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XenDesktop

Citrix Upgrades XenDesktop

August 24, 2011 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

Citrix Systems has announced a new version of its XenDesktop product line (5.5) that adds many enhancements in personalization, user experience and rich consumer device support.

The new XenDesktop 5.5 adds the “Personal vDisk” technology acquired earlier this month from RingCube to all editions of XenDesktop, making it easier for customers to deploy highly personalized virtual desktops at a lower cost.

XenDesktop 5.5 also features the most significant enhancement in company history to its Citrix HDX user experience technology, enabling customers to deliver high-definition virtual desktops up to three times faster for both LAN and WAN users.

XenDesktop 5.5, XenApp 6.5 and XenClient 2 are available for download today from the Citrix website.

Suggested pricing for XenDesktop starts at $95 per user or device for the VDI-only edition. Comprehensive desktop and application virtualization is available in the Enterprise or Platinum editions, priced at $225 and $350. XenClient 2 is available standalone as a free download from the Citrix website and included along with the Synchronizer for XenClient with XenDesktop Enterprise and Platinum.

Filed Under: Featured Tagged With: citrix, Citrix XenDesktop 5.5, RingCube, XenApp 6.5, XenClient 2, XenDesktop, XenDesktop 5.5

A Look At The New Citrix XenDesktop Release

August 27, 2010 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

Citrix Systems earlier this week announced a new release of Citrix XenDesktop that extends the benefits of desktop virtualization to enterprise laptop users with the addition of two new technologies: Citrix XenClient and Citrix XenVault.

Together, these two technologies make it easy for IT to incorporate mobile laptop users into a unified enterprise desktop virtualization strategy with unparalleled security and simplicity – including corporate-owned laptops managed by IT, as well as user-owned devices brought in by contractors or employees in a BYOC (bring your own computer) program.

Desktop virtualization is rapidly growing in popularity as a more secure, flexible way to deliver Windows desktops to business users in any location. With this new release, companies of all sizes can now deploy a single desktop virtualization solution that seamlessly supports both desk-based and laptop users in just about any scenario. With laptop users representing half of the workforce in many companies, today’s announcement represents a major milestone that significantly expands the reach of desktop virtualization to millions of new users.

Most mobile employees today do the majority of their work on company-owned laptops. For these workers, the best solution is a virtual desktop that runs directly on their laptop. This approach gives IT all the central management and security benefits of server hosted virtual desktops (VDI), combined with all the flexibility and ability to be disconnected from the network that come with traditional, locally installed desktops. And because the desktops runs in a local VM at all times, users never have to go through the cumbersome time consuming process “checking-out” their virtual desktop by downloading it from a central server each time they leave the office. These new capabilities are all enabled by the new XenClient technology, a groundbreaking client-side hypervisor developed in close collaboration with Intel, and optimized for the Intel Core vPro technology.

With the addition of the new XenClient and XenVault features, XenDesktop extends its lead as the most comprehensive and flexible desktop virtualization solution on the market.

Key Facts and Highlights (XenClient):

  • Enables Virtual Desktops “To Go” – XenClient is a client-side hypervisor that enables virtual desktops to run directly on client devices. It provides all the security and central management of VDI, while allowing users to seamlessly work online or disconnected without any cumbersome check-in or check-out requirements, just as they would with a traditional locally installed desktop. While XenClient can be run on any supported PC hardware, it is ideally suited to corporate-owned laptops.
  • Control for IT, Flexibility for Users – XenClient makes it easy for IT to deliver a secure, centrally managed corporate desktop environment to laptop users without compromising user experience. They can even set up a second personal virtual desktop on the same laptop, giving users full freedom, without compromising corporate security.
  • Centralized Backup and Recovery – When disconnected from the network, XenClient operates just like a traditional installed desktop. As soon as users connect to the network, it automatically synchronizes any changes with the datacenter, ensuring full centralized backup of all corporate laptops. If a laptop is ever lost or stolen, users can easily restore their full desktop environment exactly like it was to a new laptop, while data on the original laptop can be wiped remotely.
  • Portable and Persistent Desktop Images – By separating the operating system from the underlying hardware, desktop images can now be created, secured, deployed and moved across any supported hardware, greatly reducing the maintenance burden on IT and simplifying disaster recovery for laptop users.
  • Expanded Hardware and Device Support – XenClient now also includes several new capabilities that were not supported in the initial beta release. These include multiple usability and security enhancements, new synchronization features, and expanded support for hardware platforms, wireless adapters and USB-based devices such as webcams, iPads, iPhones, Androids, BlackBerrys and Windows Mobile devices.
  • Optimized for Intel vPro – The XenClient hypervisor was designed jointly with Intel to work seamlessly with the underlying hardware. Intel Core vPro processors are designed to provide the best experience for end-users and IT through use of Intel hardware-assisted virtualization, management and security technologies.

Key Facts and Highlights (XenVault):

  • Protects and Isolates User Data – The new XenVault technology automatically and transparently saves any user data created by corporate apps into an encrypted folder, ensuring that it is protected at all times from unauthorized users.
  • Ideal for Contractors and BYOC – Because XenVault supports both virtual and physical desktops, it is an ideal solution for contractors and employee-owned laptops where users don’t want IT installing software on their personal laptops. When a contract is over, an employee terminates, or the laptop is lost or stolen, corporate data remains secure, and can even be wiped remotely.
  • Supports XenApp and App-V – XenVault automatically encrypts data created by any corporate app that is delivered by Citrix XenApp (or the XenApp feature of XenDesktop) or Microsoft App-V.

The new XenClient and XenVault technologies will both ship in the new XenDesktop 4, Feature Pack 2 release, available at the end of September. XenClient is available at no additional charge for XenDesktop Enterprise and Platinum editions customers with current Subscription Advantage agreements.

XenVault is enabled through a plug-in to the Citrix Receiver software client, which is available at no additional charge to all XenDesktop and XenApp customers. Citrix XenDesktop, including the new XenClient and XenVault technologies, will be demonstrated in the Citrix booth #1219 at VMworld San Francisco, Aug. 30 – Sept. 2.

Filed Under: News Tagged With: citrix, Citrix Systems, Citrix XenClient, Citrix XenDesktop, Citrix XenVault, XenDesktop

Here Comes Citrix XenDesktop 3

February 5, 2009 by Robin Wauters 1 Comment

Citrix Systems today announced Citrix XenDesktop 3, the newest release of its desktop virtualization solution. XenDesktop 3, a key component of the Citrix Delivery Center product family, incorporates several of the company’s new Citrix HDX technologies, giving virtual desktop users a richer “high-definition” experience with enhanced support for multimedia, audio and video.

XenDesktop 3 also dramatically improves scalability, hosting twice as many virtual desktops per server as previous versions. And with version 3, XenDesktop becomes the first product on the market to deliver Microsoft Windows desktops from a common set of centrally managed images that can be run either in the datacenter (hosted), or directly on a PC or thin client device (local). This new capability gives IT organizations far more flexibility, reducing desktop management costs by making efficient use of distributed processing power across both servers and end point devices.

XenDesktop 3 includes several enhancements that dramatically improve virtual machine density and efficiency in the datacenter, allowing customers to host up to twice as many hosted virtual desktops per server as previous versions.  These new optimizations cut server acquisition costs in half and dramatically reduce ongoing management and power consumption costs, allowing significantly larger deployments than before at no additional cost.

With version 3, XenDesktop becomes the first solution on the market to deliver both hosted virtual desktops and local streamed desktops from a single image store, leveraging the same delivery infrastructure. Most virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) solutions on the market offer only hosted virtual desktops, in which each desktop runs inside a virtual machine in the datacenter.

Adding support for local streamed desktops lets XenDesktop administrators stream desktops from the same golden master images, and execute them locally on any network-connected endpoint capable of running a desktop operating system. This powerful combination adds significant flexibility and cost savings, allowing IT to centrally manage desktops for office workers and run them wherever it makes the most sense, leveraging the distributed processing power of both servers and endpoint devices.

XenDesktop 3 also includes a variety of new features to support simpler management, easier user personalization and enhanced security. Most significant among these new features is fully integrated user profile management, making it far easier for IT to provide a consistent, personalized experience for each unique user every time they log in. Version 3 also includes broad support for smart card security authentication systems which are widely adopted throughout government, financial services and healthcare organizations.  XenDesktop not only enables this added level of security for gaining general access to the desktop environment, it also ensures that this information is seamlessly and transparently passed through to individual applications within each virtual desktop.

Citrix XenDesktop 3 will be generally available from authorized Citrix partners in February 2009, and from the Citrix website at http://www.citrix.com/xendesktop. Suggested retail pricing begins at $75 per concurrent user.

Filed Under: Featured Tagged With: citrix, Citrix Delivery Center, Citrix Systems, Citrix XenDesktop, Citrix XenDesktop 3, desktop virtualization, VDI, virtual desktop, virtualisation, virtualization, Xen, XenDesktop, XenDesktop 3

3Tera Aims To Bring XenApp and XenDesktop Into The Cloud

October 29, 2008 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

3Tera, provider of cloud computing technology and utility computing services, announced today it will be demonstrating for the first time Citrix XenApp and Citrix XenDesktop technologies deployed and running in a cloud environment using 3Tera’s AppLogic Cloud Computing Platform during Citrix Summit in Orlando, an invitation-only event for Citrix partners to learn about the latest and greatest products and technologies for application delivery infrastructure solutions.

Customers of all sizes will be able to take advantage of this technology, both in public external Internet based clouds and as a commercial enterprise strength platform for deployment in clouds behind the corporate datacenter firewall. The initial focus will be collaboration with Citrix and its solution partners to deliver continued application virtualization and desktop management and virtualization, with the added portability and scalability cloud computing enables.

Filed Under: News Tagged With: 3 Tera, 3Tera, 3Tera AppLogic, 3Tera AppLogic Cloud Computing Platform, AppLogic, AppLogic Cloud Computing Platform, citrix, Citrix XenApp, Citrix XenDesktop, cloud computing, cloud services, virtualisation, virtualization, XenApp, XenDesktop

Citrix Releases XenApp 5, Will It Prove To Become The Application Virtualization Standard?

August 25, 2008 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

Remember when Brian Madden pointed out that Citrix XenApp 5.0 would be delayed for several months? Well, he was right, technically. Anyhow, Citrix today announced the release of Citrix XenApp 5, and claims it “breaks through performance and operating-cost barriers, making application start times up to 10 times faster, dramatically improving end-user experience and lowering application management costs by more than 25 percent over previous versions”.

“XenApp 5 broadens the horizon of the end-user experience and accessibility by delivering an end-to-end virtualization solution that addresses the needs of both local and hosted applications,” said Mark Bowker, analyst, Enterprise Strategy Group. “In addition, XenApp 5 is giving new and existing customers a welcome boost in performance at an attractive price-point, two highly sought-after requirements for companies investing in strategic technologies in today’s economy.”

XenApp, in combination with Citrix XenDesktop and Citrix XenServer, creates an end-to-end virtualization solution that spans servers, applications and desktops. The new XenApp 5 release is being featured on September 9, 2008 as part of a global, online launch event, called Citrix Delivery Center Live!

With the release of XenApp 5, Citrix claims it is raising the bar with significant new improvements to performance, user experience and cost savings. In total, XenApp 5 includes more than 50 new major enhancements, according to the official press release.

XenApp 5, which runs on the Microsoft Windows Server platform, leverages all the enhancements in Windows Server 2008 and fully supports Windows Server 2003. This enables existing Windows Server 2003 customers to immediately deploy Windows Server 2008 into their existing XenApp environments in any mix.

XenApp 5 will be available September 10, 2008. For North America, suggested retail pricing is per concurrent user (CCU) and includes one year of Subscription Advantage:

  • Advanced Edition – US $350
  • Enterprise Edition – US $450
  • Platinum Edition – US $600

Standalone pricing for client-side application streaming and virtualization begins as low as $60 per CCU.

Citrix Systems

Filed Under: Featured, News Tagged With: application virtualization, citrix, Citrix Systems, Citrix XenApp, Citrix XenApp 5, Citrix XenDesktop, citrix xenserver, virtualisation, virtualization, Xen, XenApp, XenApp 5, XenDesktop, xenserver

“Benchmarking” The Citrix / XenServer Combo with Ian Pratt (Video Interview – Part 4)

June 15, 2008 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

During the Fosdem 2008 conference, we had a chance to sit down (on a bench) with Xen Guru Ian Pratt. Below is the fourth and last part (see part 1, part 2 and part 3) of our exclusive interview, where Ian shines his light on Citrix Xenserver, relocating virtual machines (VM), VM-mirroring, OVF, page tables algorithms, open source community involvement, management frameworks, the Citrix take-over, Virtualization marketing with OS-enlightment, FUD-tactics by VMWare, self-healing servers, Xen embedded in firmware, why Amazon goes with Xen, the Xen GPL license, OracleVM, xVM (Sun), Parallels and the future of virtualization…

We cut the interview into 4 digestable pieces, which we publish one at a time (see part 1, part 2 and part 3). As said, this is the final part (soon, you’ll also find a written transcript below for your convenience):

The video is also up on YouTube and Steamocracy.

Filed Under: Featured, Interviews, People, Videos Tagged With: citrix, Citrix Ian Pratt, citrix xenserver, Ian Pratt, interview, Sun xVM, University of Cambridge, video, virtualisation, virtualization, Xen, Xen Ian Pratt, xen.org, XenDesktop, xenserver, xensource, XVM

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