

Now, with my "everything that is relevant today is already legacy" hat on, I want to make the case for the emergence of a PaaS (or application-centric) approach as a logical evolution of the IaaS model, for which again I see strong evidence on the part of major players, including VMware. This also challenges the traditional role of the OS. Here is what is happening:

1. The major IaaS vendors are already adding PaaS-like features: One has simply to observe the rapid and continual evolution of the IaaS model and the offerings from vendors to see that the bare-bones Virtual Private Server model is rapidly being enriched with features that are very developer and app sticky. While VMware boasts about its 2M Spring developers, Amazon Web Services can boast at least half a million. And there's a very significant difference between the two: The AWS apps are built around a monetization model, from the get-go. So with Spring VMware will likely compete head to head with both IaaS and PaaS cloud providers, including Azure. If Spring and its hosted apps are run and monetized on top of IaaS clouds and offered in their own right as SaaS apps to customers, then VMware will find that it competes with another category of vendors: the software resellers - the same folk who happily sell vSphere today.
2. Emerging standards, such as DMTF OVF, will allow IaaS clouds to become more app-centric: The vendors who work on standards at the DMTF, including all of the virtualization players, have collaborated to develop a portable application packaging standard, called the Open Virtualization Format (OVF). Citrix Project Kensho offers a complete open source toolset for the OVF, including the ability to combine in a single portable package multiple VMs from VMware, Xen/XenServer, & Hyper-V, together with all of the meta data required to completely instantiate multiple VMs and all of their environmental configuration, on any virtualization platform. OVF provides a powerful framework for packaging complete multi-tier applications, combining VMs in any OSes, their storage, compute, networking and other parameters. OVFs can be secured, and readily imported into IaaS clouds where they can be instantiated and run. Here the traditional OS plays an important role - namely running specific components of a multi-tier, multi-VM application. But that's it. Adoption of OVF by IaaS clouds as their standardized import/export format will give them an ability to directly deploy and ultimately manage the life-cycle of applications for their customers - hence becoming more app-centric. In this model the VM is simply an execution container for a part of an app.

Finally for those of the "traditional OS wins" variety who took offense to my last blog: There is no doubt that virtual infrastructure is compelling from an infrastructural agility, availability and resource management perspective. But the "VM as proxy for the app" model (which is how most virtualization administrators manage their environments today) is simply a recognition that most apps run in one VM, and hence the relevance of the OS is uncontested - from the app perspective. Moreover the skill sets and processes of today's IT Pros mean that the "single app per OS / VM" will remain a key building block of enterprise IT for a very long time. Indeed one can argue that the change to an app model that inherently spans multiple virtualized execution containers is so profound that it is generational - and will occur only as fast as skill sets evolve in IT. But I've been surprised by how rapidly the cloud has seized attention in corporate IT, perhaps because it is so much easier to consume IT as a service than to stand it up oneself, and so much more productive to develop new apps using powerful new frameworks. Indeed one can postulate an outcome whereby traditional IT enterprise architectures and growth will stall, in favor of new deployments using private and public service offerings. IaaS cloud providers are moving up-stack to support abstractions for apps and the momentum around PaaS (or even enriched IaaS) is a telling indication of the trends.

Windows 7 looks great

Like it or not, Windows 7 will be here soon. I am a new user of Windows 7 and it looks great! Definitely faster! I think that the adoption rate will far outpace not just Vista (of course) but also Windows XP. So chances are pretty good that there will be a rollout in your organization in the next 12 months.

But,...

Unfortunately, a migration could be disruptive, time consuming and can bust your budget.

Windows 7 represents a significant change as compared to XP. Apps that ran on XP may not run natively on Win7 without upgrading. The XP emulation feature on Win7 - the jury's still out on that. So, no matter what, you are likely going to have to spend a lot of time to test all of your applications in XP emulation or go buy upgrades to some of the apps and then do compatibility testing to ensure everything interacts the way it did in XP. In addition to spending 100's or even 1000's of dollars per user on these license upgrades, even a medium sized organization could spend millions on testing/integration/project management/installation.

Then, of course, there may be the cost of buying new PCs for the upgrade. If you have the luxury of time, you can just wait until the next refresh and ensure you get Win7 for some of your users. With this approach, you will have spent a chunk of money on planning Win7 app upgrades to just the first 20-25% of your user base and you will still be stuck with supporting PC desktops along with two OS platforms for years to come.

Finally, you need to manage somehow getting Windows 7 physically rolled out on all the end points that you manage. If you are lucky, they are all sitting in a single room - but for most of you this means end points everywhere. Also, since you did your last migration to Windows XP, you now have users that you didn't have in your previous migration - contractors, offshore, partners, you name it - you likely have it.

Time to think of the right plan

Can desktop virtualization help you with Win7 migration? Yes! In a big way: make it non-disruptive and will help you lower your costs.

1. You can migrate to Windows 7 by installing it once in the datacenter without touching every end point.
2. You don't need to refresh the hardware. Repurposing old PCs into thin clients can get you started quickly.
3. Any application conflicts can be managed via app virtualization technology, which should be a key component of any virtual desktop project. App virtualization makes desktops so much easier to manage than dealing with multiple desktop images spread on multiple end points.

Once you have established a golden OS image with Win7, desktop virtualization will deliver Win7 to your old PCs essentially overnight.

The key is to leverage the right delivery technology for different end point devices. By judiciously applying OS streaming technology, you can leverage the local processing power in newer PCs and reduce the investment in data center infrastructure. This has a significant impact on the overall per user cost of the solution. Now, you will be able to get started with desktop virtualization by using the budget you have allocated for PC replacement and start reducing desktop management costs from that point on.

7 STEPS TO WIN 7

1. KICK-OFF A PILOT FOR HOSTED VIRTUAL DESKTOPS TODAY - Kick off a pilot for virtual desktops today in order to experience the different in management and user experience. This gets you started.
2. SEGMENT YOUR USERS & EXPAND VIRTUAL DESKTOPS - Pick the right kind of virtual desktop for all your enterprise users. Expand your pilot to other office workers, remote workers and guest workers.
3. INVENTORY & VIRTUALIZE YOUR APPS - Inventory all the apps that you have and identify the ones that get updated the most or will have compatibility problems with Windows 7. Virtualize these apps within your virtual desktop pilot. Ether host the apps on dedicated servers if they are big, chunky LOB apps or stream them into the image (isolated) if they are productivity apps.
4. PREPARE CLEAN & PRISTINE WINDOWS 7 IMAGE - Prepare the OS image that you plan to roll-out with Windows 7. Ensure that you only have one clean & pristine image for all your users - virtualize all other applications and separate them from your OS. Centrally update your virtual desktops to Windows 7 for instant experience for all.
5. ROLL OUT WINDOWS 7 WITH VIRTUAL DESKTOPS FOR ALL ONLINE USERS - use a combination of delivery technoloies for getting the best ROI and levreage of your existing PC refresh budgets and cycles.
6. ADOPT OFFLINE VIRTUAL DESKTOPS - Once you are done with your online users, it will be time to expand llocal virtual desktops for your offline users. This is where you are using a technology such as XenClient to implement offline virtual desktops.
7. GET OUT OF MANAGEMENT OF END POINTS - This is where you transfer the responsibility of managing the end points entirely out of IT; and give it to other groups. It could be facilities. Or, it could be the employees themselves - helping you implement a BYOC program.

Follow this process and be a hero - lead the migration without disruptions for a change! And, you will never need to worry about the disruption and costs of another OS upgrade!

It will be hard to argue that there will be a migration process that is simpler and less disruptive. So, our conversation should shift to evaluating the technology landscape - which technology can help you with this migration best. Of course - my advice would be - XenDesktop

We will be talking more about this and more in our big desktop virtualization show - there will be thousands attending the online event - Secrets, Lies and VDI

Finally, join others who are going through Windows 7 migration with desktop virtualization

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

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

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

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

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

The recent announcement of the Terremark Cloud offering has raised significant attention especially because of the competitive pricing and EC2 like features of elastic capacity and hourly charges with no commitment. On the surface the Terremark entry price of $0.036 per hour seems very low compared to Amazon EC2 at $0.10 but it's worth picking a few examples to provide a more apples to apples comparison.

..
Not included in the comparison is the difference in storage costs which can be small or very significant depending on the circumstance. Amazon provides up to 160 GB of instance storage for a small image or 850 GB for a large included in the hourly cost. If you have only a small instance say 10GB that adds $ 2.50 to the monthly price at Terremark ( @ .25/GB ) however of you needed the 850 GB included in the Amazon Large image that would add $ 212 to the monthly Terremark costs. Also not included is bandwidth costs, however both charge the same $0.17 GB for data transfer out . ( Although Amazon charges $ 0.10/GB for data in vs Terremark $ 0.17 data in ).

Some the bigger differences will more likely depend on how the VMs are utilized. The numbers stated above assume a full month of 24x31 operation. With Amazon EC2 it's possible to save in S3 ( bundle in Amazon terms ) an instance and then shut down ( terminate ) the VM and the billing stops. With Terremark however although you can shut down the VM, the hourly charges do not stop. Only deleting the VM ends the billing, there does not appear to be an option of saving with the hourly charges turned off and allowing a new instance from the saved image to be started at a later time. This appears to be a big advantage for Amazon although I need to learn more about the Terremark offering to fully appreciate the capabilities.

Certainly economics is not the only factor in selecting a Cloud infrastructure provider. Vendor Lock-in and VM portablity often come up as concerns. Security is also a factor in regard to Cloud computing and this was a motivator for Amazons recent Virtual Private Cloud offering which provides a dedicated VPN connection from a customer premise to an isolated Cloud inside the Amazon infrastructure. I also have to admit I was impressed with a recent tour of the Terremark data center in Miami , this place was like a high tech Fort Knox when it came to security. The entire topic of Cloud security is worthy of specialized consideration not covered in this simple comparison.

Ease of use is another consideration that is worth evaluating. The Amazon Web Console is limited in function but easy to use plus includes access to many partner and community provided ( including Citrix C3 Lab ) templates that are prebuilt and ready to launch. In Amazon EC2 for example its now possible signup and launch your own XenApp server in as little a 15 minutes.

Terremark also provides a web base console that looks straight forward however I have not used it myself yet. Terramark does not provide the same portfolio of 3rd party templates however they do provide more granularity in the size of VMs and RAM plus they offer multiple versions of Windows Server.

As the options for Cloud Computing continue to expand the economic analysis of Cloud vs Premise will extend to Cloud vs Cloud, as Service Providers continue to provide dynamic cloud type offerings.

Cloud Economics 101 Part 1 - Premise vs Cloud vs Colo
Cloud Economics 101 Part 2 - Premise Plus Cloud
Cloud Economics 101 Part 3 - Amazon Reserved Pricing

http://twitter.com/chrisfleck

We are pleased to announce that Citrix XenDesktop and HDX technology is powering the new Smart Business Desktop on the IBM cloud, a public cloud service that delivers desktops for office based workers. This new service enables small to medium businesses to be able to virtualize desktop computing resources, and provide a logical, rather than a physical method of access to the entire Windows desktop experience, including OS, apps, and data - with all the storage and computing services hosted in the public cloud. The service requires no up-front capital making it easier for small to mid-size businesses to adopt virtual desktops.
 
One of the keys to successfully deliver virtual desktops from a public cloud is to ensure that the experience for end users remains unchanged or is better than their physical PCs. Remember, all users in this environment will be accessing their desktop over WAN. This is where Citrix's HDX technologies come into play for IBM Cloud. HDX includes a set of technologies designed to enable a high definition user experience for virtual desktops, and is a key component for IBM public cloud services for virtual desktops. Virtual desktop users from IBM cloud services will now be able to access their desktop from any device in any location and still get uncompromised experience with any kind of content, including rich media. Learn more about Citrix XenDesktop and Citrix HDX.
 
Citrix and IBM Global Technology Services have worked closely together for many years. IBM has been successfully managing XenApp implementation for delivering apps to hundreds of thousands of users for customers worldwide. Centralization and optimization have been the joint focus for Citrix and IBM and we have hundreds of successful customer implementations (see a great example on ATU in Germany through the video at  www.citrix.com/ibm). Citrix XenDesktop and HDX technology will continue to be key parts of IBM Global Technology Services offerings for private clouds within larger enterprise customers. The private cloud offerings now include the entire Citrix desktop virtualization product portfolio - i.e. XenDesktop, XenApp, Netscaler, Branch Repeater and the Citrix Access Gateway.
 
IBM has developed hundreds of consultants with skills that span the entire Citrix desktop virtualization portfolio, making it easier for both large and small businesses to adopt Citrix XenDesktop and HDX technology for delivering virtual desktops to their users anywhere.
For more information about IBM Smart Business Desktop on the IBM Cloud, visit http://www-935.ibm.com/services/us/index.wss/offering/bcrs/a1026737.

Raj Dhingra

General Manager, XenDesktop Product Group

On the run up to VMworld 2009, there seems to be an increasing amount of activity on the subject of user personalization in VDI. Gartner has written about dynamic workspace includng user personalization as a key element of the stack. What does it mean? What is user personalization all about? And, where does it need to be? Let's take a closer look.

Aren't all PCs supposed to be personalized? What's the big deal?

Personalization of the desktop is really all about making the working experience for the user as effective as possible. Sure this means users have photos of their family or favorite sports team as their wallpaper, but personalization is more than that! Think about all the things you have done to make your personal computer your own - from toolbar settings to your email signature, to applications you have installed since being supplied with your machine. Then think about how IT is able to manage the user-specific component of this machine - corporate policy, user access rights, PC lifecycle management, patching and security updates. It's a constant struggle between IT who needs to manage the PC and the user to wants to personalize it. The more personal the PC, the less control IT has over that machine and the more expensive it becomes to manage.

Does desktop virtualization help or hurt the cause for users?

The emergence of desktop virtualization provides a real opportunity to address this long-standing struggle. Those assets of the desktop that are common to many users, including corporate OS and apps, can now be standardized and automatically delivered 'on-demand' to users from a central source. In fact, the only way to get scalable and cost effective virtual desktops is with single instance management of the corporate OS and applications - as with Citrix XenDesktop. A 'corporate' OS can be dynamically provisioned into a virtual image, and likewise, corporate applications can be delivered on-demand onto the virtual desktop as needed. The result? A scalable, low-management, low-storage, low-cost corporate desktop for all employees. The third key component of this scalable virtual desktop is personalization - so that you can make each user's virtual desktop personal.

So, how do you pick the right solution?

Based on my interactions with customers successfully implementing virtual desktops, I have come to a conclusion that there are 5 key requirements that you need to consider for delivering personalized virtual desktops:

1. Starting with managed user profiles or equivalent - A system that can store user settings and personalization changes. A system that can provide an easy and fast way to manage the settings for users. This is included as part of XenDesktop and gets you started with your personalized virtual desktops.
2. Getting On-demand 'personality' - To increase the responsiveness of the desktop and logon, only provide parts of the user personality required by the user at the time when needed. Why load what a user is not going to use?
3. Allowing user-centric configuration - This may be a bit counter-intuitive to personalization; however, role based configuration is a critical component of making every user's desktop 'personal'. It starts with configuring which applications a user has access to. XenDesktop (with XenApp as an application management system) offers the ability to control the applications. IT may need more granular control - such as what printers users will need and what drives they can access.
4. System self-healing from user errors - To be able to automatically roll back to pre-configured user settings in case any personalized changes made by zero conflict centralized configurations.
5. Ensuring visibility - Giving IT the ability to see into the user environment and solve potential problems before the user gets involved creates a continuously improving desktop estate as well as reducing costs

How do you get it going?

We have included #1 and parts of #3 in Citrix XenDesktop. To address other requirements that cover comprehensive enterprise-level control and management of personalization, I have seen customers successfully use the combined solution of Citrix XenDesktop and AppSense Environment Management to good effect. In addition, AppSense Environment Management is also able to offer Enterprise-level scale to cover not just your virtual desktops but also your physical environments, or environments where you may be using multiple technologies such as XenApp published/hosted or streamed apps to physical PCs and XenDesktop.

So when you hear about 'user personalization' or 'user profiles', look deeper into the details of what's being discussed. Successful (low-cost, high adoption) VDI requires the ability to use a single instance of OS and apps on demand across an entire company. I have seen that customers have successfully combined Citrix XenDesktop with AppSense Environment Management to ensure user adoption across all platforms for thousands of users, and it's being considered as the most complete solution for delivering personalized virtual desktops.

What to expect in coming weeks?

I expect to see more point solutions and some technology acquisitions and OEMs. However, they have two fundamental shortcomings, in my opinion:

• They are built only with the perspective of user personalization. Any user personalization product needs a solid desktop virtualization solution.

• They solve one of the requirements I listed above and may not be enough to address all of enterprise requirements.

As you are doing your assessment on personalization, I encourage you to review this list of requirements that I have seen in successful implmentations of virtual desktops. Also, I'd love to hear your comments on other requirements around personalization that I haven't covered here.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The results

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

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

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

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

So what should one make of all this?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

http://twitter.com/chrisfleck

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

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

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

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

http://twitter.com/chrisfleck

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


http://twitter.com/chrisfleck