Adventures in home working

Delivered by Sumit Dhawan – Senior Director – Desktop Virtualization Group

Key points:

1. Current desktop process is slow, complex, insecure and costly to maintain
2. Task workers 30%, Office workers 55%, Mobile workers 15%
   1. Office workers seems to me to be way to broad a classification
   2. Office workers are characterised as needing a “personalized” environment
3. Task workers
   1. Standard work environment
   2. Fast startup/low cost
   3. Data security
   4. Compliance and control
   5. XenApp is a great solution for these users
   6. Seems to me that this description above does apply to lots of office workers as well, even consumerized use cases.  In my case for example for enterprise applications – I would be happy with the above, so long as my client was a non locked down laptop
4. Mobile workers
   1. Frequent travel and offline work
   2. Unmanaged or lightly managed laptop
   3. XenApp is a great solution for these users
5. Office workers
   1. Mainly work in the office
   2. Inter office roaming
   3. Office day extenders
   4. Assumption that XenDesktop is the solution for these users
   5. Citrix believes XenApp is the way to deliver the apps to these users
   6. My concern over this positioning is that it also kind of assumes a person works at a desk, rather than someone else’s desk (shoulder to shoulder) or in a conference room or some other collaborative space
   7. 1st generation VDI – which maps to my maturity level 1 – has mainly been for customers who wanted to solve mainly security related issues, at least these were the projects that succeeded
   8. Lots of talk about the ability for users to personalise, for example installing Active X controls.  But no explanation as to where these personalisations get persisted if you are using provisioning server!
      1. Given this lack of a persistence solution, its unclear to me how XenDesktop differs from XenApp Presentation Virtualization
   9. Discussion of the slow degradation of windows desktops over time.  Its not clear what causes this, however does it automatically follow that the same issues won’t occur when a PC is assembled every day from components, perhaps even worse if the components are virtualized (ie multiple copies of dependant components).  However using XenApp published applications would be cleaner.
      1. However if XenApp published applications are being used how does a user add their own apps or add active x controls, or outlook add-ins etc.
   10. Repeated the benefits of using XenApp published apps, ie you can get up to twice as many XenDesktop users per server.
6. Customer example
   1. Collier County public school
   2. 10,000 students, 1000+ staff, about 9,000 remote students
   3. Early adopter of desktop virtualization
   4. A customer that was caught in the “hype cycle”
   5. Deployed maturity level 1, didn’t get beyond the pilot
   6. Rolling out to about 50% of users
   7. Key message – use cases are key!!
7. Costs
   1. Will this cut costs?
   2. For procurement costs Citrix believe PC is $1100 VDI is $1400, but by extending the life of the PC this cost increase will be reduced
   3. Lots of other cost discussion didn’t get covered, although they believe that TCO saving is 40%

IGEL is number 3 in thin clients

1. Access is diversifying, computing is centralising – at least that IGELS idea
2. Do PC cards to pu in legacy PCs, traditional thin clients, thin tablets and up to quad head clients
3. Target 5 minute rollout per device!
   1. Connect device to KVM
   2. How to configure
      1. define profiles for each location
      2. deploy profiles to locations
      3. when the device plugs into the network it picks up its profile
      4. profiles can be defined based on
         1. mac address
         2. ip address range
   3. Use hot spares
   4. XPe devices need to have centrally managed domain join to remove need for admin visit to device
4. Great user experience
   1. Delivering a total PC experience through a single protocol is like a square peg in a round hole
   2. No protocol translations
   3. IGEL support multiple protocols, web mainframe, voip, multi-media, java
   4. Direct connections to reduce latency – eg voip lots of latency because traffic goes client to server to voip switch to client, not client to client
5. Try to avoid management tools that open additional firewall ports and try to avoid protocols like PXE to rebuild thin clients – some router config issues apparently
6. Modern thin client images can be between .5G and 1G, especially XPe, an update is a big deal unless you have caching appliances or a fan out infrastructure.  Even better don’t re-image when you can avoid it
7. Resilience
   1. If device can run web apps or java then this can be a fall back
8. Cost
   1. Some users don’t need a windows desktop, just let the terminal access the applications directly

A few random notes about this session:

1. Applications run businesses
2. Doesn’t mention multiple classes of apps
   1. Enterprise defined
   2. Business area defined
   3. Team defined
   4. End user defined – work related
   5. End user defined – personal
3. Doesn’t mention that there may be different approaches to these different classes of apps
4. It seems to me that the:
   1. primary benefit delivered by the desktop is that it provides services to the applications that allow them to work together synergistically. 
   2. As a secondary benefit it provides a way to navigate to and lauch applications either from the desktop or start menu and to swicth between running applications
   3. Finally it provides a way to access applications by navigating their associated files, and to manipulate these files
   4. Do we get all of these benefits when we deliver all apps via XenApp?  Probably not as seamlessly as we are used to
5. Easy call is an interesting option for low end telephony integration, no presence, web meeting integration etc , but lots of other useful telephony integration
6. key features in next release
   1. Inter isolation communication – this is key – see points above
   2. Differential updates for offline apps – this is useful, even if we pre-cache images and stream with provisioning server
   3. Streaming via HTTP[S] – not before time!
7. XenApp multi-media – Project Apollo – will feed into XenApp and XenDesktop
   1. This is a must have feature now
   2. Vista Aero remoting
   3. WPF remoting – isn’t this the same as Vista Aero remoting?
   4. Flash acceleration
   5. OpenGL
   6. Enhanced audio codec support (not great on XenApp today)
8. Long term approach
   1. Ask
   2. What are the capabilities of the client
   3. What are the capabilities of the network
   4. What are the requirements of the app
   5. make sensible decisions
9. XenApp and Server 2008
   1. Leverages the new WTS architecture
   2. Leverages server 2008 security
   3. XPS printing
   4. Special folder redirection, eg if a users my documents is on their laptop then when they save to my documents in XenApp it gets saved on the laptop
   5. Clear type font support
   6. Microsoft strategy – get more people using presentation virtualization, NOT compete with Citrix
   7. 25% more users on XenApp than on Server 2008 terminal services
   8. IPv6 support

These are the key things that I took away from the iForum keynote by : Mark Templeton at Edinburgh.

1. It’s started late!
2. 1 Million Citrix servers currently in operation, in 200,000 companies
3. Citrix NetScaler sits in front of many large scale web sites today, 75% of Internet users touch NetScaler every day
4. Citrix are pushing support for Apple products going forward
5. Nice slide – you are here, your apps are there, and your users are somewhere else
6. Business issues
   1. Globalization
   2. Offshoring
   3. tele-working
   4. Mobility
   5. Green
7. IT issues
   1. Consolidation
   2. Security
   3. Compliance
   4. Business continuity
   5. Green
8. Not just think different – DO different
9. Citrix takes inspiration from TV
   1. Simple, fast and on demand
   2. Device, network and application independence
   3. Content security and access control
   4. Dynamic capacity
   5. Predictable operating and capital costs
10. However I would make the point that even with all the above, there are still:
    1. PVR’s
    2. youtube
    3. DVD’s
    4. BBC iPlayer
    5. etc
11. Doesn’t change my view that one solution will not meet all requirements, and to be fair Citrix understand that in their model of Controllers, gateways, repeaters and receivers
12. Citrix are promoting a move from the DATA centre to a DELIVERY centre, not sure myself that much changes, data centres have always been delivery centric.
13. Citrix approach – follow the users and the applications —> the web is number 1 for new applications
    1. This means put lots of effort into application layer network services – Citrix NetScaler, 20,000 enterprise deployments so date.  5x (10x for MPX) performance improvement, with increased security and lower server load
14. Relationship with Microsoft stronger than ever
15. The end user experience, requires a lot of focus on the delivery network and associated services
    1. Single signon
    2. Security
    3. Appsharing and collaboration
    4. Integrated telephony
    5. performance monitoring
    6. …
16. Over 50% of employees are in branch office
    1. Citrix branch office repeater
       1. Application delivery staging, for virtualized streamed applications
       2. Windows branch services, file, print, DNS, AD
       3. WAN optimisation
       4. Ok – but where is Citrix provisioning server branch repeater services!
       5. This is a nice integrated appliance, but how does it compete with Cisco WAAS or Riverbed?
17. Citrix app receiver
    1. A universal software client, everything else is a plugin
       1. acceleration, security, virtualization, monitoring, web collaboration, technology, user support, third party extensibility
       2. This is a trend I am seeing everywhere, including Symantec/Altiris and VMware, Firefox
18. Citrix workflow studio
    1. Works within a single Citrix product, between Citrix products and because its Microsoft Windows Workflow Foundation it can orchestrate Citrix and third party products
19. Xen Desktop
    1. A Xen desktop with no applications – ie all apps delivered by XenApp uses half the resources of XenDesktop with apps.  ie twice the users per server.
    2. Upgrade from XenApp to add XenDesktop license for 95$ (enterprise or platinum?)
    3. Not clear what advantage XenDesktop gives over XenApp other than “personalization” also not clear what the real cost difference is.

I’m at Citrix iForum in Edinburgh today,  the conference starts tomorrow and lasts for two days.  There are a couple of CSC people giving talks.  I’m not speaking but I will definitely be listening.  I’ve got a few objectives from the next two days:

1. I want to get a general update on the Citrix portfolio, especially the edge appliances
2. I want to get a broader perspective on VDI, listening to the perspectives of RES, Appsense, the thin client hardware vendors and Citrix themselves.  I have a pretty clear view already, but I want to test it
3. I want to spend some time writing a couple of blog posts, thinking a bit and structuring my thoughts
4. I want to have a rest, and get some walking in – I’ve been over worked for the last few months and I can feel it!