1. to any end point, over the ICA channel

1. Streaming media
2. 3D graphics

1. At some time in the future this will run on virtual machines, rather than physical machines with a GPU

1. inspecting the end point
2. inspecting the app
3. inspecting the network
4. then decide how to deliver the experience

1. Server side GPU’s
2. Server side rendering units

1. directX, OpenGL, WPF, Flash and Silerlight

1. VOIP over ICA seems to work ok
2. Softphone on demand

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

1. Who you are
2. Time of day
3. Location
4. Whether you have a token

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

1. This is a key issue, coming out in the next release “real soon now”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.