Back in the days of Windows 9.X Microsoft had "Network Neighborhood" on everyone's desktop. It made sense for us to place an icon on the desktop and call it "Program Neighborhood". From there is wasn't much of a leap to get to "Program Neighborhood Agent" when we decided to create a less conspicuous way to integrate applications into the Windows Start Menu and Desktop. Of course, Microsoft has long ago done away with the "Neighborhood" concept leaving us with a very cool program that no longer had a clear and meaningful name.

    Late last year we embarked on a project called "Pineapple". So named as it was charged with identifying the "low hanging fruit" in the users experience. It probably shouldn't be all that surprising that XenApp with its 13 year legacy doesn't have too much that's easy to  change. There's more to the story but for now let's say that Pineapple settled on crafting a consistent user experience across our products. As a result "Program Neighborhood Agent" became "Citrix Applications". We were shooting for something simple and obvious and I think we nailed it. And, yes, in case anyone was wondering we are considering making it possible to change "Citrix Applications" to something that makes even more sense depending on the implementation.

    These days there is a lot of emphasis at Citrix around End User Experience. You may have heard about "App Receiver" which has been highlighted during the keynote at "App Delivery Expo" back in October of 2007 and at our "Partner Summit" this past January.  App Receiver is our vision for a new user experience that will bring together multiple Citrix technologies in a way that is intuitive and easy to use. Imagine client software that is downloaded, installed and configured with little user interaction. An intelligent system that delivers the right components to the user without revealing any of the complexity involved. We will be talking more and more about App Receiver in the coming months so keep watching this space. I bring up App Receiver now only to point out that it is not simply "Program Neighborhood Agent" rebranded. The new "Citrix Applications" is a part of the larger vision and will play a key role in success of App Receiver but it is only a part of a much bigger plan to provide an awesome experience to the folks who use Citrix products every day to get theirs jobs done.

                So how about a few screen shots of the new "Citrix Applications" .....

Al Grandville

Citrix Product Management