If your thinking about attending Synergy 2009 you may want to check out some of the "underground" videos taken at Synergy 2008 on a new Synergy Underground Channel on YouTube at: 

http://www.youtube.com/synergyunderground

Citrix Synergy 2009

Where Virtualization, Networking and Application Delivery Meet

MGM Grand Hotel, Las Vegas (May 4-7, 2009)

For more information: www.citrixsynergy.com

Every organization is cutting costs, looking for ways to save money - 'doing more with less' CIOs  are making it clear to their IT organization - find cost savings, in one meeting the CIO said we need to find projects that will save us $2M+ and we need a few of these now!

In all the meetings I have had, Citrix has been at the top end of possible projects that can really save money now! Citrix champions within the IT organization are being called on to expand and accelerate their projects. For a long time these Citrix champions were seen as a niche group within IT, now they are being called upon to lead larger projects as their work has been at the core of saving organizations real dollars as they centralize and virtualize their application environments.

Often,  projects around Citrix technology have not been specifically about cost savings, it's usually solving other problems, such as application delivery for challenging apps, providing remote and secure access to applications or giving access to new locations/branches or home users. All these scenarios also include an element of cost saving, using Citrix was always the lowest cost option.

What is not so obvious is that these Citrix projects where not just the best/lowest cost option but also they provided real cost savings to the organization, reducing the TCO for the IT team, and providing best in class ROI. Gartner did some studies that showed Citrix XenApp ROI was less than 9 months. (To get a TCO and ROI calculator done for your organization ask your Citrix partner contact to build one for you.)

Delivering all your Windows apps with Citrix XenApp is at the heart of the real cost savings, Check out the compatibility tool,  http://community.citrix.com/citrixready if your app is not listed it you can add it. Saving of over 40% on your desktop management costs can be realized by running all your apps via XenApp.

Whether it's about TCO or ROI, Citrix have always shown excellent results and now that cost savings are the priority, Citrix champions are shinning a cost savings light on their organizations. To find out more about saving real money for your organization and meet some of the real Citrix champions working at our customer sites come to Citrix Synergy in May 2009 http://www.citrixsynergy.com.
Citrix champions speak out! Are you seeing your projects increase in these financially challenging times? Are you shining a cost saving light for your organization?

 
 
We have a poll going on over on *Linkedin*asking for feedback and opinions about the impact of making XenServer free. If your part of Linkedin please add your vote. So far the result are not too surprising with the majority feeling the largest impact will be around new adopters to virtualization. This has been one of the primary targets for XenServer and the product strategy initiative. In addition, we expect many companies with existing virtualization implementations to evaluate XenServer and some of those also make a switch as a result. This could be because of the current costs or performace limitations such as running XenApp on virtualized servers. The Poll seems to reinforce this may happen as well, however more data/samples are required to better quantify the results. Let us know your thoughts. 
Download XenServer for free here

 
 
 
 
 

There are a lot of things to do in Vegas, such as seeing a show, riding a roller coaster and of course, becoming a high roller; however, none of them come with a guarantee that you will go home with something more valuable than you arrived with. At Citrix Synergy, not only will you leave with new and/or renewed connections with other professionals in the industry and at Citrix, but you will leave with knowledge that will deliver more value to your company and to you as an individual.

Sure, there are multiple valuable conferences within a conference at Synergy (iForum, Network World Live! and Virtualization Congress) but my personal favorite is GeekSpeak Live!  If you haven't seen or attended a GeekSpeak session (examples Shawn at Synergy  and Michael with GeekSpeak Roadtrip!) , you need to check this out. These sessions are where true unfiltered technical interactive discussions occur, many sessions are led by Citrix CTPs such as Charles Aunger , Ruben Spruijt  & Jeroen van de Camp, and Brian Madden and many more, but you also have the ability to lead and/or change a discussion topic on the fly.

This year we have expanded GeekSpeak Live to not only include our traditional evening sessions, but we also have the GeekSpeak SpeakEasy sessions on the exhibit floor and we have woven GeekSpeak session through the traditional conference tracks as well.

As we get closer and closer to Citrix Synergy, I will be posting more information about our GeekSpeak sessions and presenters. Please feel free to leave a comment on this blog, check out the GeekSpeak forum or drop me an email if you are interested in a topic or being a GeekSpeak session lead.

Before I go, I wanted to share a discussion I had with a Citrix Synergy attendee. The discussion started regarding the GeekSpeak session, but quickly transitioned to "I am planning to attend, but my boss/finance team is really leery of spending on technology conferences (especially in Vegas), given the negative press that AIG and others in the industry have gotten regarding conferences. Do you have any advice for me?"

We at Citrix are completely aware budget constraints and have pulled together some information on the topic for you. The fact is that from a cost perspective, Vegas is a value compared to other cities hosting technology events Vegas is 20%-60% cheaper from an attendee perspective. With the data we provided, she was able to assure her management that Citrix Synergy was not a boondoggle!

I look forward to seeing you at Citrix Synergy and Geekspeak Live! , perhaps the one time that "What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas" isn't true!

Here's a straightforward (and hype-free) introduction to HDX. Let me know what you think.

Put very simply, HDX (or High Definition eXperience) is our way to talk about all the elements of the Citrix remote access technology that affect the user's computing experience. It's designed to provide a Systematic Framework to talk about the Citrix Delivery Center in a way that focuses upon the user experience. It takes all the elements that might impact on the end-user's XenApp or XenDesktop experience and provides a straight forward way to talk about them. It also elevates the discussion beyond protocols. Don't worry, the ICA protocol remains a key part of the Citrix story, but the ability of our solutions to deliver a great user experience is much broader than simply talking about a remoting protocol.

In the following I build the story step by step.

HDX - Broadcast

HDX - Broadcast refers to Citrix capabilities for providing virtual desktops and applications over any network. It provides the underlying transport for many of the other HDX technologies. HDX - Broadcast includes many of the technologies very familiar to ICA experts such as instant mouse click feedback, keystroke latency reduction, multi-level compression, session reliability, and queuing and tossing.

HDX - Plug and Play

HDX - Plug and Play refers to current and future capabilities to provide connectivity for local devices and applications in a virtualized environment, including USB, multi-monitor, printers, and peripherals. HDX - Plug and Play includes technologies such as multi-monitor support, smart card support, special folder redirection, universal printing, file-type association, and USB support.

HDX - 3D

HDX - 3D refers to Citrix current and future capabilities in remoting high end graphics. It rests upon and extends our HDX - Broadcast capabilities. HDX - 3D includes technologies like image acceleration and progressive display for graphically intensive images. Soon it will include a range of new 3D acceleration technologies from Project Apollo.

HDX - MediaStream

HDX - MediaStream refers to Citrix current and future capabilities for multimedia such as sound and video. It also rests upon and extends our HDX - Broadcast capabilities. HDX MediaStream includes technologies for streaming media files to the client device for playing via local codecs with seamless embedding into the remote session.

HDX - RealTime

HDX - RealTime refers to Citrix current and future capabilities for real time communications such as voice and web cameras. It rests upon and extends our HDX - Broadcast capabilities. HDX - RealTime is today a work in progress with several technologies ranging from EasyCall to our bi-directional audio functionality. The near future will see dramatic enhancements to our ability to support real-time communication via both voice and video on the remote client.

HDX - IntelliCache

HDX - IntelliCache refers to Citrix current and future capabilities to locally cache bandwidth intensive data and graphics and locally stage streamed applications. Here we use Branch Repeater to illustrate IntelliCache as it caches common application display data for multiple users locally to the branch office, eliminating redundant transfer of commonly used application objects.

HDX - Adaptive Orchestration

HDX - Adaptive Orchestration refers to current and future capabilities that enable seamless interaction between the HDX Technology categories. A central concept is that all these components work adaptively to tune the unified HDX offering for the best possible user experience.

HDX Technology Futures

Citrix has a broad range of technologies under R&D that will continue to build the HDX story. (Some of you will have heard of project Apollo ... hint - check out Derek Thorsland's posts)

Other Sources

1. Citrix HDX Technology Press Release
2. Citrix HDX Technology Web Site
3. Citrix creates the "HDX" brand to compete against those who say they 'just' have ICA - Brian Madden

Many of us in the IT industry recall the old adage  "you'll never get fired for buying IBM" this held true for quite some time while IBM provided a comprehensive albeit expensive set of products that got the job done and provided the safe bet vendor selection. As the PC era took hold and the introduction of credible alternatives became available, the pendulum began to swing the other way. IT started being challenged about the "safe bet" choice and in many cases the assumption became if you were only buying IBM you were probably paying too much. This phenomena also translated into many purchasing processes that forced spec & price comparisons, in other cases it came about by users inside and outside of IT making departmental decisions to purchase PC's and other IT solutions from alternative vendors.

Wind the clock forward to today's situation in the server virtualization industry. The so called "safe bet" is to keep buying VMware regardless of the alternatives. And it's probably true today, you won't get fired just for buying VMware, however in today's economic climate this may not be the best alternative for your company or for your career. No doubt, VMware does offer a comprehensive server virtualization solution that gets the job done, albeit at a premium cost. You can continue to build your experience and expertise solely on VMware and be recognized as the company's "VMware guy/expert/fanboy/bigot/etc". Or, you can expand your horizon and expertise by carving out some time to install and evaluate XenServer and Hyper-V. The great news is you can now test and even deploy in production without spending the companies money, only your time which is valuable but so is the experience. As you drill into the capabilities of each virtualization platform you can develop your own first hand knowledge of the features, capabilities, and limitations of each. Equipped with this information you can build your own pro's and con's list as well as cost comparisons.

So before your management asks you if you have considered the alternatives, or the finance department cuts your budget again, you can now proactively develop your own proposal for a virtualization solution that gets the job done and saves the company significant money. Even if the decision is to stay with the status-quo, chances are you will be recognized as someone that takes initiative and looks for new ways to benefit the company. If you do start to carve out some area's to deploy XenServer or Hyper-V you will also be building your experience and resume as a "Virtualization guy/expert/guru/etc" that also knows how to save money. That has to be a good thing for your career in this economy.

Download XenServer for free here.
 

As the Beatles so famously declared in 1967, we can all use the help of a good friend. From day one, Citrix has always had a strong partner community to ensure that we deliver as complete and robust a solution to our customers as possible. In fact, with over 2200 companies enrolled in the Citrix Technology Member Program more than 800 products from 150 companies verified as part of the Citrix Ready Program and nearly 1200 products in 8000 instances documented in the Citrix Ready Community Verified Program, I would say that we have reached a level of partnership that few companies in the industry can match.

However, that is not enough. It's easy to partner when the economy is good, but it's even more essential to pull together when times are tough. In that spirit, the Citrix Ready team held a webinar for our Citrix Ready partners yesterday (available for Citrix Ready Partners to replay here) to discuss important new changes made in the program that will elevate the value of the Citrix Ready program not only for our partners, but perhaps more importantly, for our customers and channel partners.

The Citrix Ready team is constantly in touch with our partners to ensure that we evolve the program to ensure that the program brings value to our partner community. While there are many ways to calculate the value of a program, the most basic way to quantify the program value is to assess the value of the benefits against the cost to participate in the program, more simply stated:

                        Value of Citrix Ready Program == Program Benefits / Cost of Program

Obviously the quantification of the numerator is subjective and will vary for each company participating in the program, how engaged they are in the program, how many benefits they take advantage of, etc. The denominator is clearly described in terms of the program fees. Therefore, to increase the value of the program, the job of the Citrix Ready team is pretty simple - Increase the value of the benefits without increasing the costs of the program.

That might be enough if times were good. However, they are not. As such, we challenged ourselves to see if we could really, really, find a way to pull together the partner community for the mutual benefits of our customers and channel partners. I am pleased to share with you that the team did just that and found a way to increase the benefits while decreasing the program costs by 1/3!

Yes, you read that correctly, more benefits at lower costs.

(For those of you that are following the math, we increased the numerator while decreasing the denominator thereby supercharging the value of the program!)

Specifically, we announced the following new Citrix Ready program benefits:

• Enhanced partner communication and collaboration via Citrix Ready Forums, Citrix Ready Blogs, Citrix Ready Newsletters and a Citrix Ready Steering Committee

• Increased participation in our channel program communication and events

• Deeper involvement with our products via quarterly technology roadmap seminar series and discounts on Citrix Education programs

• Extended marketing benefits that include education and inclusion in our "Key Play" go to market activities, customer newsletters and Citrix Communities such as the Community Verified site

In addition, all of these benefits are available via the web regardless of what geographic location or time zone the partner is located in, providing 24x7 access enabling our partners to take advantage of these benefits when it is convenient for them, not based on Citrix's availability.

While I doubt that Vicky, Tricia, Vishal and I will ever be confused with John, Paul, George and Ringo, we certainly aspire to uphold the spirit of those Beatles from 1967.

2008 ended with a resounding call for change. It became the slogan as we entered 2009 and continues to hold true across political, social, and technological themes.  

Over the past few months since my last post, I'm beginning to see more and more change occurring; customers adopting virtual desktop technology as they look to really drive down the cost of desktop ownership associated with users. 

But let's be honest, isn't the utopia for companies to deploy technologies that can reduce costs and still provide flexibility and business agility anyway? And, corporate desktop has overtime become the biggest culprit – expensive, slow, & rigid.

In September 2008, I posted "Virtual Desktops, Mobile VDI and Client Hypervisors - Oh My!".   As I reread that earlier post, I may have accidently over-polished my crystal ball back then.  This week saw us release two very strategic announcements that I'd like to share a few of my own personal thoughts – very similar to my predictions in September, don't you think?

Here's a link to the two announcements on Citrix.com in case you hadn't seen them: Citrix Collaborating with Intel to Deliver Xen-based Client Virtualization Solutions, Citrix Unveils Vision to Transform Desktop Computing with Project Independence.

I may not be the next Nostradamus, but in this post, I'll give my take on what I believe will change fundamentally in desktop computing - something that is over-due.  At Citrix, we are hard at work at enabling this change.  I believe that Citrix Delivery Center and now Project Independence will become the catalyst for this change.

Change #1 - Your company will no longer own your laptop.  

Finally, as a user I can buy the machine I want, not just assigned by corporate!   Whether it's a 12" mini or a gaming powerhouse, I get to pick and choose based on my personal tastes and needs. 

At Citrix we implemented a BYOC (Bring Your Own Computer) program and we are on track to have 20% of our laptop users on the program in the next 12 months.  Sure, as a user I'm happy but our CFO and CIO are ecstatic – instead of dealing with constant capital expenditure we can have predictable expense on our income statement just like any other service or employee benefit on a regular basis.  

We are marching forward with this but our goal is to broaden this with our leading customers.  The client hypervisor developed in collaboration with Intel will become the foundation of our solution.

Change #2 - Your company will spend more on coffee and office supplies than they do on desktop management.

Companies have been talking about reducing IT support and management costs since the days of the first networked PC.  Today's desktop management is like creating a house of cards and giving one to every employee everywhere. To make any change is like moving a wall in thousands of these houses of cards distributed everywhere.  Citrix's approach to enable IT to manage OS, apps and user data/settings separately and centrally changes the economics entirely.  

We've already seen customers reduce total cost of ownerships in early XenDesktop implementations for office-based workers, specifically around the areas of IT helpdesk costs, updates/refreshes, and administration.  

Project Independence gives IT the flexibility for mobile workers.  Add/move/remove become mundane, updates & rollbacks can be done by anyone centrally and packaging/compatibility testing can finally scale.  Not to forget many tasks such as data backup/recovery and PC inventory management are entirely eliminated.

In this independent world, cost of desktop management will be similar to any other expense that a company makes for serving an employee – such as coffee or office supplies.

Change # 3 - You will access your corporate desktop from whatever device is most convenient at the time.   

I truly enjoy the opportunity to travel around the world to meet customers and partners and talk about Citrix's vision around both application and desktop delivery.  During these trips, I get to test our technology from all locations, various connection bandwidths, and increasingly across multiple devices.  With hosted virtual desktops, I'm able to securely access my corporate desktop on any Internet connected device – whether it's my own laptop, an Internet kiosk, or a mobile device (click here to view iPhone demo.) 

Project Independence extends this so an employee can access their personalized desktop from any device, online or offline. And if their personal laptop is unavailable for any reason then they can use whatever PC/Mac/iPhone they may have access to and still get their personalized desktop deliver to them instantly.

Gone will be the days when we still think that we can get our personalized desktop from only one laptop that we were given from our company.

Change #4 - You will switch back-and-forth between work and personal desktops on the same device without thinking twice. 

I was just thinking about how only a few years ago, corporate and commercial users were waiting for an all in one device that delivered on email, phone, music, photos, etc with simplicity.  A device that enabled me to unify work and personal items together to make life easier. From Blackberry devices to the iPhone, manufacturers delivered. 

I see a similar convergence of my personal and corporate desktop as well.  If I'm buying my own PC for work and personal use, I would expect access to both desktops to be seamless and still deliver on computing flexibility and usability.  I have read that 75% of users use their corporate machine for personal use (OK, so we all have iTunes install and aren't comply with corporate policies... let's keep it our little secret).

The current environment is not just rigid but also hard to enforce and insecure. Project Independence will address this – you could be working on your own media gallery during the weekend and switch to quickly refer to their customer information excel worksheet with a single click to respond to a quick business call. 

Change #5 - You will never complain about your PC being too slow again. 

I can't remember the last time I had to call IT because my machine was running slow, since running on a virtual desktop – I love the smell of a fresh machine in the morning.   It's great to get a nice clean, fast image running knowing that I can't really get myself into trouble.

That's the experience any user should expect from any virtual desktop solution whether it's local or hosted. Project Independence will free those laptops with all the gunkware – all the mish-mash of OS, apps and personal data/downloads that makes the PCs slower within few months.

IT is under a lot of pressure – budgetary, user satisfaction and new technology adoption.  Virtualization has helped IT in the data center already – it is time to give IT some freedom for desktop computing.  Project Independence is not just about giving IT freedom to centrally manage desktops with a single instance, but it will liberate businesses from huge capital expenses on their balance sheets, and give employee the flexibility of picking the best devices possible.

I can't wait for the Independence Day – I know it is coming,  2H'09...

Cheers,

Gordon

Here are some thoughts on 2009 -- I'd love to hear your thoughts - where am I right and where have I missed the bus?

1. IT heads will be in the clouds: After so much hype on cloud computing in 2008, enterprises will start looking to leverage the benefits of the cloud. Or at least specific varieties of the cloud - the 2009 conversation will be a lot more nuanced around different cloud varieties. This is not an all or nothing move - IT feet will stay firmly planted on the ground. The cloud brings new capabilities to the IT toolbox and will be just part of the enterprise IT architecture strategy.
   1. The cloud will ultimately be visible at the top of every mountain of IT infrastructure. Some applications will remain on premise, others will move to the cloud, and many will span both cloud and on-premise.
   2. Isolated (incompatible) clouds will fail. Compatibility issues will slow adoption. Vendors trying to lock-in enterprises to a proprietary platform will be brought to earth.
2. Virtualization on the move: Desktop virtualization continues to grow largely due to the conceptual appeal and simplicity of reusing the stand alone operating system combined with the real advantages of centralized, remote computing.
3. Make it personal, BYOC: Citrix has been publicizing the Bring Your Own Computer as a replacement for the enterprise laptop. This will continue to gain momentum in 2009 and is a fantastic illustration of the power of cross-platform, universal interfaces, such as the Citrix Receiver and the humble web browser. It's also a great illustration of modularity with maturing technologies (the PC) as raised by Clayton Christensen in the Innovators Dilemma.
4. The desktop is here to stay: The major driver of IT change in our time has been the internet and the web. Some see the web displacing the notion of the personal computer desktop and have offered up desktop like experiences in browsers. This will not succeed. Local devices will remain important and the desktop operating system will remain at the contextual center of our computing experience.
5. iPhone blazes the trail: The iPhone, Palm Pre, Blackberry Bold and the Android variants are bringing a new age of smart phones that will be popular with consumers and enterprise users. Key memes (1) Touch screens (2) iTunes-like application stores (3) Full web experience (4) Utility focus – trading off flexibility for ease of use – such as the iPhone's restriction to running only one 'user' application at a time.
6. SmartPhone and laptop converge: This is a longer term trend. Nevertheless, the rush toward smartphones, combined with the enthusiasm for (utility focused) Netbooks such as the Asus EEE, lead me to believe that the smartphone and the laptop will converge in many cases – enabled by the same technology that enables the BYOC trend - cross-platform, universal interfaces, such as the Citrix Receiver and the humble web browser. The Nirvana phone is only the beginning.

Prediction #1: The iPhone goes Enterprise

- The iPhone will gain rapid adoption in the Enterprise driven by user demands including executives, road warriors, and knowledge workers asking for access to the apps they need ( including windows apps ) from anywhere. IT will increasingly support the effort based on new improved security capabilities and productivity gains ( including for themselves ).

..	Choose
I am in IT and we will support the iPhone in 2009 ! ( I need the Citrix Receiver now... )
Blackberry reigns in the Enterprise, no change for '09 ...

Prediction #2: Corporate issued laptop model will be challenged
- Companies looking to provide access to day extenders without the full expense and maintenance of a company laptop will increasingly adopt application delivery infrastructure like XenApp that can provide safe IT hosted application access from un-trusted personal PC's. In addition, companies will begin to pilot the BYOC ( Bring Your Own Computer ) model for knowledge workers seeking personal choice while reducing IT expense and support costs.

..	Choose
We already are saving significant $$ by enabling safe access from home PC's
We are planning to allow controlled access ( via Citrix ) from home PC's in 2009
Status quo, corporate laptop access or none at all.

Prediction #3: Virtual Desktops grow beyond a niche

- Improvements in user experience capabilities of VDI solutions combined with the reduced support cost model will drive increased adoption of VDI beyond the initial niche deployments.

..	Choose
We are moving from VDI pilots and special use cases to broader deployment
VDI is not ready for the masses, we will wait and see

Prediction #4: IaaS Cloud Providers are no longer just for web startups

- The recent Windows offering by Amazon will validate the IaaS ( Infrastructure as a Service ) model as a viable platform for companies small and large looking to add test and targeted production capacity without capital and facility costs.

..	Choose
We have started to use Cloud VM's or Storage for test and plan broader use in '09
What is IaaS ? No way are we putting anything in the cloud...
Not sure, need to try it first

Prediction #5: Netbooks drive Servers, Clouds and Linux clients

- The rapid adoption of Netbooks based on low cost and light weight convenience will increase the desire to run server hosted apps ( Web and Windows ). A significant number of the new mini laptops will be used for occasional use vs a primary PC which makes maintaining local apps and synchronizing data problematic. This in turn will help break the traditional model of running Windows apps installed on PCs and laptops.

..	Choose
We are getting more and more requests for access from Netbooks, all they need is Citrix and a browser.
Netbooks are just toys for kids ...  ( small & big )

Agree / disagree ? what are your predictions ? 

Also seen at Sys-Con Cloud Computing Computing Journal

As we have announced here on the Citrix Blog ( still no Press Release though ...  ) we are actively developing a Citrix Receiver for the iPhone that will bring the world of millions of Windows apps and developers to the iPhone. As part of our testing and demonstrations we are looking for examples of compelling applications that will not run natively on the iPhone, however if the app was hosted on XenApp and delivered to the iPhone it would provide a great visual example of the power of Citrix and the iPhone.

Some things that come to mind are;

• Web sites that require flash
• Medical Apps
• Web apps that need IE
• Cut & Paste ( within Citrix sessions )
• ?

We have received great feedback and use case descriptions on the original post ( keep that coming ) now we are looking for specific apps or new ideas that would really open eyes to the possibilities.

Thanks !

We are always looking for idea's to improve our Citrix events. Some of the past feedback we have received is to step-up the technical content and include more unscripted and unfiltered opinions and dialog. At Synergy 2008 we introduced GeekSpeak which was very well received as indicated by the feedback and standing room only crowds. At Synergy 2009 you can expect even more technical content plus more GeekSpeak sessions. In addition as many iForum/Summit/Synergy attendees know. Citrix usually includes a concluding session that could be a brand name comedian ( Dana Carvey - Synergy 2008) or an Athlete with a story ( Lance Armstrong - Summit 2008 ) or other memorable entertainer.
 
In keeping with listening to the community and even better engaging with some of the innovators of social media we thought it might be interesting to have Kevin Rose and Alex Albright host an episode of Diggnation at Synergy 2009. As you may know Kevin is the founder of Digg and an expert at developing a community. If you're not familiar with the show check it out at Diggnation.com ( it's about as unscripted and unfiltered you can get ...  ). If you are a fan of Digg this might be your chance to watch an episode first hand and maybe hang out with Kevin and Alex afterwards with some beers at our closing party. If you're not a fan of Diggnation and would rather we look for other entertainment we would like to hear that as well. As always, suggestions and comments welcome.
 

Do you Digg the idea of Diggnation at Synergy ?	Choose
2 Thumbs up, I want to see Kevin and Alex at Synergy in Vegas !
Keep looking ...

First the thanks!

As we roll into the Thanksgiving week in the US, I thought I would give a quick shout out of thanks to all of you that have participated in the Citrix Ready Community Verified site. Verifications are coming in faster than we can keep up with them (which was, after all, the whole idea in the first place). As of this morning, we have well over 1,000 applications and products verified by customers and partners as "Citrix Ready", backed by more than 7,000 verifications... more than 500 were added this week alone, and it's only Wednesday!

I'm assuming that you have all seen the Citrix Ready Community Verified site and you know it rocks... not because of anything we've done, but because it's created, owned and maintained by YOU; if not don't just take my word on it, check out Chris' blog, or Rene Vester's two blogs, here and here, or even Brian Madden's review, ...or of course, the site itself!

By many standards, the site has proven to be an overwhelming success. We launched it at Citrix Summit on October 25 this year with 600 Applications and 500 Community Verifications. In the month since launch, these numbers have gone through the roof with no end in sight. In fact, I am already hearing of cases where the Citrix Ready Community Verified site has encouraged customers to virtualize more apps, helped channel partners answer customer & prospect questions more quickly and technology partners who have submitted apps (theirs as well as from other vendors).

Citrix IT has even taken up the challenge by starting to validate all the products and applications we use internally in our IT environment. I challenge all of you reading this to verify via the "voting" function all apps and other products you are using via XenApp, XenDesktop, XenServer and NetScaler!

May I have another? Or more appropriately, may we give you another?

The Citrix Ready Community Verified site is a great example of how a community can share small bits of information that doesn't impose a tax on the submitter (the apps are already deployed, submitters are just telling us they have already completed the work)... taking full advantage of the network effect to drive overall benefit.

So the question that I have for all of you, is what can we do next? The Citrix Ready Community Verified site is addressing a common question around product verification with Citrix products that has been around literally since the first release of WinFrame. Are there other longstanding questions, issues, etc that seem difficult to solve as an individual customer, SE, channel partner, technology partner or Citrix employee, that we as a community can attack?

My team and I are very interested in your feedback and would welcome the opportunity to help.

Please feel free to comment on this blog, or send an email to me at john.fanelli@citrix.com

 Citrix now provides a single place to look for application and 3rd party product compatibility. Beyond the featured Citrix Ready products we are now leveraging the power of the community including; customers, resellers, partners, consultants and Citrite's to identify all 3rd party products known to work with all Citrix products. We have developed a community website that not only collects, consolidates and displays this essential information but it also provides "Digg" like voting functionality to quantify the number of verifications for each product. The site also includes a mash-up with support forums so relevant verification details can be provided as well as threaded discussions and problem resolution.  
We are counting on the community to use AND contribute to make this effort a success. So we made it easy to search, use and add your knowledge of 3rd party apps and products. Your MyCitrix ID will be identified as the original contributor, and if you see an app listed that you know works adding a vote is a simple click to vote. Top contributors of verifications/votes will be highlighted and forum posters can share deeper knowledge on the forums and include links to their own blog or company site. In order to maintain credibility of the program we do not allow a single user to vote more than once for the same verification and we do require that contributors are logged on with My Citrix credentials. 

Please take a look at the site, add your known apps and votes, and let us know any feedback to improve the site.

http://community.citrix.com/citrixready

As described in part 1 of this blog series, the cloud is not the answer for every enterprise or every workload. This is true based on the current economics even without considering additional factors like security, control and SLA's. On the other hand the economics do point out a major cloud advantage when it comes to short term or variable workloads. ( pointed out by Michael Keen and Billy Marshal as well ) Perhaps this is not very surprising to many, but it does help to look at the numbers to put it in perspective. The largest Intrinsic cost advantage of the Cloud is the ability to share infrastructure among multiple customers ( i.e. Multi-Tenancy and/or Multi-Instance ). This comes into play when many customers have variable workloads that are not likely to overlay at the same time. A Cloud infrastructure can load balance this workload on-demand significantly reducing the cumulative infrastructure required to support N number of customer workloads.
A Premise only solution will typically deploy the infrastructure required to accommodate the anticipated peak demand plus a factor of safety. As a result excess capacity is built into every deployment even if it is rarely ( or never ) utilized. This formula gets very expensive for many scenarios such as implementing a redundant DR solution across multiple data centers or a retailer building infrastructure to accommodate the Christmas shopping season but paying for it all year. As noted in the Cloud 101 example however, when a premise based is well utilized it can be the most cost effective solution to stay with especially if the on-site facilities can accommodate the anticipated growth.
The following Premise Plus Cloud scenario provides an optimized view of where a fully utilized premise infrastructure is used for constant predictable workloads and the Cloud is used for the variable workload. To put some simple numbers to it based on the original example, let's assume that the constant workload is roughly equal to 5 Quadcore server capacity. The variable workload on the other hand peaks at 160% of the base requirement, however it is required only about 400 hours per year, which could translate to 12 hours a day for the month of December or 33 hours per month for peak loads such as test or batch loads. The cost for a premise only solution for this situation comes to roughly 2X or $ 15,600 per year assuming existing space and a 20% factor of safety above peak load. If on the other hand you were able to utilize a Cloud for only the peak loads the incremental cost would be only $1,000. ( Based on Amazon EC2 )

Premise Only
$ 15,600	Annual cost ( 2 x 7,800 from Part 1 )

Premise Plus Cloud
$ 7,800	Annual cost from Part 1
$ 1,000	Cloud EC2 - ( 400 x .8 x 3 )
$ 8,800	Annual Cost Premise Plus Cloud

As noted for this example the server cost of using a Premise Plus Cloud solution could save as much as 44%. This does not factor in many costs that either the Premise only scenario or Premise Plus Cloud would face but those costs vary according to the situation. So the challenge is how to identify variable workloads that can be placed in the Cloud or split between premise and cloud. The CSP ( Cloud Service Provider ) must also provide the proper infrastructure and remote administration to enable corporate IT to control and manage applications and images in the extended cloud as a virtual private network of their own. Economics aside, the CSP also needs to address the SLA's and security concerns that corporate IT has identified as prerequisites for adoption. Given the intrinsic cost savings possible as portrayed in this example, there is little doubt that CSP's will fill the gaps and the industry will move to Premise Plus Cloud solutions.

Part 1 - Premise vs Cloud vs Colo

Part 3 - Reserved Pricing

Part 4 - Amazon EC2 vs Terremark vCloud

There is an interesting debate going on over on the Google cloud computing group that also helps point out some of the appropriate use cases for cloud computing. The example used is a simple comparison of Amazon EC2 vs. purchasing a set of servers for development purposes ( I have added some additional costs and scenarios below ) This example also assumes the servers fit in existing space and either environment would be managed by existing staff.

	Purchase - on Premise
$ 15,000	Quad-Core Servers ( 5 x 3,000 each  )
$ 750	1/2 Rack + Gigabit Switch
$ 15,750	Total Hardware cost
$ 5,800	Annual amortized cost, 5% over 3 years
$ 0	Assuming no incremental real estate cost
$ 2,000	Annual power & AC cost
$ 7,800	Total annual cost on premise

	Purchase - at Colo
$  8,000	Colo fee's; 1/2 Rack + power + bandwidth
$  5,800	Annual amortized cost
$ 13,800	Total annual cost at Colo

	Cloud
$ 35,040	24x365x5 Amazon EC2 ( $.80 per high CPU Server instance hour )
$  8,320	40 hours x 52 weeks
$    688	40 hours x 4.3 weeks

 On the surface it's apparent that EC2 is significantly more expensive if the set up is utilized 24x7x365, even a 40 hour week yields a slightly higher cost. So where is all the savings ? What's all the hype about ? This simple example does point out that the Cloud is not always a more cost effective solution it really comes down to what is the particular use case and alternative costs. For example if there is no space available or the existing space has reached the power limits of the facility ( a more common occurrence ). That means that the likely scenario is finding a Colo facility to provide space power and bandwidth. Depending on location and bandwidth usage this could easily cost $8,000+ per year plus additional remote administration hardware and service fees, effectively increasing the annual cost of purchased equipment to near $ 14,000. Although this option is still less than Amazon if utilized 24x7x365, it now is significantly more than the cost of the 40 hour week at EC2 which may be reality for a development environment. And if you only need the setup for a month of dev or testing Amazon becomes a no brainier.. put on your credit card !
What both examples point out are the fact that there is no single answer. In fact the right answer for many companies might be premise plus cloud. In order for this to work for a single workload however a seamless connection would be required, recognizing this has led to the Citrix Cloud Bridge based on our WANScaler acceleration technology. In fact, Citrix is in the unique position to be able to assemble the prerequisite technologies that make the C3 Citrix Cloud Center an optimized solution for many scenarios.

There are many other pro's, con's and hidden costs of each option, I am interested to hear what the community has considered regarding Cloud economics and/or other factors.

Part 2 - Premise Plus Cloud

Part 3 - Reserved Pricing

Part 4 - Amazon EC2 vs Terremark vCloud

http://twitter.com/chrisfleck

     
In my last post, I discussed the new look and feel for our Access Gateway user experience.   Most of the focus was about the consistency of user experience across Citrix Delivery Center.   Well, the WANScaler product team has done the same with the Accelerator client plug-in. The Accelerator desktop icon is pretty cool...



The real value of Accelerator is that it makes things go faster (hence the name, gotta love those creative marketing folks ).  

In my job, the biggest kick that I get with Accelerator is when I transfer files from my laptop to my V: drive on the network.   First pass on a big Powerpoint presentation download can take a couple of minutes across the world, but then after a few tweaks to the file, the upload  takes less than 10 seconds.  There is no way that I'll ever let someone take this away from me.  

The performance improvement is a result of Delta compression where only the changes are re-transmitted.  The running joke is that we'll improve this someday and call it Gamma compression.

The geek in me has fun opening the Accelerator Manager window and watching  the Performance page. The more light blue in the graph the better.  Here, it's making my home DSL line feel like I'm in the office on the LAN.

Accelerator integrates with the Access Gateway client so that you get the combined benefit of a fast and secure connection when you are remote.  Although, I run in this mode on our open wireless network when in the office as well. More on this some other time...

With the Accelerator icon running in my systray, I know that WANScaler and the Accelerator client plug-in are quietly working in the background to make my experience "LAN-like" everywhere I connect.

Go Fast!

Gordon  

 
 In my last post, I discussed the importance of user experience -> It's All About The User Experience (IAATHUX) 
Our Access Gateway team has come up with a new look and
feel that is nice and clean.   I think this is much more intuitive and consistent with the experience across Citrix Delivery Center.   Notice that they are using plugin terminology in anticipation of App Receiver.

The desktop icon has changed from the "two rubic's cubes connected by a red pipe" to the simple and easy to understand lock symbol.   The rationale here is that secure access is not just about remote access but should secure connections onsite and offsite.

The thing I like the most with Access Gateway is that with auto-reconnect, I can just live in secure connected mode all the time.  At Citrix, we run open wireless networks at most locations, so I can just put my laptop to sleep and start-up in any location (including at home) and be assured a secure connection without having to do anything.  I just see the secure lock icon in my systray and the auto reconnect happen as I transit networks. 
 
With the advantages of de-perimeterization,
I think more and more users will appreciate this model. Check out the Jericho Forum, for more on this model.

Cheers,

Gordon

  
 
 

I've had a great opportunity to travel the world this year and meet with a wide range of our customers and partners. I've been struck with the number of CIO's, IT Managers and Admin's who are consistent in their frustrations and questions around finding a better way to manage desktops. In one meeting with the IT team of a Japanese company with more than 100,000 employees, the CIO summarized this well with his comment, "We can't go on with the current desktop model as we need to reduce the overall cost of IT while continuing to deliver innovation to our businesses". I hear something similar to this in customers large and small across geographies and industries. This is a classic headache looking for aspirin IT challenge. The next part of the conversation generally turns into something like: "We know we have a problem, but how do we work our way out of this mess?".

VDI, What is all the fuss?

The cost and complexity of the current default model of: purchase personal computer's/laptop's, install standard operating environment, deploy with user, then patch/fix/secure & repeat is hitting the breaking point. Maybe this is just the edge of the pendulum swing between mainframe/dumb terminal to networked PC, but it's clear that there is a big "headache" today. Desktop Virtualization represents a new way forward that can be radically simpler than the current managed desktop model. The benefits of desktop virtualization are now within the reach of every organization. Customers deploying XenDesktop are seeing total cost of ownership per desktop reducing 10%-40% annually, time to value is pretty much instantaneous and information security is significantly increased.

After a recent customer event I had one IT manager ask me, "so for my 5,000 desktops I can use just one image of XP and manage 1 copy rather than 5,000? Wow, my management challenge just disappeared". With ah-ha moments like this, you can see why more and more organizations are making the move to centralized delivered desktops. The current economic headwind that businesses are facing is creating an opportunity for every company to take a look at current models and make large scale changes to emerge from this downturn in a stronger position. With this in mind here are a few principles and key points when considering Desktop Virtualization.

1) One size DOESN'T fit all

As we worked with customers to define and develop XenDesktop, we attacked the biggest pain point first -> the cost of delivering and managing desktops inside the company on the local area network. We partnered with a number of our hardware partners to build a new class of end user device called a Desktop Appliance - meeting a base level of capabilities to ensure a great user experience and options to increase capabilities over time. The Desktop Appliance combined with XenDesktop becomes the primary device for Office Workers and delivers a user experience better than a desktop PC.

Desktop virtualization can provide a user customized desktop for Office Workers; however it is an over-kill for task workers and does not address the needs of mobile workers. Task Workers include call center agents, retail clerks and shop floor workers, generally accessing a set of specific applications. A shared server based desktops (delivered by XenApp) combined with a traditional Thin Client device is the most secure and cost effective way to deliver applications to this group of users - 20 million task workers operate in this model every day. When you consider that a shared server can accommodate the needs to 300-400 users vs 30-50 virtual desktop users per server for VDI, the cost comparison is fairly straightforward. Mobile workers include sales execs, service personnel and executives who carry a laptop and need their applications with them on the road, both on and off the network. Application virtualization is the best solution for cutting down the cost of managing applications for mobile worker laptops. Citrix has a long history supporting mobile workers and now we have the only product, XenApp, that acts as a single application hub that can deliver line of business applications hosted from the data center and productivity applications like Microsoft Office streamed to run locally on the users laptop for offline use in locations like airplanes and at customer offices.

2) IAATHUX - It's All About the User Experience

I'm a virtual desktop (XenDesktop) user and it really is a fresh, personal & fast experience every time I log-in. My XenDesktop starts up faster than I can get a cup of coffee and absolutely screams when I launch and use applications throughout the day -> apps and data live close together on servers in the data center. Knowing there is no spinning hard drive or humming fans makes me feel good about reducing power and air conditioning in our offices. With anytime, secure remote access, I can work from home with my customized desktop when needed and not make unnecessary off-hours trips to the office. I have accessed my virtual desktop from all locations, broadband, our small regional sales offices, offshore during my international trips. With the EasyCall feature of XenDesktop set to make calls from the office, or the users cellphone or home telephone, I can be productive with voice and data access from anywhere - and see significant savings in my cellphone & telephone bills.

3) The Desktop: Just Another Datacenter Workload?

Server virtualization is primarily focused on the wringing efficiency from under-utilized servers. Virtualizing desktops, on the other hand, is more an end-to-end solution including servers, networks and client devices. Defining the desktop as Operating System + Applications + User Profiles is useful to highlight the key components. The dynamic assembly of these components and delivery as a service are critical to realize the cost advantages of desktop virtualization and improved user experience.

4) App Virtualization: Key to Succesful VDI

In much the same way that having a single copy of the operating system to be delivered to all users, application virtualization can deliver a single image of each application across a broad range of users. XenApp delivers applications on a hosted or streamed basis to virtual desktops (in addition to physical desktops). Keeping individual copies of applications for each user and maintaining these across users just doesn't make sense and destroys the cost benefits of desktop virtualization. Managing each application separately from the desktop image is the only way to make the virtual desktop projects cost effective.

5) Storage, storage and more storage - Why Storage is a Critical Factor

The first versions of early virtual desktop infrastructure seemed designed to increase IT's spend on back end storage. Virtualizing applications and managing them separately, as explained above, not only helps in cutting down the cost of desktop and application management but also becomes one of the key factors in reducing the storage requirements of the desktop images. In addition, this virtual desktop image along with applications should be dynamically assembled and provisioned into a virtual desktop on-demand at the time when a user logs on. XenDesktop has been architected to optimize storage requirements by dynamically assembling users' desktop at the time when they logon. The only unique storage required for each user is their profile and application data. This approach has unlocked the business case for Desktop Virtualization using any hypervisor - XenServer, Hyper-V or ESX.

6) Real distance, real networks

With the move to centralized data centers and more virtual workforces, the distance between users and their desktops and applications is increasing. Hence, the delivery of the virtual desktop is equally important regardless of where the end user is. Citrix has a long history with delivery applications over networks ranging from current high speed 1Gb networks with lots of bandwidth and low latency to the skinniest of networks with high latency and failure rates. Our larger customers operate with 10's of thousands of users operating across public and private networks built with wired and wireless network infrastructure from different network infrastructure vendors including Cisco, Juniper, Nortel and others. Since application and networking professionals have lots of hands on experience with Citrix traffic on their networks, we decided to have the same proven virtual delivery protocol, Citrix ICA, in both XenApp and XenDesktop.

7) Client Hypervisor - Fact vs. Fiction

Based on the strategy above, all task workers and office workers should have their desktops centrally hosted in the datacenter, enabling them to securely access their desktop from anywhere. For mobile workers, who need to work offline, I expect more innovation to come where IT can virtualize and stream full desktop images to laptops. Citrix is helping to make this a reality by working closely with the Xen.org, Xen Client Initiative (XCI) to create a fast and free embedded hypervisor for laptops, PC's and PDAs. XCI is an exciting and fast-moving initiative driven by all the biggest names in microprocessors, BIOS, PCs and laptop hardware. Because when it comes to client hypervisors, trying to build something proprietary and closed simply won't cut it. Anything that doesn't have broad, open and compatible implementation across the industry is likely to fail. An embedded client hypervisor will, of course, provide a foundation to deliver local virtual desktops. However, a client side hypervisor alone is not enough for IT to have a complete solution. At Citrix, we're working on a complete solution that integrates a client side hypervisor, application and desktop streaming, application and desktop hosting, and end user profile and context management - this complete solution will ensure that the mobile users can quickly get their personalized desktop and their applications available to them offline and IT can centrally manage the lifecycle of the desktop at lowest possible cost.

In our experience to date with XenDesktop in the market, I've been pleasantly surprised at both the level of interest and speed at which our customers are deploying virtual desktops. It seems that the headache with current desktop management crosses industries, geographies and customer size and that many of these organizations are reaching for the aspirin or already starting to breath a sigh of relief with their virtual desktops.

If you are interested in a third party evaluation of XenDesktop, check out this InfoWorld test by Paul Venezia:  http://www.infoworld.com/article/08/09/16/38TC-citrix-xendesktop_2.html

Gordon Payne,
Senior Vice President
Delivery Systems Division

And what a release it is. When we started this journey several years ago, the goal of the XenServer team was to create the industry's most comprehensive and open, bare metal virtualization solution on the planet. By nearly every measure, the XenServer 5 release meets or exceeds this objective. It's an entirely new approach to virtualization that makes the first-generation solutions look a bit complex, expensive and kludgy by contrast... kind of like comparing one of those 6-lb cell phones from the 1980s with a sleek new 3G iPhone.

Before I get into all the reasons you have to check out XenServer, I want to personally thank our fantastic team at Citrix who put in endless hours getting this release to market, as well as the hundreds of incredible customers who have discovered a better way to do virtualization and are passionate about helping us make it better with every release. Since the acquisition of XenSource by Citrix, we have grown the capabilities of the XenServer organization and have combined several existing Citrix groups into a tremendous new organization with some of the most talented engineers in the world. I am also pleased to report that every person who came to Citrix as part of the XenSource acquisition is still at Citrix and diligently working on fantastic new innovations. Citrix employs all of the original Xen inventors, so we continue to maintain a technical and leadership advantage when it comes to releasing new products. (As you know from watching all the recent top level departures from that other virtualization company in recent weeks, keeping top talent is no easy task). Software companies are based on people and a core few make all the difference. Tribal knowledge and expertise is very difficult to replace.

XenServer 5 is built on the Xen open source hypervisor, the industry's best, next generation bare metal hypervisor. We are pleased to have a robust community of over 50 major organizations that contribute to the innovation and continued development of this key technology, including all of the biggest names in server and microprocessor design. This incredibly powerful model ensures that the features in today's shipping version of Xen are already optimized to take advantage of next-generation capabilities in chips and servers that won't ship until next year, an advantage that will only increase over time. Xen has been available for many years and can be found in everything from supercomputers to cell phones. Xen is also the building block to most of the world's cloud computing vendors, including Amazon. The technology is robust, innovative, and freely available.

At Citrix, we take a snapshot of the open source Xen "engine" and build a great "automobile" around it called XenServer. With XenServer 5, this "automobile" contains a complete virtualization infrastructure with comprehensive management capabilities. We have designed this latest product to not only meet the competition in key areas, but exceed them in many dimensions. We've always said that the community development of Xen, along with the innovations and open ecosystem around XenServer, would eventually allow us to leapfrog a closed and proprietary first generation architecture. I am pleased to say that XenServer 5 accomplishes exactly that along so many dimensions.

When I talk with customers about XenServer and Citrix, they use words like innovative, open, partner-driven, and value. These characteristics have helped us double revenue every quarter, enter into strategic agreements with the largest server vendors in the world, and most recently, starting to win major enterprise deployments against a very entrenched competitor. Recent data shows that we are gaining market share even before the general release of XenServer 5. With our major OEMs, ISVs and channel partners trained and ready to deliver, it's going to be one heck of a year.

So, what's so great about XenServer 5? To begin with, it's amazingly easy to use, has unparalleled performance, is highly available, and has all the management bells and whistles an enterprise could envision. We've even taken things one-step further and enabled the product to provision both physical and virtual servers in a snap, saving up to 80% on storage costs over other solutions.

Here are some of the things that I am particularly excited about in this release:

Availability - We've added incredible new high availability and disaster recovery capabilities to this release. The new HA function allows for automated placement and restart of VMs in the event of a system failure. In addition, we've partnered with Marathon, giving us a seamless upgrade to the industry's best fault tolerance ("best of show winner at VMworld"), whereby applications can remain completely online and "compute through" any failure. No other server virtualization technology offers this level of availability and fault tolerance.

Performance - XenServer has the best performance of any product on the market, and this release builds on that by providing better Windows performance and enhanced memory management for improved performance of resource intensive workloads like Exchange and our own XenApp.

XenCenter Management - We've made many, many improvements to XenCenter, our easy-to-use management system. We've added a super cool Web 2.0 style search tool, performance monitoring, alerting and the new XenConvert utility for easy P2V and V2V conversions.

Storage Management Enhancements - This is an area I am particularly excited about. We've partnered with storage vendors to leverage native storage array capabilities by XenServer. This integration eliminates CPU-intensive storage operations to be performed by the host server and enables maximum use of array-based storage capabilities. We don't treat feature-rich storage arrays as just a dumb set of disks and load the host CPU with expensive storage operations as our competition does. In a word, we've done storage right.

While XenServer 5 can certainly stand on its own as a great server virtualization product, at Citrix, we've taken the game to the next level. XenServer is a fundamental component to the Citrix Delivery Center product family, enabling integrated application delivery from the datacenter to the desktop. The dynamic capability of XenServer provides the foundation for turning the static data center into a flexible and agile "delivery center". In addition to XenServer, Citrix Delivery Center contains XenApp, XenDesktop, NetScaler and the upcoming Workflow Studio tool for orchestrating it all together and making it easy to integrate our solutions with products you already have in your environment. The products are all designed to complement each other and we will continue to innovate around the integration of these products, always providing the best application delivery solution in the market. When it comes to application delivery, Citrix has it covered, and XenServer is a basic building block in the solution.

Finally, with the release of Microsoft Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V, some have suggested that Citrix and Microsoft are now competing head-to-head in the server virtualization space. Nothing could be further from the truth. The fact is that Citrix (and XenSource before the acquisition) have been collaborating with Microsoft for years to ensure that XenServer and Hyper-V are complementary solutions. The first thing you need to understand is that XenServer is a bare metal (Operating System agnostic) virtualization product while Hyper-V is a built-in part of the Windows Server operating system. We believe there are two types of users: those who want to perform virtualization as a bare metal extension of their hardware running multiple types of OS guests, and those who want to consume it as part of the operating system. Together, Citrix and Microsoft meet both of these market needs in a way that is flexible and interoperable - giving customers the best of both worlds

XenServer will always be bare metal, will always have great performance and leading-edge features, and will always be open. Additionally, we will take advantage of Hyper-V deployments in the future by delivering advanced XenServer capabilities on top of the Hyper-V installed base. This is a playbook Citrix and Microsoft have run successfully for years. Our philosophy at Citrix is all about customer choice and market coverage - it's a customer-first strategy we believe in and are excited about bringing to the rapidly-evolving server virtualization market.

XenServer is here and ready to deliver. Before you lock yourselves in to a proprietary system, I encourage you to try XenServer. If you're anything like the growing list of CIOs and IT managers who fill my in-basket each week, you're going to love what you see. But hey, I know I'm a bit biased. Why don't you download a copy today and try it out for yourself. I'd love to hear what you think!

Peter Levine

Executive SVP & GM, Virtualization & Management  Division

Learn more at  http://www.xenserver5.com/