Open source has always been difficult at Microsoft, they’ve struggled with how to use its obvious value as a development and delivery model, but the SharePoint podcasting kit seems to be a great example of how to do it right. 

Although SharePoint itself is unlikely to ever be Open Source there’s great value in stimulating an Open Source culture around developing on top of the platform.  Podcasting is a good example because although SharePoint provides some good plumbing in the form of support for taking a document library of media files and surfacing this as an RSS feeds with enclosures, it didn’t have a polished solution.  The same can be said for most of the SharePoint “applications”, great platform - ok solution.  If you’re interested in Podcasting, this is definitely worth checking out, but there’s much more for SharePoint going on at Codeplex.

What Can You Do With Podcasting Kit for SharePoint (PKS)?:

• Listen and watch audio/video podcasts, anywhere on your PC or mobile device (Zune, SmartPhone, or any podcasting device)
• Share content by producing your own audio/video podcasts and publish them on PKS on your own.
• Connect and engage with podcasters via your integrated instant messaging program
• Find the most relevant content using the five star rating system, tag cloud, search engine and provide your feedback via comments.
• Get automatic podcast updates by subscribing to RSS feeds fully compatible with Zune and other podcasting devices
  • Simple RSS feed based on a defined podcast series
  • Simple RSS feed based on a person
  • Dynamic RSS feed based on search results
• Play podcasts in real-time using Microsoft® Silverlightâ„¢ and progressive playback
• Retrieve instant ROI and metrics with the ability to track the number of podcasts downloaded and/or viewed, instant feedback via rating system and comments, and subscribers via the RSS feed
• Access the richness of SharePoint to extend the solution: workflows, community sub-sites, access rights, editorial and more
• Customize your own PKS User Experience

Tags: collaboration, microsoft, open source, sharepoint

I picked up a few useful bits of information during iForum this week:

1. Citrix predict that between 30 and 50% of people will be mobile by 2010
2. Some form of rights management is required when delivering to unmanaged PCs.  For example XenApp has a type of rights management, ie it can disable cut and paste, save to local PC disk, Print etc based on the results of a NAC check.  Microsoft have a much richer rights management solution, but its not currently integrated with NAC, nor can it be applied to all applications.  My thought perhaps SoftGrid execution environment could be NAC and rights management enabled, and therefore prevent certain things on unmanaged PCs
3. 10% of people poled in a couple of sessions had increasing IT budgets
4. 60% of people are expected to be working either from home or in branch offices by 2010
5. There were 1.2B mobile phones in 2007, expected to be 1B SmartPhones by 2010
6. 47% of companies now consider data protection now more important than perimeter security, again another hint at the potential growth of rights management if it could be made seamless enough for people who have rights!
7. An IDC study was quoted that predicted that knowledge workers would be working with 60% of their information sourced from outside the company within 5 years.  I can really relate to this, I think I’m way beyond that ratio already and this >60% is part of my personal knowledge management system, not my companies, although some small part of it is relevant to share.

Tags: desktop, future, mobility

1. This was a very difficult session to follow, so the following notes are not that great
2. Multi-media virtualization
1. to any end point, over the ICA channel
3. Apollo
1. Streaming media
2. 3D graphics
4. Remote audio/video extensions, not in XenDesktop - but it is supported with the Linux Wyse thin client
1. At some time in the future this will run on virtual machines, rather than physical machines with a GPU
5. key to the above is:
1. inspecting the end point
2. inspecting the app
3. inspecting the network
4. then decide how to deliver the experience
6. 3D graphics
1. Server side GPU’s
2. Server side rendering units
7. Accelerated bitmap remoting
1. directX, OpenGL, WPF, Flash and Silerlight
8. Realtime communications
1. VOIP over ICA seems to work ok
2. Softphone on demand

Tags: Citrix, iforum, VDI

1. Challenges
1. How do I ensure that users get their own personalised workspace
2. How do I ensure that end user productivity impact is minimised during the migration
3. How do I deal with some continued use of some local applications
4. How do I ensure that my Virtual machines continue to be up to date
2. This list of challenges seems to be very RES specific, perhaps that’s not surprising
3. The workspace can be modified based on:
1. Who you are
2. Time of day
3. Location
4. Whether you have a token
4. What is a workspace
1. Personalisation, apps desktop, environment, portability, location sensing - with RES this is downloaded just in time
1. Seems to require you to manually figure out what needs to be persistent between sessions.  if you have 4500 applications that’s a complex job.
2. Security, Applications, files and folders, local disks, access to removable drives, IP connections
1. seems to be very similar to group policy, but had the benefit of a common set of policies across operating systems.  Not sure whether it depends on the client device being domain joined, if not that would be an advantage as well
2. more granular than GPO in some areas at least
3. nice feature that allows a USB key to be used as a rule that can govern anything else, for example the ability to run a particular application can be linked to the presence or absence of a USB key
3. Reliability, logon performance, session, cpu, memory, logoff
4. Administration
1. delegated admin, building blocks and templates, usage reporting, license metering, analysis and audit
5. Integration
1. Uses variety of databases
2. Integrates with Active Directory
3. Workspace integration between apps delivered locally and apps delivered by presentation server or xen desktop
4. Runbook automation, using Wisdom - this seems to be a distributed systems management product - simillar to BMC Configuration manager or SCCM
1. detects when snapshots are being used, when they are rolled back etc.  so that the cmdb maps to the actual configuration of the client, even if a snapshot rollback occurs, it will reapply lost changes.

Tags: Citrix, iforum, VDI, XenApp

Delivered by Steve Maytum - VP - End user platforms

1. Today
1. 54,000 managed XP desktop, two builds.  Modified the Gina to add a “borrow” button to RDP to a CPS environment or RDP to the users desktop PC,  this is similar to what CSC have done, but my modifying the GINA they have a solution that doesn’t force a locked session to logoff - nice!
2. 15,000 managed laptops
3. 4,500 applications
2. Investing in
1. 50 unmanaged PCs
2. 300 thin client devices
3. 3,200 virtual workstations
4. 700 seamless published applications, 4,500 concurrent users
5. 70 streamed apps
6. Lots of Blackberries
3. Investment banking is all about agility and power and speed of delivery, 140 changes a week
4. Private banking is about protection of data and stability, 2 big changes a year
5. Drivers
1. Cost reduction
2. Strategic sourcing
3. Increasing remote offices
4. Mobile and nomadic users
5. Home working
6. Availability of power and heat, green - in some building they are not able to deliver any more power to the buildings
7. Business continuity
8. Regulatory requirements
9. What their peers are doing
10. Consumer experience & user capability is driving a need to raise the bar
11. Increase in technology capability
6. Remote access security framework
1. A NAC check provides control over what you have access to, using an SSL VPN -
2. EPA Factory is used for the end point analysis
1. Service pack
2. AV running and have a signature that’s less than 2 weeks old
3. Personal firewall running
4. New version being developed to provide information on geographical location, whether they are at the PC console or remoting to it, checking for password protected screen savers
3. Pass
1. Access to your PC via RDP
2. Local printing
3. Line of business apps
4. Long inactivity timer
4. Fail
1. Just access to email and office apps, plus a softphone
2. Short inactivity timer
5. Citrix Access Gateway - Advanced Edition sits behind an SSL VPN
6. RSA SecureID
7. Citrix web interface used
8. Most users just use Citrix to provide access to their existing desktop PCs using RDP tunnelled through ICA
9. They have lots of users apparently who bring in their personal laptops and rdp to their desktops
7. Success so far
1. 8,738 user connections a day
2. After 6PM 1.26 years of work gets done every night
3. At the weekend 3.33 years or work gets done
4. Total of 500 years of productivity
5. Peak usage is 9PM and 7000 users on a sunday
6. Number 1 requested service
8. End state
1. Citrix PS desktop - 112 sessions per blade
2. VDI desktop - 40 desktops per HP C Class blade
3. Trader private blades
4. SoftGrid for application streaming
5. IGEL thin clients
6. Traditional PCs with app streaming
7. Thin offices
8. Remote users
9. Considering putting all the clients on a “dirty” network and do all client - data centre access over an SSL VPN
9. Interesting point that I’ve made myself many times
1. yesterday - business demand outstripped technology opportunity
2. now - technology opportunity has exploded, way beyond business demand or even businesses availability to keep up

Tags: Citrix, consumerization, desktop, future, iforum, VDI

1. XenDesktop running Vista
2. Client is running XPe
3. Showed AutoCad, great 3D model rotation using 5mb/sec
4. Vista 3D flip worked fine
5. WPF 3D app - patient records system - worked fine
6. Call of duty game - worked ok
7. Full screen video worked well too
8. Still working on high quality audio
9. Works on Citrix desktop spec appliance

Tags: Citrix, desktop, future, iforum, VDI

1. Why change Presentation Server to XenApp?
1. The future is going to be bigger than the past
2. Seen as a way to communicate that Citrix is relevant to the mainstream
3. It simplifies the message
2. What is the advantage of XenApp on XenServer?
1. XenApp itself is not always worth virtualising, but some XenApp servers and supporting infrastructure servers will be worthwhile
2. Now that the overhead of XenApp on XenServer is only 7% sometimes its worth virtualising because there is a benefit from everything being virtual, even if the ratio is 1 to 1
3. Some customers would rather have a smaller number of users per server than the hardware allows, hence pushing the ratio to say 4 to 1.
3. Why did Ian decide to develop Xen?
1. A typical open source success story
2. Very close working relationship with hardware vendors, shipping Xen code has features that won’t light up until hardware ships that supports it in 2009
3. Lots of open source innovation on top of Xen and extending Xen
4. Although Citrix say this is not Linux like, I think it is, only the hypervisor is open source, very similar to the Linux kernel.  Both projects by keeping the core deliverable limited in scope allow a lot of innovation around it
4. Will Citrix drop Xen when HyperV comes out?
1. Citrix will leverage Microsoft, but that’s all
2. Think of Xen and HyperV in the same way as ICA and RDP,  my comment - this analogy works provided that HyperV lags behind Xen in capabilities
3. Citrix definitely think they will stay ahead of Microsoft in the hypervisor space
5. General question on integration
1. Citrix are very keen on Powershell
2. Workflow studio integrates well with powershell
3. Several products are optimised to work well together, eg WanScaler for caching streamed apps and shaping ICA traffic
6. Citrix core DNA?
1. To be a good enterprise citizen
2. For example snap into and integrate with other management infrastructures
3. Good partner
4. Pragmatic
5. Will continue to stick to what they do best
6. Not compete by closed lock-in strategies, Citrix will provide best integration with their own products, but will also work well with competing products
7. Will everyone in the world be on XenDesktop tomorrow?
1. XenDesktop is very exciting
2. Its not for everyone
3. XenApp is still more cost effective
4. XenDesktop promise extends uowards to those who need a “higher definition” experience - still not clear to me what they mean by this
8. Is there a Linux host for XenDesktop?
1. Currently no, Citrix claim that this is based on demand, I’m surprised I would expect XenDesktop for Linux being much more cost effective than Windows
9. What’s the roadmap to fix inter application communication with virtualization?
1. This is a key issue, coming out in the next release “real soon now”
10. As the OS moves to the network disk, why not put the apps on the network disk as well like Thinstall (now Thinapp)
1. Citrix didn’t really answer the question, however my comment is that if you pre-cache the apps in the PVS image then the experience is very Thinstall like
2. XenDesktop is still very early, Citrix are definitely looking to move to supporting physical desktops, laptops just as well as they support virtual desktops and hosted apps/desktops
11. Will Citrix provide a different licensing model - eg monthly subscription
1. No, it doesn’t seem to make sense since customers have already invested in the server hardware.  My comment, I’m not so sure - in the flexible datacentre the servers can be reused elsewhere, and subscription licences would allow customers to invest in Citrix only while they are competitive and switch if they stop being

Tags: Citrix, iforum

Five simple predictions from Citrix with my comments

1. Virtualization will be assumed, the hypervisor will just melt into the hardware, the focus will switch from cost reduction to flexibility and agility
2. Applications will be delivered and not installed, not so sure about this one,  I think its true for a class of applications, but if you follow the citrix analogy of TV delivery, whilst its true there’s a lot of delivery going on its complemented by lots of “installed” DVD’s, YouTube video’s and cached TV on PVR’s.  I think when we say installed, we are mixing up longevity and integration with difficult to install and deinstall
3. App experts will rule the world, i’m not so sure about this one either - often the app experts are the end users, so if this means the end users will rule the world Citrix might be right
4. Consumerization will reshape IT, and for this reason I think we will still see things “installed” even if installation only means persistently cached.
5. The world wide computer is real, IDC believes that within 4 years 80% of data needed to do work will be outside the firewall

Tags: Citrix, future, iforum

I’ve had a day at iForum and feel ready to make a few comments on the reality of XenDesktop compared to the position presented by Citrix so far. 

First off though I will say that I am impressed by the vision that Citrix presented, the coherence of the vision and the relative openness of the eco system that surrounds it. 

I’m not so impressed by the details of their current implementation and the messaging that surrounds it,  but I would have been if the messages had been just slightly moderated and developed in the more technical sessions.  I’ve made some points about the marketing in a previous post so I won’t repeat them here.

By XenDesktop I really mean the Citrix Desktop Delivery Controller (DDC), it’s integration with the Access Gateway (CAG), the XenServer  Virtual Machine Manager (VMM) and the Provisioning Server (PVS).

In summary I like the DDC and the CAG a lot, I like PVS in principle for users who don’t need to install applications and right now I don’t see much to differentiate XenServer.

Some bold claims were made for the XenDesktop, I may have got the wording slightly wrong, but I’m right in principle:

1. It’s like a new PC every day
2. XenDesktop is applicable to 55% of workers, ie “office workers”

I want to work through these messages and try and get my thoughts straight:

It’s like a new PC every day

The assumption is that a new PC is great and that a new PC every day is even better.  The supporting evidence for this is that a PC gets slower over time, because new versions of applications consume more resources and just because of PC entropy.  If I get a new PC or just rebuild an existing one the world is rosy.  Comments:

1. It’s true that PCs do slow down with time, because new apps and web pages consume more resources.  But how does XenDesktop help?, most cost models show servers being replaced every 5 years and PCs being replaced every 3 years so that in 3 years time I will have a fast desktop again, but a slow XenDesktop for another two years. 
2. It’s true that PCs do tend to slow down with time, but speed up following a rebuild, but in my experience that’s because when I rebuild my PC I forgot to put half the applications back on it that I’ve accumulated over the year[s].  I then spend a very frustrating few weeks trying to find and install perhaps the most important 50% of these apps and by the time they are all reinstalled I’m back to the slow PC.  So there are two scenarios
   1. If I have a locked down PC and can’t install anything then PC’s don’t slow down and so “having a new PC every day” makes no difference, because the new PC is exactly like the old one
   2. If I don’t have a locked down PC and all my changes don’t get persisted from day to day, then I’m going to be really annoyed because one things for sure.  I hate getting a new PC because the first thing I have to do to it is to install all my apps and utilities and configure it, and I don’t want to do that every day.
3. A new PC every day also assumes I logoff every day, since the only way that I pick up changes to the image with PVS is to reboot this seems reasonable.  However this is incredibly unproductive,  it’s true that years ago people did close down every application at the end of the day and shutdown their PC, now though its just a quick suspend and resume.  At the end of my day I will often have 20 browser tabs open, and 10 applications running, if I have to close all of these down and open them all up again to the same state that will cost me 15 minutes a day off the bottom line, that will wipe out any TCO benefit for sure.  In my personal case I restart/logoff my desktop once a month, it runs Vista 64 and its rock solid.

 

XenDesktop is applicable to 55% of workers

This is a key figure.  The logic goes as follows:

1. 15% mobile
2. 30% XenApp desktops
3. 55% XenDesktop users

My view Citrix should have made clear that this is a long term goal, not a current reality.  Lets examine the positioning:

1. XenDesktop is distinguished from XenApp primarily by the fact that office workers need to personalise their desktop environment.  There are six main areas where personalization takes place:
   1. The roaming profile
   2. The local profile
   3. The user hive of the registry (persisted as part of the roaming profile)
   4. The system hive of the registry
   5. Program files
   6. Windows directories
2. XenDesktop doesn’t currently deliver a [cost effective] solution for persisting any of these personalisations.  Windows roaming profiles and a myriad of third party solutions for profile/environment management do support effectively “roaming profile” persistence
3. All of these roaming profile persistence technologies were invented to work with XenApp and are being re-envisioned as solutions for XenDesktop
4. So personalisation is not really a reason to use XenDesktop, and since this is the key criteria for positioning XenDesktop and not XenApp as applicable to the 55% of office workers is there another reason?  I think there is but its not really specific to Xendesktop:
   1. Virtual client PCs have higher levels of application compatibility than Windows 2003/8 server - less relevant with Application Virtualization
   2. Virtual client PCs can leverage the existing management infrastructure being used to manage the physical desktop environment - Citrix dismiss managing Virtual PCs using these legacy management tools though
   3. Virtual client PCs have a slightly improved fidelity of UI than 2003/8 server - no business case could be built around this difference
5. Finally XenApp is cheaper than XenDesktop and so far as I can tell it’s implementation of SpeedScreen and support for multi-media is better than XenDesktop.  I feel Citrix need to work harder on getting their positioning straight on this.  My feeling is:
   1. Citrix need to make clear that this positioning is strategic, and will reflect relative investment priorities within Citrix in XenApp vs XenDesktop
   2. Citrix need to recognise that customers are going to make long term (5 year) investment decisions in servers and licenses and that these will drive them to the cheaper XenApp unless there is a case to do differently
   3. Citrix need to recognise that for any office worker who does need to install applications or makes changes to the operating system configuration XenDesktop doesn’t provide a cost effective solution and start talking about their roadmap for addressing this
   4. I also feel that although its not as strategic, it does make sense today for office workers who need VDI and need to personalise their PCs to just boot them virtually, but then manage them as if they were physical PCs.  You don’t get the nice conceptual separation of apps, personality and OS, but as I’ve explained above that doesn’t work well anyway with XenDesktop and legacy management is cheap and easy.

Quite a few issues here, but no show stoppers for Citrix, they are on the right path, messaging just needs a little work.  of course these are just my quick personal notes, not some details analysis.

Tags: Citrix, VDI, XenDesktop

I’ve gained a new respect for marketing since working with some of my colleagues in CSC recently.  However for me marketing needs to work towards 3 key goals:

1. provide a framework that’s allows for complexity to be reduced at a high level, but then gradually decomposed to lower levels of detail
2. help people with a common need discover common services and solutions that meet that need
3. improve the quality of decisions
4. provide names that reduce confusion

Overall I score Citrix pretty highly, perhaps 7/10

 

The framework - 9/10

 

Citrix did pretty well here.  The framework seems to have two dimensions, first there is the lifecycle, which goes:

1. Delivery controllers
2. Gateways
3. Repeaters
4. Receivers
5. All of the above essentially connect to a delivery network

Its nice and simple, maps well to the real world and has the nice analogy of the delivery of TV. 

 

Join common needs to common solutions - 5/10

 

Generally Citrix did well here, except for XenApp and XenDesktop.  Here the relative positioning of the two technologies was difficult to work out:

1. Superficially it seems easy
2. XenApp for apps and XenDesktop for desktops, but wait
3. XenApp is fine for task worker desktops, and that’s 30% of users, ok so far
4. 55% of users are positioned for XenDesktop - because those users need personalization, but hang on provisioning server only really supports personalisation that can be persisted in the profile - which XenApp supports anyway!  So doesn’t that mean that at least some of those 55% are candidates for XenApp!!!
5. That leaves 15% of people who are mobile, but one session later we are told that its projected that 30-50% of people will be mobile by 2010!!
6. Finally XenApp is a great solution for mobile workers who need access to enterprise client server and sometimes web apps but that’s not mentioned.

All this confusion would have been fixed if it had been made clear that this positioning is strategic, it’s not deliverable with the currently shipping products, but new innovation will make it real over time.  This is important because the client and server infrastructure we invest in for XenApp and XenDesktop is going to be with us for 4-6 years which means getting your strategic positioning right is key, since we are going to see perhaps 3 software updates on the same hardware. 

As to the mobility numbers my guess is that 15% need laptops and that the remaining 15-35% would be better served by a combination of XenDesktop, their personal desktop/laptop and a Smart phone.

 

The decision support - 3/10

 

(see also above)

I do like some of the messaging, examples being:

1. Separate OS from Apps from Environment
2. A new PC every day
3. Delivery centre not data centre

But I don’t like that even in the technical sessions they don’t really drill into the reality behind the message.  There tends to be little high level positioning, for example:

1. No discussion on timing, ie when some of the high level vision will be delivered to which use cases
2. No discussion of completeness, ie what doesn’t work - where are the limitations
3. No discussion of assumptions, that underly the message, but if not true for a customer might render the message irrelevant

I’m not going to pick through each of the messages here, but I will give an example of how they could have been improved - i’m making up the details!:

1. Timing,  lets take XenDesktop which is positioned as appropriate for 55% of users, Citrix could have made clear that this was their vision and said that the current product probably targets say 20% of those with the current release
2. Completeness, it wasn’t made clear that XenDesktop and XenApp whilst they both use ICA and both use SpeedScreen use different versions with different overlapping but distinct features
3. Assumptions, a new desktop every day assumes people logoff every day.  I routinely stay logged onto my desktop PC for 25 days at a time, I can’t imagine what logging off every day would do to my productivity!  Certainly it would wipe out any TCO benefit

 

The naming - 2/10

 

XenApp, XenServer, XenDesktop and netscaler are the key names it’s here that I’m less impressed:

1. I really like them as high level brands:
   1. XenServer
   2. XenApp
   3. XenDesktop
   4. NetScaler
2. I really dislike the confusion around the use of the brands:
   1. The brands are used to name suites, eg XenDesktop Standard, that contains products from the other suites/products/families
   2. The brands are named after the delivery controllers, but they sometimes include other delivery controllers, repeaters, gateways and receivers
   3. The suites contain products, but the suite names are also used in place of the product names, eg XenApp is used to describe Citrix Presentation Server and Application Streaming.  XenDesktop is used to describe the broker and the Virtual machine manager, and sometimes provisioning server
   4. The names are also used for families of products, ie several different NetScalers from $10K to $250K
   5. An names assume a single use, eg:
      1. XenApp is assumed to be about application delivery, but today it’s arguably applicable for more desktop delivery use cases than XenDesktop. 
      2. It’s my guess that it won’t be long before XenDesktop is used to deliver apps, competitor brokers already support this
      3. NetScaler is a delivery controller, but the same hardware includes gateways and repeater functionality

Tags: Citrix, iforum, VDI