iForum Application Virtualization

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