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Citrix Unifying App, Server, And Desktop Virtualization
Posted in: Application Delivery, Deskside, Virtualization by thirdoctet on February 17, 2008 | No Comments
Care of Joseph F. Kovar, CMP Channel (source) – Citrix Systems (NSDQ:CTXS) is taking the next step towards unifying its application, server, and desktop virtualization technologies with new enhancements to several of its products.
Citrix, of Fort Lauderdale, Fla. next week is expected to rename its flagship Presentation Server application virtualization software as XenApp. The move follows a similar move to rename its server virtualization application as XenServer and its desktop virtualization application as XenDesktop.
Citrix acquired server virtualization software vendor XenSource in a $500 million deal last year.
The name changes brings consistency with Citrix’s other virtualization products, said Bill Hartwick, senior director of product marketing for Citrix’s Virtualization Systems group. “It also drives home the value of the technology,” Hartwick said. “It’s now expanded to become part of an overall virtualization solution.”
In order to start making its various virtualization applications work better together, Citrix also expects to introduce Citrix Workflow Studio, a software package that composes the workflows of XenApp, XenServer, XenDesktop, and NetScaler, the latter of which accelerates the delivery of Web-based applications, Hartwick said.
Citrix Workflow Studio also makes it easier to integrate Citrix products with third-party technologies, he said.
As an example of how it is used, Hartwick said to imagine hiring a new employee. The company could use Citrix Workflow Studio to design a workflow to automatically provision the employee’s desktop and applications. Scripts could be set up so that a manager could handle the provisioning without intervention from the IT department, he said.
Pricing for Citrix Workflow Studio has yet to be determined. It is expected to be ready for technical preview in the second quarter of this year, with shipment expected by year-end, Hartwick said.
XenApp, XenServer, XenDesktop, NetScaler, and Citrix Workflow Studio are being brought under a single new umbrella brand next week, Hartwick said. That brand, Citrix Delivery Center, emphasizes Citrix’s plans to help customers transform their data centers into delivery centers which use virtual infrastructures to deliver customer applications and data, he said.
Sumit Dhawan, director of product marketing for Citrix’s Desktop Delivery group, said that XenDesktop is currently under technical preview, with over 5,000 copies having been downloaded since December 1. A full-feature beta version is expected to be released this quarter, with the final release expected next quarter, Dhawan said.
In the 90 days since Citrix closed on the acquisition of XenSource, customers and partners have downloaded over 30,000 copies of XenServer, Dhawan said. Over 1,600 of Citrix’s 5,000-plus legacy channel partners have already been trained to take XenServer to customers.
A new version of XenServer, XenServer 4.1, is expected to be available in the near future, Dhawan said. New to XenServer 4.1 will be increased support for storage on arrays and appliances from Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Network Appliance (NSDQ:NTAP), and performance enhancements when working with XenApp, he said.
Citrix is also planning to unveil XenServer Platinum Edition, which features automatic provisioning of application workloads, Dhawan said. It is expected to be available shortly after the release of XenServer 4.1, and have a list price of about $5,000, which allows application workloads to be provisioned on an unlimited number of virtual servers on one physical server, as well as on three other physical servers, he said.
Citrix Delivery Center Helps Customers Transform Datacenters into Delivery Centers
Posted in: Application Delivery, Industry News, Virtualization by thirdoctet on February 11, 2008 | No Comments
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. » 2/11/2008 » Citrix Systems, Inc. (Nasdaq:CTXS), the global leader in application delivery infrastructure, today announced Citrix Delivery Center, a new overarching product family brand for its market-leading application delivery infrastructure solutions. The Citrix Delivery Center product family features four primary product lines: Citrix XenServer™, Citrix XenDesktop™, Citrix® NetScaler® and Citrix XenApp™ – the new name for Citrix Presentation Server™. Citrix also unveiled a new tool called Citrix Workflow Studio designed to help customers unlock the full power of Citrix Delivery Center by orchestrating communications across multiple Citrix products as well as third-party solutions.
The new Citrix Delivery Center brand reflects the growing need for IT organizations to transform static datacenters into dynamic “delivery centers.” By definition, datacenters have historically been static warehouses of applications and data, oriented more toward long-term production projects than highly-responsive, on-demand service delivery. Unfortunately, this outdated model makes it extremely difficult to keep pace with today’s fast-paced business environment where companies must contend with a constant barrage of new applications, new devices, new competitive pressures and an increasingly mobile workforce. In an era where businesses run on applications, the ability to deliver applications and desktops to any user, anytime, anywhere from a secure central location is rapidly becoming a core focus for most IT organizations. By providing an end-to-end infrastructure for application delivery, Citrix Delivery Center is the first solution on the market to address this challenge across all applications, all networks, and all users.
“In today’s volatile business environment, the traditional deployment of applications leaves a lot to be desired by enterprise organizations,” said Michael Rose, Research Analyst with IDC. “With the increasing number of mobile workers, computing locations, applications and user scenarios, an application delivery infrastructure enables a dynamic and flexible way of providing applications to users. Citrix Delivery Center presents a unique way to help orchestrate the critical pieces of the infrastructure required for true application delivery.”
Introducing Citrix Delivery Center
The Citrix Delivery Center product family ties together the company’s four key application delivery infrastructure systems. Customers will continue to have full flexibility and choice to buy individual products or combined solutions within the family or take advantage of them as an end-to-end application delivery solution. The Citrix Delivery Center product family includes:
- Citrix XenServer – The XenServer product line is an enterprise-class solution for virtualizing application workloads across any number of servers in the datacenter as a flexible aggregated pool of computing resources. With the new Platinum Edition, XenServer also becomes the first and only solution on the market to address both virtual and physical servers, making the entire datacenter more dynamic (see today’s separate press release on the latest edition of this product).
- Citrix NetScaler – The NetScaler product line is a purpose-built web application delivery solution that accelerates application performance up to five times while improving security and reducing web infrastructure costs. In addition to delivering web applications for thousands of corporate customers, NetScaler is also the delivery infrastructure of choice for most of the world’s largest consumer websites, touching an estimated 75 percent of all Internet users each day.
- Citrix XenApp – The company’s flagship application virtualization product line, previously known as Presentation Server, is the industry’s de facto standard for delivering Windows-based applications with the best performance, security and cost savings. With more than 70 million users and 99 percent of the Fortune Global 500 as customers, the XenApp product line uses state-of-the-art client and server side virtualization to deliver applications to office and mobile workers from a single centralized location. The new XenApp name was chosen to better reflect the product’s core focus on application virtualization, and to underscore the importance of providing customers with an end-to-end virtualization system that incorporates servers (XenServer), applications (XenApp) and desktops (XenDesktop).
- Citrix XenDesktop – XenDesktop is the industry’s first comprehensive Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) system – moving beyond the limitations of existing products to ensure the simple, secure and cost effective delivery of Windows desktops to any office worker with an unparalleled user experience.
The Citrix Delivery Center product family also includes all Citrix solutions that go to market as part of the above four product lines, including Citrix Access Gateway™, Citrix EdgeSight™, Citrix Password Manager™, Citrix Provisioning Server™ and Citrix WANScaler™. These products, which enhance the value of application delivery for all applications and desktops and serve as key differentiators to the four primary Citrix Delivery Center product lines, will continue to be available both as standalone solutions.
“This shift in thinking about the traditional datacenter as more of a dynamic delivery center makes perfect sense for organizations’ evolving IT environment, where technologies such as virtualization make infrastructure much more complex than in the past,” said Davood Ghods, Agency Information Officer for the California Department of Food and Agriculture. “The promise of a product such as Citrix Delivery Center is that it provides a complete set of application delivery technologies that work seamlessly together, something that any IT organization would love to have.”
Workflow Studio Enables a Truly Dynamic Delivery Platform
Tying it all together, the new Citrix Workflow Studio provides an orchestration tool that wraps commands from virtually any product and presents them as graphical objects that can be easily linked together on a visual workflow canvas. Using Workflow Studio, administrators will be able to integrate previously disconnected processes far more easily across multiple Citrix Delivery Center products, allowing them to work together as a single cohesive system. This also makes it much easier for customers to integrate Citrix solutions with third-party products to automate end-to-end application delivery processes.
Highly extensible and open, Workflow Studio is built on Microsoft .NET, PowerShell and Windows Workflow Foundation technologies. This extensible design also makes it easier for customers to link Citrix products into broader systems management solutions from partners like HP, IBM and Microsoft to ensure that all of the Citrix Delivery Center products function seamlessly within large enterprise environments.
“In the early 1990s, Citrix inspired an entire industry to think differently about how a new generation of applications should be delivered. Over the years, we have continued to raise the bar on application delivery with innovative new products that help customers keep pace with new application types, user scenarios and business challenges,” said Wes Wasson, senior vice president and chief marketing officer, Citrix Systems. “Today, Citrix offers the industry’s most comprehensive portfolio of application delivery infrastructure solutions, featuring a broad range of world-class products that extend from the datacenter to the desktop. We are excited about Citrix Delivery Center and its potential for transforming datacenters into delivery centers for customers around the world.”
Pricing and Availability
The individual products in the Citrix Delivery Center family can be purchased today in any quantity and combination to fit the exact requirements of each unique customer. A tech preview of the new Workflow Studio solution will be available in Q2 2008.
Citrix XenApp will be the new product line name for all versions of Presentation Server going forward. The Citrix Presentation Server name will remain on all existing product, documentation, support and marketing tools specific to the 4.5 and earlier releases of the product.
About Citrix
Citrix Systems, Inc. (Nasdaq:CTXS) is the global leader and the most trusted name in application delivery infrastructure. More than 200,000 organizations worldwide rely on Citrix to deliver any application to users anywhere with the best performance, highest security and lowest cost. Citrix customers include 100% of the Fortune 100 companies and 99% of the Fortune Global 500, as well as hundreds of thousands of small businesses and prosumers. Citrix has approximately 6,200 channel and alliance partners in more than 100 countries. Annual revenue in 2007 was $1.4 billion.
Care of citrix.com.
Citrix XenServer Wins Gold in SearchServerVirtualization.com 2007 Product of the Year Awards, Virtualization Platforms Category
Posted in: Application Delivery, Industry News, Virtualization by thirdoctet on February 5, 2008 | No Comments
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla » 1/30/2008 » Citrix Systems, Inc. (Nasdaq: CTXS), the global leader in application delivery infrastructure, today announced that Citrix XenServer™ Enterprise Edition 4.0 has been named the Product of the Year in the Virtualization Platforms category of the SearchServerVirtualization.com 2007 Products of the Year awards. The Virtualization Platforms category recognized three products that have altered the virtualization landscape this past year. The awards are presented by the editors of TechTarget’s Data Center Media Group, and products are judged based on innovation, performance, ease of integration into existing environments, ease of use and manageability, functionality and value.
“Being recognized as the Product of the Year in the Virtualization Platforms category by TechTarget’s respected virtualization industry site validates Citrix’s goal to simplify server virtualization,” said Phil Montgomery, senior director of product marketing, Citrix Systems. “This award highlights XenServer Enterprise Edition 4.0 as a solid, enterprise-class platform, ready to give the market leader a run for its money.”
Introduced in August 2007, new features in XenServer Enterprise Edition 4.0 include XenMotion™ for live migration of running virtual machines; XenCenter™, a scalable, resilient virtual infrastructure management solution with an easy to use Windows user interface; a powerful 64-bit hypervisor that supports both 32- and 64-bit enterprise workloads; and, an open, standards-based XenAPI which enables ISVs and OEMs to develop add-on solutions for XenServer. The release also includes version 3.1 of the Xen open source hypervisor “engine” and leverages the latest hardware virtualization support features from Intel and AMD to deliver near bare-metal performance.
XenServer was also named Product of the Year in the Virtualization for Linux servers category by TechTarget’s SearchEnterpriseLinux.techtarget.com. For more information about the awards and to view a list of all featured companies, visit: http://www.searchservervirtualization.techtarget.com and http://www.searchenterpriselinux.techtarget.com.
Read the entire press release at its source.
Microsoft and Citrix Expand Alliance to Deliver Virtualization Solutions
Posted in: Application Delivery, C-Level, Deskside, Industry News, Virtualization by thirdoctet on January 26, 2008 | No Comments
REDMOND, Wash., and FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. » 1/22/2008 » Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq “MSFT”) and Citrix Systems, Inc. (Nasdaq: CTXS) today announced an expanded alliance to deliver a comprehensive set of virtualization solutions to address the desktop and server virtualization needs of customers. The two companies will work together to deliver and market joint virtualization solutions with Windows Server 2008 to help customers achieve a flexible and dynamic client computing infrastructure.
For more than 18 years, Microsoft and Citrix have offered customers solutions to deliver Windows-based applications using Citrix Presentation Server™ running on Terminal Services. Now the companies plan to co-market new client computing offerings with the next generation of Citrix Presentation Server and the Citrix XenDesktop™ products, both based on Windows Server 2008 and Windows Optimized Desktop solutions, and managed by Microsoft System Center. With these solutions, customers can build an array of flexible, low-cost and manageable client computing options for different types of enterprise users.
Citrix Presentation Server along with Windows Server 2008 enables customers to deliver remote Windows-based applications at a low cost and with high performance for users. The next generation of Citrix Presentation Server will support and extend Windows Server 2008 and will help enable customers to use Windows Server 2008 for the remote Windows application execution workload.
Citrix XenDesktop is a complete desktop virtualization system and, when combined with Windows Server 2008, Windows Vista Enterprise Centralized Desktop and System Center, will help enable customers to deliver Windows-based desktops to virtually all task-based and knowledge-based workers at a low cost, and with high performance and enhanced security features. Citrix XenDesktop, planned for release in second quarter 2008, will support and extend Windows Server 2008 shortly after the availability of Hyper-V, a hypervisor-based virtualization feature available as part of Windows Server 2008. The two companies will work together to co-market both of those solutions — Citrix Presentation Server and Citrix XenDesktop along with Windows Server 2008 and System Center — to help customers meet the full spectrum of their Windows client computing needs. This expanded alliance also marks an initial step toward a longer-term plan to collaborate on future desktop virtualization solutions.
“Citrix’s end-to-end virtualization strategy includes a strong shared alliance with Microsoft and a commitment to continued innovation on the Windows platform,” said Mark Templeton, chief executive officer of Citrix Systems. “By leveraging our strength in desktop virtualization in support of the Windows Server 2008 platform and System Center, our development efforts enable businesses to deliver the right desktop experience to the right user at the right time for the increasingly diverse set of user needs. Customers should find that our virtualization products together provide one of the best ways to virtualize Windows apps, desktops and servers.”
Microsoft and Citrix also have extended their alliance for server virtualization to enable IT departments to run heterogeneous hypervisor software. Citrix is developing a capability to enable the portability of virtual machines between the Xen hypervisor in Citrix XenServer™ and Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V. This capability will offer the companies’ joint customers a unified portfolio of virtual infrastructures that utilizes both Hyper-V and the Xen hypervisor under a common System Center management platform. This capability is scheduled to be available for beta evaluation in the second quarter of 2008.
Microsoft and Citrix will offer server virtualization solutions with the combination of Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V, System Center family of products and Citrix XenServer. Citrix will extend support for Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V and Microsoft System Center in all its virtualization products: XenDesktop, Presentation Server and XenServer. As part of this collaboration, a future version of System Center Virtual Machine Manager will support managing Citrix XenServer, and Citrix plans to integrate Hyper-V with Citrix XenServer. This collaboration will enable customers to easily deploy and manage heterogeneous virtualization environments built on both Citrix XenServer and Hyper-V.
“For nearly two decades, Microsoft and Citrix have delivered significant value to customers, and we’re excited to expand our work around desktop and server virtualization technologies,” said Bob Muglia, senior vice president of the Server and Tools Business at Microsoft. “Virtualization enables our customers to deliver the right computing resources to their employees virtually anytime, anywhere, regardless of the situation, and helps create IT systems that are more efficient, more flexible and more cost-effective. Microsoft and Citrix are working together on product integration so that customers have access to comprehensive and flexible virtualization solutions, all controlled by an integrated management platform.”
Today’s announcement is another milestone in the alliance between Citrix and Microsoft. Also recently, the two companies have collaborated on solutions designed to simplify branch office computing using Citrix WANScaler™ running on the Windows Server 2003 and Microsoft Internet Security and Acceleration Server platforms. In the area of virtualization software, the companies agreed in September 2007 to standardize the companies’ desktop and application virtualization solutions on the Microsoft Virtual Hard Disk (VHD) format as a common runtime environment. And in July 2006, before Citrix’s acquisition of XenSource, Microsoft and XenSource announced plans to provide interoperability between Xen-enabled Linux and Hyper-V in Windows Server 2008.
About Citrix
Citrix Systems, Inc. (Nasdaq:CTXS) is the global leader and the most trusted name in application delivery infrastructure. More than 200,000 organizations worldwide rely on Citrix to deliver any application to users anywhere with the best performance, highest security and lowest cost. Citrix customers include 100% of the Fortune 100 companies and 99% of the Fortune Global 500, as well as hundreds of thousands of small businesses and prosumers. Citrix has approximately 6,200 channel and alliance partners in more than 100 countries. Annual revenue in 2006 was $1.1 billion.
About Microsoft
Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT”) is the worldwide leader in software, services and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full potential.
Care of Citrix.
VMware to Expand Desktop Virtualization Solution with Acquisition of Thinstall
Posted in: Application Delivery, Deskside, Virtualization by thirdoctet on January 15, 2008 | No Comments
Thinstall’s Best-of-Breed, Agentless Application Virtualization to Join VMware’s Desktop Portfolio; VMware Also Acquires Virtualization Services Assets from Foedus
PALO ALTO, Calif., January 15, 2008 — VMware, Inc. (NYSE: VMW), the virtualization software leader, today announced it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Thinstall, a privately-held application virtualization software company headquartered in San Francisco. VMware is acquiring Thinstall to expand its desktop virtualization capabilities which help customers better provision, deploy and update desktop environments. The terms of the acquisition, which is expected to be completed in the current fiscal quarter, subject to customary closing conditions, were not disclosed.
“Delivering software applications to an organization’s workforce is the single largest cost of desktop administration today,” said Jeff Jennings, vice president of desktop products and solutions at VMware. “Thinstall’s third generation solution offers the best technological approach in the market for application virtualization, providing faster, easier and more secure delivery of software applications to desktop-based workforces. The addition of Thinstall to our desktop virtualization portfolio will help us to better deliver cost-effective and more flexible tools for quickly and securely provisioning desktops.”
Thinstall decouples applications from underlying operating systems, improving isolation and portability for applications across desktop environments. Thinstall’s unique, agentless approach to application virtualization enables the rapid, secure and cost effective delivery of software applications to desktops. Agentless application virtualization, pioneered by Thinstall, requires no pre-installed software on physical or virtual PC’s and no new deployment infrastructure or management tools. Thinstall’s architecture integrates into existing application management systems to deliver virtualized applications across a variety of operating system versions (NT, 2000, XP, Vista) and enables applications to move with users as needed. Thinstall significantly decreases the time to value of a software application and reduces the overhead of costly integrations. For example, a large federal agency turned to Thinstall to completely eliminate software installation conflicts that previously ran as high as 20%. The same customer used Thinstall to cut regression testing by 70% as applications no longer had to be tested in every environment or with every other application.
Founded in 1999, Thinstall is used by more than 600 customers in government and commercial industries. Thinstall customers have deployed thousands of virtualized applications to over a million desktops around the world. For more information about Thinstall please visit www.vmware.com/go/Thinstall.
Read the complete press release at VMware.com.
Pano Logic Launches Innovative Desktop Virtualization Solution in Canada with the Opening of a Toronto Office
Posted in: Application Delivery, Deskside, Virtualization by thirdoctet on December 14, 2007 | No Comments
Pano Logic™, developer of a server-based virtualized desktop, today announced the expansion of its North American operations with the opening of a Canadian headquarters in Toronto, Ontario. Industry veteran Rob Lalonde, Pano Logic’s vice president of East coast sales, will oversee the new office, which will focus on accelerating sales of Pano Logic and supporting the growing Canadian market.Founded in February 2006, Pano Logic launched its first desktop virtualization solution in August 2007. The company is led by CEO Nick Gault, an experienced leader of enterprise technology companies who is originally from Montreal, Canada. Gault brings strong virtualization experience to Pano Logic, having served as the founding CEO of XenSource, recently acquired by Citrix Systems.
“As in other regions, virtualization is a very pressing IT need in Canada, and we expect to see rapid adoption of the solution,” said Lalonde. “We recognized the need to have an office dedicated to the Canadian market, and selected Toronto for its central location, the sophistication of its IT community and the availability of talented, highly-trained personnel.”
Lalonde will be responsible for sales, partner and business development for Canada, as well as the Northeast and Central regions of the U.S. Previously, Lalonde has held executive sales positions at Hummingbird Communications, Delano Technology and Fusepoint Managed Services. In addition to sales and support, the new office will include quality assurance and research and development operations headed by Anthony Di Loreto, manager of quality assurance, and George Halpert, director of software development.
Pano Logic leverages standard virtualization technologies to create a new approach to client/desktop computing that dramatically lowers total cost of ownership while increasing security, management and mobility. The Pano desktop computer has no CPU, no memory, no operating system and no drivers. By moving all software off the desktop and consolidating everything onto easier to manage, shared servers, Pano reduces desktop TCO by 70 percent or more–saving $3150 per desktop over three years–and eliminates the desktop as a security risk.
“We have carried VMware products for several years, and Pano Logic is a natural extension of our offerings. Their approach to desktop virtualization leverages our customers’ existing server virtualization technology and seamlessly integrates with their datacenters,” said Alex McGillivray, president at Calgary–based Sure Systems Ltd. “We look forward to working closely with Pano Logic to bring this innovative technology to our customers.”
Read the entire press release at PanoLogic.com.
Citrix Teams with HP to Accelerate Server Virtualization Adoption
Posted in: Application Delivery, Industry News, Virtualization by thirdoctet on October 23, 2007 | No Comments
LAS VEGAS — 10/23/2007 — Today at Citrix iForum™, the world’s largest application delivery conference, Citrix Systems, Inc. (Nasdaq: CTXS) announced an agreement with HP to qualify and sell Citrix XenServer™ Enterprise Edition (formerly XenSource XenEnterprise) on industry-standard HP ProLiant and BladeSystem servers.
Introduced in August 2007, Citrix XenServer Enterprise Edition 4 includes XenMotion™ for live migration of running virtual machines; XenCenter™, a scalable, resilient virtual infrastructure management framework integrated into every host; an open, standards-based XenAPI that enables ISVs and OEMs to develop add-on solutions for XenServer Enterprise Edition; and a powerful 64-bit hypervisor that supports both 32- and 64-bit enterprise workloads.
“HP is the largest x86 server vendor in the world, and its validation of Citrix XenServer provides ease of installation and access to virtualization for customers worldwide,” said Frank Artale, vice president of business development at Citrix Systems. “We look forward to working more closely with HP to accelerate the adoption of virtualization technology.”
HP ProLiant servers provide optimum operational efficiency and virtualization performance for consolidation and energy efficiency. HP and Citrix’s expanded relationship provides customers the ability to purchase an entire virtualization solution, from server to software, from HP with the added benefit of interoperability and HP support.
“Virtualization has become a necessity for our customers to achieve desired business outcomes,” said Scott Farrand, vice president of Industry Standard Server Software at HP. “This agreement with Citrix will provide customers an easy-to-use and cost-effective virtualization solution for their existing HP investments.”
Read the entire press release at Citrix.
Gartner Places Citrix in the Leaders Quadrant for 2007
Posted in: Application Delivery, Industry News, Security by thirdoctet on September 25, 2007 | No Comments
Citrix Systems, Inc. (Nasdaq:CTXS), the global leader in application delivery infrastructure, today announced that Citrix Password Manager™, a key component of its Citrix Presentation Server™ product line for Windows application delivery, has been positioned by Gartner, Inc. in the leaders quadrant of the “Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Single Sign-On, 2007”i report authored by Gartner Research Director Gregg Kreizman.
With more than 200,000 customers, Citrix Presentation Server is the industry’s leading solution for delivering Windows-based applications with the best security, performance and cost savings. The Password Manager integrated enterprise single sign-on (ESSO) capabilities make it easy for these users to securely access all their applications with a single password, then reset that password via the web without calling the help desk. In addition to its ESSO capabilities, Presentation Server also integrates secure application access capabilities based on its award-winning Citrix Access Gateway™ solution, which also placed in the leaders quadrant of Gartner’s “Magic Quadrant for SSL VPN, North America, 3Q06”ii report earlier this year.
Password Manager and Access Gateway are available both as standalone solutions or as part of the Citrix Presentation Server, Platinum Edition. More information on Citrix Presentation Server can also be found in a recent report by Gartner Principal Research Analyst Federica Troniiii ( http://www.gartner.com/DisplayDocument?ref=g_search&id=509490&subref=simplesearch ).
“IT administrators need top notch security for their applications, as well as a solution that won’t compromise ease of use and productivity for their users,” said David Roussain, vice president of product marketing, Virtualization Systems Group, Citrix Systems. “By featuring seamless, integrated password management as a critical element of the application delivery infrastructure, Citrix Password Manager ensures that employee productivity and system usability are preserved. We are honored that Citrix Password Manager has been placed in the ESSO leaders quadrant.”
To be placed in the leaders quadrant, Gartner looks for influential companies in the Enterprise Single Sign-On (ESSO) market that “show a consistent ability to gain new customers in broad industries and geographies, and at the higher end of the quadrant, have very good to excellent customer references, products that easily or very easily integrate with target systems, and a commitment to rapidly provide the product updates their customers want.”
Sun enters the VDI market announcing its own connection broker
Posted in: Application Delivery, Deskside, Industry News, Virtualization by thirdoctet on September 20, 2007 | No Comments
With a surprising announcement, which most press magazines didn’t cover, Sun enters the VDI market with its own connection broker: Sun VDI 1.0.
Sun is already busy in the OS virtualization space since a while with its Solaris Containers included in Solaris 10 operating system, but it seems the company is now ready to invade hardware virtualization market as well.
An upcoming update for Solaris 10 in fact will introduce xVM, the Sun implementation of open source hypervisor Xen. And this new VDI seems the best complement for the new plaftorm.
Meanwhile the new solution integrates VMware Infrastructure 3 with well-known Sun Secure Global Desktop (the terminal services technology acquired from Tarantella).
Sun VDI Software will be available in October 2007, priced at $149 per user, and will install on both Solaris and Linux operating systems.
Sun is not playing the virtualization game with VMware and Xen only. The company just signed an agreement with Microsoft to improve xVM and codename Viridian upcoming hypervisors.
Citrix’ strategy is your moment of Xen
Posted in: Application Delivery, Industry News, Virtualization by thirdoctet on September 13, 2007 | No Comments
John Bara,vice president of marketing for XenSource, isn’t afraid to admit that Citrix’ new strategy includes more than just a single moment of Xen.
John called soon after introducing XenSource OEM edition, which he called a key to making virtualization into a standard PC capability over the next two years.
“By the end of 2008 at least half the server volume in x86 will include an option for XenExpress OEM edition. That’s a 20x expansion of our market.”
Citrix’ acquisition of XenSource, announced last month, has now gotten regulatory approval and should close next quarter, Bara said. XenSource will become a Citrix division, and Bara said a 400% gain in employment is then anticipated by the end of 2008.
“Xensource brings server virtualization and storage virtualization. Citrix delivers application and desktop virtualization., We intend to connect those into one platform that is virtualized. We haven’t published the schedule, but you’ll see a stream of announcements on our joint plans beginning at the Citrix iForum in October,” he said.
Bara added he is not jealous of VMWare, which chose an IPO while XenSource was being acquired, and is now worth nearly $30 billion. Citrix paid about $500 million for XenSource and is now worth about $6.7 billion.
“Xensource is only three years old. VMWare has been around 10 years. We’ve created a lot of value,” he said. And VMWare’s public status makes its actions a roadmap for XenSource.
“You’ve seen all these VMWare announcements? Look at these as two paths for OEMs. Most will choose both, I believe. The deals VMWare announced are non-exclusive. We’re talking to the same people.”